The Kopje Garrison: A Story of the Boer War

Chapter Ten.

Tracking the Wagons

Lennox was well enough, when the sun was up, to accompany Dickenson to the examination of the scene of the explosion, but not in time to witness the discovery of two bags of unexploded powder, from where they had been hurled by Colour-Sergeant James, who was on the ground before it was light, as he explained to the two young officers.

“You were early, sergeant,” said Lennox. “Yes, sir; to tell the truth, I was. You see, I couldn’t sleep a wink.”

“In so much pain?”

“Well, the back of my head did smart pretty tidy, I must say, sir, and I couldn’t lay flat on my back as I generally do; but it wasn’t that, sir – it was the thought of the step up. Just think of it, sir! Only been full sergeant two years, and a step up all at once like that.”

“Well, you deserved it,” said Lennox quietly. “Deserved it, sir? Well, what about you?”

“Oh, I dare say I shall get my promotion when I’ve earned it,” said Lennox. “Now then, let’s look round. You found two bags of the powder, then?”

“Yes, sir,” said the man, pointing; “one down in that pit where they dug the soil for filling the biscuit-tins and baskets, and the other yonder behind that wall. The blast must have blown right over them.”

“But how about the sentry the colonel said he saw here?” asked Lennox.

The man’s countenance changed, a fierce frown distorting it.

“He was quite right, sir,” said the sergeant, nodding his head. “They found him this morning at his post.”

“Dead?” said Lennox in a hoarse whisper.

“Yes, sir – dead. Horrid! Some one must have crept up behind him with a blanket and thrown it over him while some one else used an iron bar. He couldn’t have spoken a word after the first blow.”

“But why do you say that?” said Dickenson. “I understand the sentry was found dead, but – ”

“There was the blanket and the iron bar, sir – the one over him and the other at his side. I don’t call that fair fighting, sir; do you?”

The answer consisted of a sharp drawing in of the breath; and the officers turned away to examine the mischief done by the explosion, the backs of two houses having been blown right in.

“Well,” said Dickenson dryly, “it’s awkward, because they’ve got to be made up again; but one can’t say they’re spoiled.”

“Not spoiled?” said Lennox, looking wonderingly at the speaker.

“No; they were so horribly straight and blank and square before. They do look a little more picturesque now. Oh, he was a wicked wretch who invented corrugated iron!”

“Nonsense!” said Lennox.

“But it does keep the wet out well, sir,” put in the sergeant. “I don’t know what we should have done sometimes without it.”

Further conversation was stopped by the coming towards camp of a couple of Boers bearing a white flag; but they were only allowed to approach within the first line of defence.

“Want to have a look at the mischief they have done,” said Dickenson bitterly, “and they will not have a chance. My word, what they don’t deserve!”

The permission they had come to ask was given, and they were turned back at once, to signal for their ambulance-wagons to approach, these being busy for quite an hour picking up the dead and wounded; while the murdered sentry was the only loss suffered by the defenders of Groenfontein and the kopje.

As soon as suspicion was firmly fixed upon the party of non-combatant Boers who had departed upon their mission to obtain fresh supplies, one of the first orders issued by the colonel was for a patrol of mounted men to go in pursuit and, if possible, bring them back.

“There is not much chance of overtaking them,” he said to the officers present; “but with a couple of teams of slow-going oxen they cannot make their own pace. Then this is the last time I’ll trust a Boer.”

“The worst of it is,” said the major, “that we have let them carry off those two spans of bullocks. Tut, tut, tut! Forty of them; tough as leather, of course, but toothsome when you have nothing else.”

“Toothsome!” said Captain Roby, laughing. “A capital term, for the poor teeth of those who tried to eat them would have to work pretty hard – eh, – Dickenson?”

“Better than nothing,” said the young lieutenant – a decision with which all agreed.

That day passed off without further attack from the enemy, who seemed to have drawn off to a distance; and as night fell the colonel became very anxious about the patrol, which had not returned. Dickenson, who had the credit of being the longest-sighted man in the regiment, had spent the day on the highest point of the kopje, armed with a powerful telescope, and from his point of vantage, where he could command the country in that wonderfully clear atmosphere for miles round, had swept every bit of plain, and searched bush and pile of granite again and again, till the darkness of evening began to fill up the bush like a flood of something fluid. When he could do no more he left the crew of the gun and began to descend by what he considered the nearest way to headquarters, and soon found it the longest, for he had delayed his return too long.

“Hang it all!” he muttered. “What a pile of shin-breaking rocks it is! I’ve a jolly good mind to go back and take the regular path; seems so stupid, though, now.”

In this spirit he persevered, wandering in and out among the piled-up blocks, all of which seemed in the darkness to be exactly alike, often making him think that he was going over the same ground again and again. But he was still descending, for when he climbed up the next suitable place to try and get a view of the lights of the camp he could see them beneath him and certainly nearer than when he started.

“Shall manage it somehow,” he muttered; “but, hang it! how hungry I am! There, I’ll have a pipe.”

He fumbled in his pocket as he stood in the lee of a block of granite, sheltered from the cold night wind, found the pipe, and raised it to his lips to blow through the stem, but stopped short with every sense on the alert, for from below to his left he heard a light chirp such as might have been given by a bird, but which he argued certainly was not, for he knew of no bird likely to utter such a note at that time of the evening, when the flood of darkness had risen and risen till it had filled up everything high above the highest kopje that dotted the plain.

“Couldn’t be a signal, could it?” he said to himself. “Yes,” he said directly after, for the chirp was answered from lower down.

Dickenson softly swung the case of his telescope round to his back out of the way, and took out his revolver without making a sound, listening intently the while, and at the end of a long minute he made out a low whispering close at hand; but he could not place it exactly, for the sounds seemed to be reflected back from the face of the rock directly in front of him.

“I wish it wasn’t so dark,” he said, and screwing up his lips, he tried to imitate the chirp, and so successfully that it was answered.

“Must be one of our sentries,” he thought, and he hesitated as to his next proceeding.

“Don’t want to challenge and raise a false alarm,” he said; “but last night’s work makes one so suspicious. I’ll let them challenge me.”

He turned to descend softly from where he had climbed to, and his foot slipped on the weather-worn stone, so that he made a loud scraping sound in saving himself from a fall; but not so loud that he was unable to hear the scuffling of feet close at hand, followed directly after by dead silence.

His finger was on the trigger of his pistol, and he was within an ace of firing in the direction of the noise, but refrained, and contented himself with walking as sharply as he could towards it with outstretched hands, for overhanging rocks made the place he was in darker than ever, and he was reduced to feeling his way. Then stopping short with a sense of danger being close at hand, he gave the customary challenge, to have it answered from behind him; and the next minute he was face to face with a sentry.

“I thought I heard something, sir,” said the man. “Then it was you?”

“No, no,” said Dickenson; “I heard it too – a low chirp like a bird.”

“No, no, sir; not that – a sound as if some one slipped.”

“Yes, that was I,” said Dickenson; “but there was a chirp. Did you hear that?”

“Oh yes, I heard that, sir; and another one answered it.”

“And then there was talking.”

“Oh no, sir, I heard no talking. Sound like a bird; but I think it’s a little guinea-piggy sort of thing. I believe they live in holes like rats, and come out and call to one another in the dark.”

“Well, perhaps it may be; but keep a sharp lookout.”

“I’ll keep my ears well open, sir,” said the man; “there’s no seeing anything in a night like this.”

The sentry was able to put his visitor in the right direction, and Dickenson went on, forgetting the incident and wondering how Lennox was getting on; then about what the colonel would say to his ill-success; and lastly, the needs of his being filled up all his thoughts, making him wonder what he should get from the mess in order to satisfy the ravenous hunger that troubled him after his long abstinence.

He reached the square at last, but not without being challenged three times over. Then making his way to the colonel’s patched-up quarters, he was just in time to meet the patrol coming into the opening, their leader going straight to the mess-room, where the officers were gathered.

“Any luck?” said Dickenson. “I was on the lookout for you up yonder till I couldn’t see.”

“Yes, and no,” said the officer. “Come on and you’ll hear.”

Dickenson followed his companion into the long, dreary-looking, ill-lighted barn, where they were both warmly welcomed; and the officer announced that he had gone as near the Boers’ laagers as he could, drawing fire each time; but he had not been able to either overtake or trace the plotters till close upon evening, when on the return. They had found a sign, but there was so much crossing and recrossing that the best of scouts could have made nothing of it; and he concluded that the party he sought had got well away, when all at once they came upon the undoubted spoor of the two teams of oxen, followed it into the bush, and just at dusk came upon the two wagons in a bush-like patch among the trees.

“And what had the men to say for themselves?” said the colonel eagerly.

“The men had gone, sir,” said the officer.

“Ah! Bolted at the sight of you?”

“Oh no, sir; they were gone.”

“What! and left the wagons?”

“Yes, sir; they had left the wagons, but they had carried off the teams.”

Chapter Eleven.

The Colonel’s Plans

The effects of the night alarm were dying out, for there was plenty to take the attention of the defenders of Groenfontein every day – days full of expectancy – for a Boer attack might take place at any moment, while every now and then some one at an outpost had a narrow escape; and two men were hit by long-range bullets, fired perhaps a mile away by some prowling Boer who elevated his piece and fired on chance at the buildings in the village.

“Sniping,” the men termed it, and all efforts to suppress this cowardly way of carrying on the war were vain, for in most cases there was no chance of making out from what scrap of cover the shots had been despatched; while it became evident that, from sheer malignity, the undisciplined members of the enemy’s force would crawl in the darkness to some clump of rocks, or into some ditch-like donga, or behind one of the many ant-hills, and lie there invisible, firing as he saw a chance, and only leaving it when the darkness came on again.

The rations issued grew poorer; but the men only laughed and chaffed, ridiculing one another and finding nicknames for them.

Colour-Sergeant James, the sturdy non-commissioned officer, the back of whose head still showed the blasting effects of the explosion which he had shared with Lennox, was known as the “Fat Boy,” on account of the general shrinking that had gone on in his person till he seemed to be all bone and sinew, covered with a very brown skin; another man came to be known as the “Greyhound;” while Captain Roby’s favourite corporal, an unpleasant-looking fellow, much disliked by Lennox and Dickenson for his smooth, servile ways, had grown so hollow-cheeked that he was always spoken of as the “Lantern,” after being so dubbed by the joker of his company.

In fact, the men generally had been brought down to attenuation by the scarcity of their food; while their khaki uniforms were not uniform in the least, the men for the most part looking, as Bob Dickenson put it, “like scarecrows in their Sunday clothes.”

“The lads are getting terribly thin, sergeant,” said Lennox one day, after the men had been dismissed from parade.

“Oh, I don’t know, sir,” said the sergeant; “a bit fine, sir, but in magnificent condition. Look at the colour of them – regular good warm tan.”

“But the Boers haven’t tanned them, all the same, sergeant,” put in Dickenson, who was listening.

“No, sir, and never will,” said the sergeant proudly. “As to their being thin, that’s nothing; they’re as healthy as can be. A soldier don’t want to be carrying a lot of unnecessary meat about with him; and as to fat, it only makes ’em short-winded. See how they can go at the double now, and come up smiling. They’re all right, sir, and we can feed ’em up again fast enough when the work’s done. Beg pardon, sir: any likelihood of a reinforcement soon?”

“You know just as much as I do, sergeant,” said Lennox. “Our orders are to hold this place, and we’ve got to hold it. Some day I suppose the general will send and fetch us out; till then we shall have to do our best.”

“Yes, sir, that’s right; but I do wish the enemy would give us a real good chance of showing them what our lads are made of.”

But the Boers had had too many of what Dickenson called “smacks in the face” during their open attacks, and seemed disposed now to give starvation a chance of doing the work for them. At least, that was the young officer’s openly expressed opinion.

“But they’re making a great mistake, Drew, my lad,” he said one evening as he and his friend sat chatting together. “An Englishman takes a great deal of starving before he’ll give in. They’re only making the boys savage, and they’ll reap the consequences one day. My word, though, what a blessing a good spring of water is!”

As he spoke he picked up the tin can standing upon the end of a flour-barrel that formed their table, had a good hearty drink, set it down again, and replaced his pipe between his lips. “I used to think that bitter beer was the only thing a man could drink with his pipe; but tlat! how good and fresh and cool this water is, and how the Boers must wish they had the run of it!”

“It helps us to set them at defiance,” said Lennox. “They might well call the place ‘Green Fountain.’ It might be made a lovely spot if it wasn’t for the Boer.”

“Yes, I suppose anything would grow here in the heat and moisture. I suppose the spring comes gurgling up somewhere in the middle of the kopje.”

“It must,” said Lennox, “and then makes its way amongst the stones to spread out below there and flow on to the river.”

“Seems rum, though,” said Dickenson. “I never did understand why water should shoot up here at the highest part of a flat country. It ought to be found low down in the holes. What makes it shoot up?”

“The weight and pressure of the country round, I suppose,” said Lennox. “Hullo! What does that mean?”

“Business,” cried Dickenson, as both the young men sprang to their feet and seized belts and weapons. For the report of a rifle was followed by others, coming apparently from the direction of the kopje near to where the stream came rushing out between two rugged natural walls of piled-up stone. Every one was on the alert directly, fully in the expectation that the enemy we’re about to act in non-accordance with their regular custom and make an attack in the dark.

But the firing ceased almost as suddenly as it had begun; and after a time the alarm was traced back to a sentry who had been on duty at the lower part of the west side of the kopje, near by where the water gushed up at the foot of a huge mass of granite, where the most precipitous part stretched upward half-way to the summit.

Captain Roby’s company held the kopje that night, and consequently both of the young officers were present at the tracing of the cause of the alarm, when it seemed to have been proved that it was only false.

The sentry who fired was examined by Captain Roby, and was certain that he had not given any alarm without cause, for he said he had heard steps as of more than one person approaching him as if going to the water.

“And you challenged?” asked the captain.

“Yes, sir; and then all was quite quiet for a few moments, but I heard the sounds again as if they were coming closer to me, and I fired, and there was a rush of feet.”

“A party of baboons going down to drink,” said the captain contemptuously.

“There have been no baboons seen since we occupied the kopje,” said Lennox.

“Perhaps not; but when they were driven off they must have gone somewhere, and what more likely than that they should come back to the spot where they could get water? – Come, my man, you felt frightened, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” said the sentry; “I was a bit scared.”

“And you think now that all you heard was a party of those big dog-like monkeys – eh?”

“No, sir; it was men, and only three or four.”

“Ha! How do you know?”

“Because the baboons go on all fours, sir; and I could make out one man standing up as he ran off along the rocky bit of path.”

“What! You saw one man?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But it was dark?”

“I could see the figure of a man for a moment just against the sky, sir.”

“But mightn’t that have been one of the apes reared up for the time?”

“Oh no, sir,” said the sentry. “I shouldn’t mistake a monkey for a man; and besides, they don’t wear boots.”

“Ah! and do you say these people who came near you wore boots?”

“Well, it sounded like it, sir, for when I fired I could hear the leather squeak.”

“Humph!” grunted Captain Roby; and Dickenson, who was full now of his adventure in what seemed to have been near the same place, spoke out:

“I think there’s something in what he says:” and he related his own experience. “At the time, I was so occupied in getting back for something to eat that I forgot all about the matter after dinner. But now this has occurred I begin to feel that the chirping sounds I heard really were signals, and that I did hear voices talking together afterwards.”

“Then it must have been Kaffirs sneaking there for water after it was dark.”

“But the footsteps?” said Lennox.

“Well, Kaffirs have feet.”

“But not boots,” said Lennox quietly.

“I beg your pardon,” said the captain warmly; “I could pick out a dozen of the black hangers-on who have boots which they have obtained from the men.”

Just then an orderly arrived from the colonel to know what Captain Roby had made out respecting the alarm; and upon a full report being given, the colonel sent orders for Captain Roby to march his company to the foot of the kopje, surround it, and thoroughly search it from top to bottom.

This search was commenced as soon as it was light, the men having been led to the foot and stationed before day broke; and the arduous task seemed to be thoroughly enjoyed by the men, who, as they slowly ascended the rough cone, naturally closed in so that the prospect of missing any one hiding among the cracks and chasms grew less and less. To the soldiers it was like a game of hide-and-seek held upon a gigantic scale, and they shouted to one another in the excitement of the hunt. Every now and then a rift would be found which promised to be the entrance to a cavern such as abounded in many of the granite and ironstone piles; but in every instance, after the men had plunged in boldly with bayonets fixed, they found the holes empty and were brought up directly, not even finding a sign of the place having been occupied.

The officers advanced from four different places, but the incurvation of the mount, and its being only practicable for climbing here and there, caused Lennox and Dickenson to approach more rapidly than the others; hence it happened that by the time they were half-way to the top they were within talking distance, as they kept on trying to keep their men in line, and at the end of another hundred feet they were side by side, panting and hot from their efforts, and ready to give one another a hand or a leg up in difficult parts.

“Well, Drew, old man,” cried Dickenson as they both paused to wipe their faces and give their men time to breathe, “nice job this! I suppose the old man meant it to give us an appetite for breakfast.”

Lennox laughed.

“He ought to have given us a task to take away the sharpness; but it’s all right. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if we started two or three Kaffirs from some hole higher up.”

“Why, what would they be doing there?”

“Keeping their gregarious home tidy for their tribe to come back to when we are gone.”

“Well, plenty do live in these kopjes. Remember about that one up in the Matabele country that was full of cracks and passages, and had four or five caves one above another?”

“Oh yes, I remember it.”

“This might be the same some day, but I believe it’s all a reservoir of water inside.”

“Or else solid, for there seems to be no door. We may find a way in yet; I shouldn’t wonder.”

“I should,” said Dickenson; “and I believe after all now that the chirping I heard was made by some rat-like creature.”

“The more I think about it,” continued Lennox, “the more I feel ready to believe that two or three of the Kaffirs are here, and in communication with the Boers.”

“What! acting as spies?”

Lennox nodded; he was still too short of breath to talk much.

“Well, now you come to talk like that, it does appear possible, for the Boers do seem to have known pretty well how and when to attack us.”

“Exactly.”

“Of course! Why, there was the night when they were bringing up the big gun. They must have had guides.”

“Oh, if you come to that, they may have people with them who used to live here.”

“Yes, they may have,” said Dickenson; “but it isn’t likely. Depend upon it, there are two or three Kaffirs somewhere about here, and we have them to thank for some of our misfortunes. If we do catch them they’ll have it pretty sharp.”

“Not they,” said Lennox. “We shall treat them as prisoners of war.”

“As spies,” said Dickenson, “and you know their lot.”

“Psh! The colonel would not shoot a set of poor ignorant blacks.”

“Browns – browns, browns.”

“For a reward they’d fight for us just as they may have been fighting for the Boers.”

“But we don’t want them to fight for us. If they’d try and feed us they’d be doing some good. – Yes, all right. Ahoy there!” shouted the speaker, for a hail came from higher up. “Forward, my lads; forward!”

This last to the men on either side, who had snapped at the chance of a few minutes’ rest, after the fashion displayed by their officers.

The climbing advance went on again till the level patch at the top, which had been turned into a gun-platform, was reached, and the men halted in the bright sunshine, to group about the huge gun after they had been ordered to break off. They rested, enjoying the cool breeze and gazing eagerly about in search of enemies, seeing, however, nothing but the surrounding prospect all looking bright and peaceful in the morning sun.

“‘Brayvo! Werry pretty!’ as Sam Weller would have said,” cried Dickenson as Captain Roby closed the field-glass he had been using and joined his junior officers, frowning and looking impatient.

“Look here, Mr Dickenson,” he said sourly, “a little of that commonplace, slangy quotation may be tolerated sometimes after the mess dinner if it’s witty – mind, I say if it’s witty – but such language as this seems to me quite out of place, especially if spoken in the hearing of the men when on service.”