Adams Henry Cadwallader
Perils in the Transvaal and Zululand

Chapter Twenty Two

It was a Sunday evening late in December, about nine months after the departure of George Rivers and his friend from Umtongo. George, who wore a suit of clerical black, had just returned from a long ride to Spielman’s Vley, where he had passed the day. He was now a deacon, having been ordained by the Bishop of Praetoria a month or two previously. The weather was delicious, but very warm, and George was glad to sit down by his friend’s side in a charming little summer-house which they had built under the shade of a tall eucalyptus planted by Mr Rogers when he first came to the Transvaal, forty years before.

“Well, George, what sort of a congregation had you?” inquired Margetts; “and how did you get on with your sermon?”

“I had a very good congregation,” was the reply. “The farmer who bought Spielman’s Vley of my stepfather is an Englishman, an emigrant from a Berkshire village. He and his wife and grown-up children were all there, and so were nearly all the farm-servants whom he had brought with him. He told me very earnestly how it delighted him to hear the Church service. It was like a voice from Old England, he said, and he couldn’t tell me how glad they all were that a clergyman would come over from Umvalosa every alternate Sunday now, instead of once a month.”

“And I daresay, when he was in Berkshire, he didn’t think much of the Church service,” suggested Margetts.

“No, he often didn’t go, he told me, and cared very little for it when he did. And it was the same with his labourers. They seldom miss the service here. Well, it is to be hoped that they will not come to neglect it again, now it is once more within their reach.”

“But how about the ‘natives’ service’?” asked Redgy. “Could you get on with that?”

“I am afraid I made a good many blunders,” said Rivers, “especially in the sermon. However, nothing but practice will set that right.”

“You think an interpreter doesn’t answer?”

“No, I am pretty sure it doesn’t. You know what Lambert told us about his interpreter, when he first went to preach to the Kaffirs in the Knysna.”

“No, I didn’t hear the story.”

“Lambert said he was puzzled how to address them, when it occurred to him that ‘Children of the Forest’ was a title that would be sure to take their fancy, and he accordingly began his discourse to them in that way. He thought he had done it rather well, until one of his friends, who had heard him, and who was a good Kaffir scholar, told him that the interpreter had rendered his ‘Children of the Forest’ as ‘Little men of big sticks.’ That story determined me never, anyhow, to employ an interpreter.”

Redgy laughed. “I think you are right,” he said, “and your Kaffir certainly improves. By-the-bye, did you see Hardy? His house is only seven or eight miles off from Spielman’s Vley, and I am told he always goes over when there is service there.”

“I believe he does, but he was not there to-day. Mr Bacon told me he had gone to Durban – went about a week ago.”

“Indeed. Do you know what took him there?”

“I fancy he was sent for to make some report of the state of things in this neighbourhood. You know he now holds an official position of some importance.”

“Yes, which you might have had if you had liked it, George. He has the credit of having given them warning at Rorke’s Drift in time to prepare themselves for the defence of the place. But it was you who brought them that information.”

“I did not want the post, Redgy; and, if I had, Hardy was the person really entitled to it. I did not know the way from Isandhlwana to Rorke’s Drift, and could not have found it. And to say the truth, I should not have thought of the garrison at Rorke’s Drift, if he had not reminded me of it. No, he fully deserved his appointment, and I am heartily glad he got it. But I believe, when he gets to Durban, he will warn the Government that the Transvaal is not merely in a condition of discontent and disloyalty, but on the verge of an armed outbreak.”

“Do you think it goes so far as that, George? An armed outbreak means a war with England, remember. What possible hope can they have in succeeding in that?”

“No reasonable hope, of course. The hundredth part of England’s power would be enough to crush them. I don’t suppose the Boers could bring 5000 men into the field, and England could easily send five times that number, or twenty times that number, if she chose. The Boers have but little discipline or material of war, or knowledge of strategy. England is a first-rate power in all those respects. It would be as absolute madness for the Transvaal to go to war with England, as it would be for a terrier dog to provoke a lion to fight with it. But, however great the madness, it does not follow that they will not do it.”

“What can induce them?”

“Their profound ignorance of the relative strength of the two countries. I was talking with a Boer of some intelligence, who, I found, really believed that Holland was one of the Great Powers in Europe – the equal, if not the superior of England. He knew nothing of history, apparently, since the times of Van Trompe and Admiral Blake. He fancied Isandhlwana had only been redeemed by a desperate and exhausting effort, which would make it impossible for us to engage in any other war for a generation to come. The accidental circumstance that a quantity of newly-coined money had been sent out here to pay the troops was enough to convince him that England was bankrupt, and driven to expend its last guinea. People who know no more than that of the true state of things may perpetrate any act of folly.”

“No doubt, George; and I daresay also they argued that the disasters at Isandhlwana and Intombe proved that the English were not so formidable in the field as their own troops had always been. They had repeatedly fought these Zulus, remember, and always with complete success.”

“Exactly; no doubt they did, and do, so argue. They were always on their guard, and we were taken off ours, and that made all the difference. But though the Dutch might practise their rude tactics with success on the natives, they will hardly get the English to approach them and be shot down after the same fashion. That is reckoning rather too much on even an Englishman’s contempt for his enemy. But they mean mischief, these Boers. They are flocking down this way from all parts of the Transvaal. Whom do you think I saw to-day, of all people in the world?”

“I don’t know, indeed – not old Kransberg, I suppose?”

“Not old Kransberg, but I did meet the young one – our friend Rudolf. What should bring him here, or Gottlob Lisberg, or Hans Stockmar, or Julius Vanderbilt, or half a dozen other fellows from near Zeerust, whom I have seen about in the course of the last week, unless what they say is true, and they are going to rebel against the English Government.”

“It looks like it, I’m afraid. But about Rudolf Kransberg – did you come to speech of him? How did he receive you?”

“I didn’t come to speech of him, as he didn’t say a single word. He received me as Dido did Aeneas in the infernal regions.”

“What! he bears us some grudge for the trick played on him at Umtongo?”

“I am not at all sure that he realises the fact that any trick was played on him. From what Lisberg told me, – Lisberg is very intimate with him, you know, – he fancies the explosion was the work of the Evil One, and that we are in league with him. You know Thyrza wrote us word that he had never turned up at Umtongo again. My mother thought it very odd, but she apparently still believes he is a suitor for Thyrza’s hand.”

“I suppose Thyrza herself has a pretty shrewd suspicion of the truth.”

“I suppose she has, but if she guessed that Rudolf had taken up that notion, she would be quite content to let him entertain it. But the upshot, I fancy, is that Rudolf owes us one, and will pay it if he has the opportunity. He is as thorough a specimen of the sullen Boer as I know, and your sullen Boer is not a pleasant article. But, Redgy,” he added, after a few minutes’ silence, “there is a matter which I have once or twice wished to speak to you about, but have always put it off. I have a fancy that you really do care for Thyrza, notwithstanding your chaff about her. We are very old friends, and out here, cut off from all the rest of the world, we are like brothers. I wish you would tell me the plain truth about this matter.”

“Well, old fellow, where is the use of telling it? I don’t see how any one could live as long as I did in your sister’s society, and not care for her. She is simply the sweetest and most beautiful creature I have ever seen. But where is the good of my saying this, George? I can’t ask her to marry me; I have nothing but a precarious allowance of a hundred pounds a year, and I am not likely to have anything more, unless I can make it myself out here.”

“But if Thyrza likes you – ”

“I don’t know that she does,” broke in Margetts. “I have fancied once or twice that she does. But most likely it was all fancy.”

“I am only saying, if she does like you, she will have something. Umtongo belongs to my mother, not to Mr Mansen.”

“But Umtongo will come to you, George,” said Margetts, surprised.

“I shall not want it. I shall never marry; and this life here suits me much better than such a farm as Umtongo, though, no doubt, that is a very good farm.”

“No doubt,” assented his friend. “I see what you mean, and I believe I understand you, when you say you won’t marry. But, in the first place, I hope you are mistaken there; and, in the next, supposing everything else arranged as you wish, Thyrza and I could never deprive you of your inheritance. No, George; I mean to stay here and work as I am doing now. I shall never make a parson; I’m not cut out for that. But I think I shall do well enough at farming and teaching; and, by and by, if your sister doesn’t marry a Boer, I may be in a position to ask her.”

“Be it so, Redgy. I believe you are right, and this had better not be mentioned again. And here, in good time, comes Mr Rogers. He is back from Newcastle earlier than I had expected.”

Mr Rogers, whose acquaintance the reader made in the first chapter of this story, was an extremely worthy man. It would have been well for both England and South Africa if there had been more like him. Left an orphan when quite young, and possessed of a considerable fortune, he had always disliked the ordinary round of English social life, and desired the freer air and habits of a new country. As soon as he could overcome the reluctance of his guardian to the step, he had visited the colonies, and chosen out from among them the border country of Natal and the Transvaal. There he had bought a large farm, – large even for farms in that country, – and built two or three different stations on various parts of it. Spielman’s Vley and Rylands were two of these, and here he placed men whose views accorded with his own. Ludwig Mansen, though a Dutchman, had been one of these; and it was with considerable regret that he heard, soon after his arrival in England, of Mrs Mansen’s succession to her uncle’s property near Zeerust and their removal thither. Notwithstanding his affection for colonial life, he was an Englishman to the backbone, and the blunders made by Colonial Secretaries, one after another, sorely disturbed him. In particular, the gigantic mistake of the annexation of the Transvaal so troubled him, that he made an expedition to England in the hope of persuading the Government to reconsider that disastrous measure. There was no doubt it was, for the moment, advantageous to the Boers, as a sentence of penal servitude would be less unwelcome to a convicted prisoner than a sentence of death. But when the danger of being hanged had passed away, it was not likely that penal servitude would be cheerfully accepted. Foreseeing the inevitable mischief that would ensue, Mr Rogers had urged the repeal, or, at all events, some modification of the decree. But the new Government could not be induced to pay any heed to South African matters, being completely absorbed by domestic and Continental questions; and Mr Rogers went back to Umvalosa, to do the best he could under the circumstances of the case.

On the present occasion he had not returned from Newcastle (whither he had gone, as was his practice, to help in the church services on a Sunday) in the happiest frame of mind. Everywhere he saw the plainest indications of the mischief he had anticipated. Newcastle was full of Boers, who had come in from the more distant parts of the Transvaal, and their feelings and intentions could not be mistaken: not only was revolt designed, but it was close at hand. He greeted George and Redgy with his usual kindness, but his depression and vexation were evident.

“Did you know that your stepfather and mother, as well as your sister, were on the way here?” he asked, addressing Rivers.

“No, sir, I had no idea of it. I haven’t had a letter for the last fortnight; and Thyrza, from whom I heard three weeks ago, said nothing of any such intention.”

“No; I imagine it must have been a hasty thought. But they are certainly on their way to Newcastle, and will arrive in a day or two at furthest.”

“Who told you of it, sir?” asked George. “Perhaps it is some mistake.”

“No, that can hardly be. It was Henryk Vander Heyden who informed me. I met him in the street at Newcastle, where he arrived two days ago. Mansen, with his wife and daughter, were to follow him very shortly. Miss Vander Heyden is to travel in their company. Her brother thought it better.”

“What are all the ladies coming for?” inquired Redgy. “They are not going to fight the English, anyhow.”

“No,” said Mr Rogers; “but it may not be safe for them to stay behind. Nearly all the able-bodied men among the Boers will take part in the rising. The Kaffirs and Hottentots would have it their own way, and they might insult or injure the white women. I think Vander Heyden, and your stepfather too, George, are quite right to bring their ladies with them.”

“I suppose Vander Heyden is very hot about this,” suggested Rivers.

“Yes, he is determined enough, and he is a dangerous opponent to the English. He is a good officer; especially, he understands his countrymen’s mode of fighting, and knows from experience what are the faults into which our officers are likely to fall. And he is a desperate man into the bargain.”

“How so, sir? I do not understand you.”

“Don’t you know the story of the girl who was killed by the Zulus not long before the battle of Isandhlwana?”

“Yes; I heard something about it, I believe, from Mr Baylen or Hardy, I don’t remember which. Some female relative of his was killed in a very brutal manner. But they are always brutal, these Zulus.”

“It was too sad a matter to be much spoken about. The lady, Lisa van Courtlandt, had been engaged to him for some years, and he is said to have been greatly attached to her. She had been murdered just before he came up, and the sight of her mangled corpse drove him, they said, almost mad. It wasn’t merely for the purpose of avenging her death that he enlisted in our army – at least, so it is thought. He wanted, poor fellow, to get knocked on the head himself.”

“Well, that explains what I couldn’t understand before,” said Margetts, – “why he was so terribly vexed when it was settled that he was to remain at Rorke’s Drift. He was for a time almost beside himself.”

“And that, too, may account for his desperate exposure of himself during that night of the encounter with the Zulus,” added Rivers. “I never saw a man so utterly insensible to danger; and he hardly seemed rejoiced the next morning at his escape. Poor fellow, he has had a hard lot in life! Well, I agree with you, Mr Rogers; I have no doubt he will fight desperately enough in this outbreak, if it really is going to take place.”

“That, I am afraid, there is no doubt of. Vander Heyden told me as much. He wanted to know whether you and Margetts meant to volunteer again to serve in the English army. If you did, he said, you should leave the Transvaal immediately, or you might be arrested. He offered to give you a pass which would carry you across the frontier. That was very kind and generous.”

“What did you tell him, sir?” asked Rivers.

“Oh, I said that you were now in orders, and, of course, would not think of fighting; as for you, Mr Margetts, I said I did not know what you might do, but I would ask you, and let him know if you required his help.”

“I am obliged to him,” said Margetts; “but I have no idea of volunteering again. I consider this to be quite a different matter from the Zulu war, where it was a question whether barbarous or lawless cruelty should be put down. Unless I am myself interfered with, I shall not interfere in this business.”

“I am glad to hear you say so,” said Mr Rogers. “Then we shall all remain quietly here. I shall invite the Mansens to come and stay at Dykeman’s Hollow, and I think they will come. It will be quieter and more comfortable for them than Utrecht or Newcastle, which are overcrowded. I have no doubt Vander Heyden, who has a high command, will be able to secure us from molestation.”

Mr Rogers was not disappointed in either expectation. In a few days Mrs Mansen and Thyrza arrived; while Ludwig joined the assembled council of Boers which was now sitting at Heidelberg, exerting himself to prevent the rising which was evidently on the point of taking place. Simultaneously with the appearance of the ladies came a note from Vander Heyden, endorsing a protection from Praetorius for all the inmates of Mr Rogers’ household. Not long afterwards the standard of rebellion was openly displayed, and Ludwig joined his family at the Hollow. The Boers in all parts of the Transvaal now took the field with their Westley Richard rifles, and all through the Transvaal the English were obliged to fly for refuge to towns or villages, where they were besieged by the Boers.

Resolved not to provoke the animosity, or even the distrust of his neighbours, Mr Rogers kept himself and all his employés within the bounds of his own domains, not even sending a letter or a message to Newcastle, lest it might be supposed to have some political purpose. He advised his guests also to observe the same prudent demeanour. No doubt Mynheer Mansen was a Dutchman, and one very generally respected; but his wife and stepdaughter were English, and they were the guests of an Englishman; and at this time national feeling, as it might be termed, ran so high that the merest trifle might be enough to cause a general outbreak. The Mansens would have had no inclination to act otherwise than as he advised, even if their sense of what was due to him as their host had not forbade them to do so. They regarded the strife that was in progress as a vexation and a calamity; and whatever might be the issue of it, they were anxious to see an end put to it.

But the ladies felt the time hang heavily on their hands; and when one day had been expended on a visit to George and Redgy’s cottage and garden and an inspection of their farmyard and stock, and another to the church and school where he ministered and taught, they were at a loss how to employ themselves, until their host, by a happy inspiration, one day late in January suggested a visit to Kolman’s Kop, a most picturesque spot on the very edge of Mr Rogers’ estate, from which a wide prospect might be obtained of that part of the Orange Free State known as Harrismith. The road from Bloemfontein to Newcastle ran close beside it, and was visible for a long distance from the summit of the Kop, though the latter was so thickly wooded as to screen any visitors to it from being themselves seen by passing travellers.

To this spot it was agreed that an expedition should be made on the following day; and the whole party, inclusive of Mr Rogers, who acted as guide, set out after breakfast, on horses and mules, having sent some Kaffirs on before them to make the needful preparations.

Kolman’s Kop was situated on one of the spurs of the Drakensbergs, not ascending so high as to be bleak or chill, yet high enough to command a magnificent view of the landscape beneath, and there are few countries in the world in which so vast a panorama is visible from the higher lands as in the Orange Free State. It is not, indeed, an unbroken level, like the low country of the Netherlands, being continually varied by hill and ridge. But these hardly anywhere rise to any considerable height, so that from the slopes of the Drakenberg the eye may range in every direction, until the horizon line melts into the distance. It is a fertile and picturesque territory, watered by noble rivers, whose banks, for the most part, are fringed with foliage, rich with corn lands and fruit orchards, and pastures where sheep and oxen and horses are bred abundantly. The land on that side of the Drakensbergs being considerably more elevated than on that of Natal, the climate is cooler and more agreeable to European residents. A general cry of admiration broke from the visitors as they caught sight of it, and sitting down on the trunk of a fallen tree, they proceeded more leisurely to examine its beauties.

“Well, sir, the Dutch have not much to complain of here, at all events,” observed Redgy after a lengthened survey of the scene. “No wonder they halted here when driven from their homes by the English. I should have thought, for my part, that they might have been very thankful to the English for driving them here!”

“Well, so they might, Margetts,” remarked Mr Rogers, “if they had thought that the English had been anxious to find out pleasant quarters for them. But I am afraid the English thought of one thing only, and that was clearing them out of their old abodes.

“Yes,” he resumed; “the Dutchman has made himself comfortable enough here, if John Bull will only leave him alone. But that John Bull is too philanthropic to do – ha, Mansen?”

“There is no talk of annexing the Free State, is there?” asked old Ludwig with a smile.

“Why, no, Ludwig. The annexation of the other hasn’t proved an encouraging experiment, or I think it likely that it would have been proposed.”

“Well, sir,” observed George, “that annexation took place with the free consent of the Boers, and it was designed in kindness to them.”

“Was it?” returned Mr Rogers; “I have my doubts about that latter. No doubt the Boers agreed to it, or rather didn’t object to it, at the time. But it was very much like pulling a drowning man out of the water, on condition of his being your bond-servant for evermore. He would agree rather than be drowned, but I doubt whether you could call that his free consent. It was rather his forced consent, to my mind.”

“What would you have had England do, sir?” asked Redgy.

“Help the Transvaal out of its difficulties, without insisting on annexation,” answered Mr Rogers. “The policy would have been as wise as it would have been kind.”

“And you would have given them their independence back when they asked for it after the Zulu war, I suppose?” said Margetts. “Would you give it them now?”

“I should certainly have given it on the occasion you name, when they asked for it. It had then become clear that they did not really desire the annexation; and the only reasonable ground there could have been for it was shown by that request not to exist. I think compliance would have been as wise as it would have been just, and would have gone far to smooth away all difficulties. It is, of course, a very different thing now. England cannot give to armed menace what she has refused to peaceful entreaty. Compliance would be even worse than the previous refusal.”

“Well, sir,” urged Margetts, “no one, to be sure, could think that the Boers would ever really get the upper hand in a regular war with England. I speak with all possible respect to Mr Mansen, but that is surely impossible.”

“No one who understands the strength and resources of the two countries could think it possible,” returned Mr Rogers. “But the Boers possess very little information on the subject, and the coloured races still less. They would all think that England yielded now, because her weakness, not her magnanimity, obliged her. But I still trust there will be no war. Enough of this. What is it you have been looking at so intently, Thyrza, for the last ten minutes?”

“I think it is a man on horseback,” said Miss Rivers; “but the object is so far off that I cannot distinguish what it is.”

She pointed as she spoke to a black speck, on the road that led from Winberg to Newcastle, which was moving towards them.

They all watched it for several minutes, and then Mr Mansen said, “You have a long sight, Thyrza. It is a horseman, and he is riding fast. He will pass almost close to us.”

“It is an English soldier, or a man who has been one,” exclaimed Rivers presently; “there is no mistaking his seat on horseback.”

The rider continued to approach until he had arrived almost immediately under the spot where they were sitting. Then George and Redgy started up, simultaneously exclaiming, “It is Hardy, I declare! let us go down and speak to him.”