In the Ranks of the C.I.V. Part 10

Scjamboks are whips made of rhinoceros' hide. They take a beautiful polish, and a good one is indestructible. A k.n.o.bkerry is a stick with a heavy round k.n.o.b for a head, overlaid, head and stem, with copper and steel wire, in ingenious spirals and patterns. The Kaffirs make them.

I also wired to my brother to meet our train at Elandsfontein. He had written me, saying he had been sent there from the Convalescent Camp, having the luck to find as his commandant Major Paul Burn-Murdoch, of the Royal Engineers, who was a mutual friend of ours.

I was on picket duty that night--my last on the veldt. The camp looked very strange with only the four lines of men sleeping by their kits, and a few officers' horses and a little knot of ten mules for the last buck-waggon. It was an utterly still moonlight night, only broken by the distant chirruping of frogs and the occasional tinkle of a mule's chain.

At seven the next morning we met the C.I.V. Infantry and Mounted Infantry, and were all reviewed by Lord Roberts, who rode out with his Staff to say good-bye to us. He made us a speech we were proud to hear, referring particularly to the fine marching of the Infantry, and adding that he hoped we would carry home to the heart of the country a high opinion of the regular British soldier, alongside whom we had fought. That we certainly shall do. He prophesied a warm reception at home, and said he hoped when it was going on we would remember one man, our Honorary Colonel, who would have liked to be there to march at our head into the city of London; "good-bye and G.o.d speed." Then we cheered him and marched away.

At half-past twelve we were at the station, where the guns had already been entrained by a fatigue party. Ours was the first of three trains, and was to carry the Battery, and two companies of Infantry. Williams and I secured a small lair underneath a limber in an open truck, and bundled in our kit. The platform was crowded with officers and Tommies, and many and envious were the farewells we had. Kilsby, of T Battery, whom I had made friends with at the barracks, was there to see me off. At 4.30, amidst great cheering, we steamed out and began the thousand mile run to Capetown, slowly climbing the long wooded pa.s.s, under an angry, lowering sky. At the top a stormy sun was setting in a glowing furnace of rose-red. We hastily rigged some tarpaulins over our limber, and escaped a wetting from a heavy shower.

We had managed to distribute and compress our kit so as to leave room to lie down in, and after dark we lit a lantern and played picquet.

About eight we came to Elandsfontein, and there on the platform were my brother and Major Burn-Murdoch. The latter hurried us off to the restaurant--forbidden ground to us men as a rule, sat us down among the officers, and gave us a rattling good dinner, while our comrades munched their biscuits outside. De Wet, we heard, was ahead, having crossed the line with 1000 men, two nights ago, further south. We agreed that it would be a happy irony if he held up our train, the first to carry troops homeward--the herald of peace, in fact; and just the sort of enterprise that would tickle his fancy. Suddenly the train jerked off, and I jumped into my lair and left them. It was a warm night, and we sat under the stars on the seats of the limber, enjoying the motion and the cool air. About ten we pulled up at a station, and just after we had stopped, four rifle-shots rapped out in quick succession not far ahead. De Wet, we at once conjectured. In the darkness on our left we heard an impatient corporal turning out his sleepy guard, and a stir and clatter of arms. One of our companies of infantry was also turned out, and a party formed to patrol the line, outposts having reported some Boers tampering with the rails. The rest of the train was sound asleep, but we, being awake, got leave to go with the patrol. Williams borrowed a rifle from somewhere, but I could not find a weapon. They made us connecting files between the advance party and main body, and we tramped up the line and over the veldt for about an hour, but nothing happened, and we came back and turned in.

De Wet let us alone, and for five days we travelled peaceably through the well-known places, sometimes in the pure, clear air of true African weather, but further south through storms of cold rain, when Scotch mists shrouded everything, and we lay in the bottom of our truck, on carefully constructed islands of kit and blankets, among pools of water, pa.s.sing the time with books and cards. Signs of war had not disappeared, and at every station down to Bloemfontein were the same vigilant camps (often with parties posted in trenches), more charred remains of trains, and ever-present rumours of raiding commandos.

One novel sight I saw in the interminable monotony of desert veldt.

For a whole afternoon there were mirages all along the horizon, a chain of enchanted lakes on either side, on which you could imagine piers, and boats, and wooded islands.

At Beaufort West we dropped our "boys," the Kaffir mule-drivers; they left us in a great hubbub of laughing and shouting, with visions before them, I expect, of a golden age, based on their acc.u.mulated wealth of high pay. We pa.s.sed Piquetberg Road about midnight of October 6th. Plumbley, the store-keeper, was there, and the belle of the village was holding a moonlight levee at the end of the train.

There was a temporary clear from the rain here, but it soon thickened down again. When we steamed away I climbed out on the buffers (the only way of getting a view), and had a last look at the valley, which our wheels had scored in so many directions. Tulbagh Pa.s.s, Bushman's Rock, and the hills behind it were looking ghostly through a humid, luminous mist; but my posture was not conducive to sentimentality, as any one who tries it will agree; so I climbed back to my island, and read myself to sleep by a candle, while we clattered and jolted on into the night.

When I woke at dawn on October 7th we were standing in a siding at the Capetown docks, the rain coming down in torrents, and Table Mountain blotted out in clouds. Collecting our kit from sopping crannies and corners, we packed it and paraded at six, and marched off to the quay, where the _Aurania_, our homeward transport, lay. Here we gave in revolvers, carbines, blankets, etc., were split up into messes, and, after much waiting, filed off into the fore part of the ship, descended a noisome-smelling funnel by an iron staircase, and found ourselves on the troop-deck, very similar to that of the _Montfort_, only likely to be much more crowded; the same low ceiling, with cross-rafters for kit and hooks for hammocks, and close-packed tables on either side.

More C.I.V. had arrived, and the quays were swarming with soldiers and civilians. Williams had decided to stay and see something of Capetown, and was now to get his discharge. There were a few others doing so also. He was discharged in form, and drove away to the Mount Nelson Hotel, returning later disguised as a civilian, in a long mackintosh (over his uniform), a scarf, and a villainous-looking cap; looking, as he said, like a seedy Johannesburg refugee. But he was free! The Manager of his hotel, which, I believe, is the smartest in South Africa, had looked askance at his luggage, which consisted of an oat-sack, bulging with things, and a disreputable-looking bundle.

At about three there was a great shouting and heaving of the crowd, and the High Commissioner came on the scene, and walked down the quay through a guard of honour which we and the Infantry had contributed to form, industriously kinematographed on his progress by a fat Jew.

Several staff-officers were with Milner, and a grey-bearded gentleman, whom we guessed to be Sir Gordon Sprigg. Milner, I heard, made a speech somewhere. Then a band was playing, and we were allowed half an hour off the ship. Williams and I had our last talk on the quay, in a surging crowd of khaki and civilian grey, mingled with the bright hats and dresses of ladies. Then bells began to ring, the siren to bellow mournfully, and the band to play valedictory tunes ("Say _au revoir_ and not goodbye," I thought rather an ominous pleasantry). We two said good-bye, and I squeezed myself up the gangway. Every inch of standing room aboard was already packed, but I got a commanding position by clambering high up, with some others, on to a derrick-boom. The pilot appeared on the bridge, sh.o.r.e-ropes were cast off, "Auld Lang Syne"

was played, then "G.o.d save the Queen." Every hat on board and ash.o.r.e was waving, and every voice cheering, and so we backed off, and steamed out of the basin.

Sober facts had now to be considered. There were signs of a heavy swell outside, and something about "the lift of the great Cape combers" came into my head. We all jostled down to tea, and made the best of our time. There was no mistake about the swell, and a terrific rolling soon began, which first caused unnatural merriment, and then havoc. I escaped from the inferno below, and found a pandemonium on deck. The limited s.p.a.ce allotted to the troops was crammed, and at every roll figures were propelled to and fro like high-velocity projectiles. Sh.e.l.l-fire was nothing to it for danger. I got hold of something and smoked, while darkness came on with rain, and the horrors intensified. I bolted down the pit to get some blankets. One glance around was enough, and having seized the blankets, up I came again. Where to make a bed? Every yard, sheltered and unsheltered, seemed to be carpeted with human figures. Amidships, on either side of the ship, there was a covered gallery, running beneath the saloon deck (a palatial empty s.p.a.ce, with a few officers strolling about it). In the gallery on the weather side there was not an inch of lying room, though at every roll the water lapped softly up to and round the prostrate, indifferent bodies. On the lee side, which was dry, they seemed to be lying two deep. At last, on the open s.p.a.ce of the main deck aft, I found one narrow strip of wet, but empty s.p.a.ce, laid my blankets down, earnestly wishing it was the dusty veldt, and was soon asleep. It was raining, but, like the rest, misery made me indifferent. _Montfort_ experience ought to have reminded me that the decks are always washed by the night watch. I was reminded of this about 2 A.M. by an unsympathetic seaman, who was pointing the nozzle of a hose threateningly at me. The awakened crowd was drifting away, goodness knows where, trailing their wet blankets. I happened to be near the ladder leading to the sacred precincts of the saloon deck.

Its clean, empty, sheltered s.p.a.ces were irresistibly tempting, and I lawlessly mounted the ladder with my bed, lay down, and went to sleep again.

CHAPTER XIV.

CONCLUSION.

Impressions of the voyage--Sentry-go--Troopship--Limitations-- Retrospect--St. Vincent--Forecasts--The Start--The Needles-- Southampton Water--Landing--Paddington--A dream.

I am not going to describe the voyage in detail. Africa, with all it meant, was behind us, England was before, and the intervening time, monotonous though it was, pa.s.sed quickly with that absorbing thought.

My chief impression is that of living in an eternal jostle; forming interminable _queues_ outside canteens, washing-places, and stuffy hammock-rooms in narrow alleys, and of leisure hours spent on deck among a human carpet of khaki, playing euchre, or reading the advertis.e.m.e.nt columns of ancient halfpenny papers. There was physical exercise, and a parade every day, but the chief duty was that of sentry-go, which recurred to each of us every five days, and lasted for twenty-four hours. The ship teemed with sentries. To look out for fire was our princ.i.p.al function, and a very important one it was, but I have also vivid recollections of lonely vigils over water-tight doors in stifling little alley-ways, of directing streams of traffic up troop-deck ladders, and of drowsy sinecures, in the midnight hours, over deserted water-taps and empty wash-houses. These latter, which contained fourteen basins between fourteen hundred men, are a good ill.u.s.tration of the struggle for life in those days. That a sentry should guard them at night was not unreasonable on the face of it, since I calculated that if every man was to appear washed at the ten o'clock parade, the first would have had to begin washing about six o'clock the night before, allowing ten minutes for a toilet, but unfortunately for this theory, the basins were always locked up at night. Another grim pleasantry was an order that all should appear shaved at the morning parade. Luckily this cynical regulation was leniently interpreted, for the spectacle of fourteen hundred razors flashing together in those narrow limits of time and s.p.a.ce was a prospect no humane person could view with anything but horror.

There was plenty of time to reflect over our experiences in the last nine months. Summing mine up, I found, and thinking over it at home find still, little but good in the retrospect. Physically and mentally, I, like many others, have found this short excursion into strict military life of enormous value. To those who have been lucky enough to escape sickness, the combination of open air and hard work will act as a lasting tonic against the less healthy conditions of town-life. It is something, bred up as we have been in a complex civilization, to have reduced living to its simplest terms and to have realized how little one really wants. It is much to have learnt the discipline, self-restraint, endurance and patience which soldiering demands. (For a driver, it is a liberal education in itself to have lived with and for two horses day and night for eight months!) Perhaps the best of all is to have given up newspaper reading for a time and have stepped one's self into the region of open-air facts where history is made and the empire is moulded; to have met and mixed with on that ground, where all cla.s.ses are fused, not only men of our blood from every quarter of the globe, but men of our own regular army who had fought that desperate struggle in the early stages of the war before we were thought of; to have lived their life, heard their grievances, sympathized with their needs, and admired their splendid qualities.

As to the Battery, it is not for a driver in the ranks to generalize on its work. But this one can say, that after a long and trying probation on the line of communications we did at length do a good deal of work and earn the confidence of our Brigadier. We have been fortunate enough to lose no lives through wounds and only one from sickness, a fact which speaks highly for our handling in the field by our officers, and for their general management of the Battery.

Incidentally, we can fairly claim to have proved, or helped to prove, that Volunteer Artillery can be of use in war; though how much skill and labour is involved in its sudden mobilization only the few able men who organized ours in January last can know.

To return to the _Aurania_.

On the 19th of October we were anch.o.r.ed at St. Vincent, with the fruit-laden b.u.m-boats swarming alongside, and the donkey-engines chattering, derricks clacking, and coal-dust pervading everything.

Here we read laconic telegrams from London, speaking of a great reception before us on Sat.u.r.day the 27th, and thenceforward the talk was all of runs, and qualities of coal, and technical mysteries of the toiling engines, which were straining to bring us home by Friday night. Every steward, stoker, and cabin boy had his circle of disciples, who quoted and betted on his predictions as though they were the utterings of an oracle; but the pessimists gradually prevailed, for we met bad weather and heavy head-seas on entering the bay. It was not till sunrise on Friday itself that we sighted land, a white spur of cliff, with a faint suggestion of that long unseen colour, green, behind it, seen across some miles of wind-whipped foaming blue. The optimists said it was the Needles, the pessimists the Start; the latter were right, and we guessed we should have to wait till Monday before landing; but that did not lessen the delight of watching the familiar sh.o.r.es slide by till the Needles were reached, and then of feasting our eyes, long accustomed to the parched plains of Africa, on fields and hedges, and familiar signs of homely, peaceful life.

It was four o'clock when we dropped anchor in Southampton Water, and were shouting a thousand questions at the occupants of a tug which lay alongside, and learnt with wonder, emotion, and a strange sense of unworthiness, of the magnificent welcome that London had prepared for us.

The interminable day of waiting; the landing on the quay, with its cheering crowds; that wonderful journey to London, with its growing tumult of feelings, as station after station, with their ribboned and shouting throngs, flashed by; the meeting at Paddington with our comrades of the Honourable Artillery Company, bringing us their guns and horses; the mounting of a glossy, smartly-equipped steed, which made me laughingly recall my s.h.a.ggy old pair, with their dusty, travel-worn harness; all this I see clearly enough. The rest seems a dream; a dream of miles of upturned faces, of dancing colours, of roaring voices, of a sudden dim hush in the great Cathedral, of more miles of faces under gaslight, of a voice in a packed hall saying, "London is proud of her--," of disconnected confidences with policemen, work-people, street-arabs, and finally of the entry once more through the old grey gateway of the Armoury House. I expect the feelings of all of us were much the same; some honest pride in having helped to earn such a welcome; a sort of stunned bewilderment at its touching and pa.s.sionate intensity; a deep wave of affection for our countrymen; and a thought in the background all the time of a dusty khaki figure still plodding the distant veldt--our friend and comrade, Atkins, who has done more and bloodier work than we, and who is not at the end of it yet.

THE END.