12

December 1895

At the single wayside shack that served as a combination telegraph office, restaurant, bar, general store and stable at Pitsani, a place in Bechuanaland near the Transvaal’s western border, where passengers on the Mafeking-Bulawayo coach could take a sorry meal and their drivers change their mules, Jameson and his second in command, Carl Luckner, stood in the shade and read the telegraph message that had just been handed to them. The storekeeper, who, with the help of his wife and daughter, served as hostler, telegraph operator, cook, bartender, and counterman for the tiny outpost, stood and waited for the answer he knew would be forthcoming; every telegraph received by Jameson seemed to require a response, although the storekeeper could not understand why. Most of them made no sense at all to him.

Jameson glowered at the message. “Three weeks ago it was ‘Polo tournament postponed.’ Without a bloody reason! And when I telegraph to tell them we’re ready and any delay would be most injurious, they come back saying that it was absolutely necessary to postpone flotation until we hear from them. And when I complained again, we get this!” He slapped the piece of paper with his gloved hand. “‘I absolutely condemn further developments at present. We cannot have fiasco.’” He looked up, his face flushing with anger. “This is all Frank Rhodes’ work, take my word for it.”

Luckner shrugged. “Whoever’s work it is, we can’t wait much longer. The boys won’t stand for it. They signed up to fight the Boers, not the heat or the damned flies or the plain boredom of this place.” He might have added that the poor grub didn’t help, or the fact that all the decent whiskey was locked up and the men had to do with the cheap stuff in the bar, or the complete dearth of women other than the storekeeper’s wife and daughter, who was practically under lock and key when there were any men around. “We’ve had fifty men desert in the past month.”

“I know that!” Jameson said in irritation. “I know all the arguments against staying here! It’s those idiots who have Cecil Rhodes’ ear, who don’t. Frank Rhodes is afraid of his shadow; how he ever got to be a colonel in the British Army is a mystery to me! I know the people of Jo’burg and how they feel a damn sight better than Frank Rhodes does. Once we enter the city, we’ll have every man, woman, and child on our side, and the Boers will be running for their lives!” He scribbled a message on his pad and handed it to Luckner to read. Luckner read it and handed it to the storekeeper, but his eyebrows raised at the words. “Send that at once,” Jameson said.

The storekeeper read the message for clarity, and shrugged. At least this message made some sense; the other messages about polo, in a country that didn’t have a polo field anywhere in it, let alone at Pitsani; or the flotation of companies when there wasn’t a decent building, let alone a factory or a mine within fifty miles, had been ridiculous. And while this message indicated he would soon be losing custom and therefore revenue, at least it would also mean his daughter wouldn’t have to hide every time a trooper showed up at the bar, but could do her share of the work once again. For the message read: “Unless I hear definitely to the contrary, we shall leave tomorrow night, December 29, signed, Jameson.”

Luckner stared at him. He waited until the storekeeper had nodded and gone back into the shack, then he said, “And just suppose you get a telegraph hearing to the contrary?”

Jameson grinned. “In the first place, this is Saturday and the company offices are closed weekends. By the time anyone receives that telegraph, we’ll be halfway to Jo’burg. And in the second place, we’re going to cut the telegraph wires before we leave, so that handles the matter of return messages in the first place. Don’t worry, Cecil Rhodes will thank me when this is all over.” He became serious. “Issue the men all the whiskey they want today; they won’t be having any drink for a few days, and they’ll want to celebrate leaving this miserable place. They’ll have tomorrow to sober up. We’ll leave at dusk. And assign some men to cut the telegraph wires tomorrow afternoon.”

“Yes, sir!” Luckner said with a happy grin, and got on his horse to ride to camp. The stores of decent liquor that had been held back from the men, forcing them to drink the cheap-grade brandewyn at the bar in the shack, had been another sore subject among the troopers. This complaint, however, would be handled as soon as he got back to camp, and the other squawks, he knew, would be forgotten the minute they were on their way. There might be loot; there even might be women; who knew? But there definitely would be action, and that’s what the men needed more than anything else.

President Kruger was reading his Bible; it was his only reading material and he read it whenever he had time from state business. He looked up at the urgent rapping on his door, marking his place in the Bible with a thick finger. “Yes? Come,” he called.

His aide entered, excited, and gave his report.

“Ummm,” Kruger said thoughtfully. “They’re leaving tomorrow night, you say?”

“Yes, sir,” said his aide. “Our man at Pitsani—the storekeeper—sent us the telegraph exactly as he had sent it to Cape Town. As he has reported all of the exchange so far. He’s not the brightest person in the world,” the aide said condescendingly. “He has no idea of what he’s about, but he’s reliable as far as following orders. Oh, yes,” he added, grinning. “He also said he heard them say something about cutting the telegraph wires before they left. A little late, but sounds like the rest of their planning for this ridiculous affair.”

“Ummm,” Kruger said, and returned to his Bible, motioning his aide to leave the room and leave him alone.

“But, Mr. President,” the aide stammered. “Did you hear me? Jameson and more than four hundred armed troopers are planning to invade the Transvaal, leaving Pitsani tomorrow night. Shouldn’t we—”

“Shouldn’t we—what?” Kruger asked mildly.

“Well, I mean, sir, shouldn’t we do—well, something?”

“We will,” Kruger said, his tone dismissing the puzzled aide, and returned to his Bible.

Trooper Jimmy Parkinson, trying to stand more or less erect while suffering the grandfather of all hangovers and with a headache the equal of which he could not remember having encountered in a lifetime made up largely of headaches, spoke out of the side of his mouth to the man next to him, his friend Trooper Billy Watson.

“Billy,” he said in a mournful undertone, “I should ’ave stuck to the ’orrible muck in the telegraph ’ut. I never did ’ave a ’ead fer decent whiskey. Never ’ad a chance t’ get used to it.”

“You feelin’ rough?” Billy said sympathetically.

“Ain’t you?”

“I ’ad me some cookin’ oil afore I ’it the bottle,” Billy said virtuously. “Never get bashed that way. You really feelin’ bad? We’re ridin’ soon.”

“Me teeth all feel like they got little sweaters on ’em,” Jimmy said, “an’ me ’ead’s got t’be the size of a football. Wit’ a youngster inside beatin’ on a drum. I better tie meself on me ’orse,” Jimmy said, “becos’ I’m goin’ t’fall asleep soon’s we start. Better ride close t’me to make sure I don’t fall orf.” He looked down the wavering line. “Looks like th’ whole company’s in th’ same shape.”

“Ah, well,” Billy said philosophically, “we’ll be in Jo’burg in two, three days and you can do it all over again.”

“Can’t wait,” Jimmy said dryly, and then grimaced painfully as a bugler began blowing assembly, seemingly right into his ear. He tried to straighten up, squinting ahead into the setting sun as Jameson swung himself into his saddle and looked out over the assembled men, the sun at his back casting long shadows over the now-deserted campgrounds. Behind him and a little to one side, Luckner sat easily in his saddle, his face expressionless. A little behind him the company bugler sat, and Lieutenants Willoughby and White sat their mounts, while behind them the mule wagons with the tenting equipment stood waiting to go, their Kaffir drivers paying little attention to the assemblage. Their loads were light. Each trooper had packed one day’s rations, for supplies had been planned to be placed at fifty-mile intervals along the road to Johannesburg.

“Troopers!” Jameson called out in a loud voice. “This is the moment we have all been waiting for! I want to read you a letter I’ve received from the Reform Committee in Johannesburg!”

He reached into the top pocket of his uniform and withdrew the letter he had insisted upon receiving many months before. That afternoon, before packing his gear, he had taken pen and ink and carefully placed the date in the upper right-hand corner, December 29, 1895. The fact that it was December 29 when he penned the date, and Pitsani was a good two days’ hard riding to have been delivered from Johannesburg the same day, meant little to Jameson regarding the fictitious message. He was sure there would never be the slightest reason to ever use the letter beyond the use he was about to put it to. He cleared his throat and began to read.

“To Captain Jameson and his men:

“The situation in Johannesburg has now become intolerable. The cruelty of the Boer burghers, backed by their Government under the direction of the tyrant, Kruger, and the actions of the Johannesburg Police in their intolerant treatment of our men, women, and children, has passed endurance. Each day one hears the cries of innocent women and even babies as they are hounded, beaten, and even killed by the inhuman Boers. We beg of you to come to our assistance; we cannot long endure under these oppressive conditions. We pray you can find it in your hearts to come to our aid immediately, for Queen, for England, and for common human decency.

“Signed,

“The Reform Committee.”

Jameson raised himself in his saddle, his saber now drawn, raised in the the air, flashing in the last rays of the sun.

“We shall ride into Johannesburg and settle this matter once and for all! Men, are you with me?” There were a few rather embarrassed and drunken yells, but the response seemed to satisfy Jameson. He replaced the saber in its scabbard. “Then—troopers—mount!”

The rescuers of the women and children of Johannesburg were on their way.

The sinking of a shaft for a gold mine, Armando quickly decided, was quite a bit different from sinking a shaft in a diamond mine. The blue ground at Kimberley was a pipe, the core of an ancient volcano, and it ran vertically and therefore its location could be easily calculated and determined. The shaft, paralleling the pipe, was also sunk vertically, and horizontal chambers or tunnels were dug through to the blue ground at whatever level was desired. It was all relatively simple. The gold reef, however, was considerably different from a diamond pipe, for it ran at angles of varying steepness, and shafts had to be sunk through the rock to intercept the diagonal reef at various depths, and the reef mined for the gold-bearing rock in the immediate vicinity before sinking the shaft deeper to intersect another angled reef containing gold farther down. How deep one might go before failing to intercept a diagonal layer of gold-bearing rock nobody knew, but there seemed little doubt that the shafts would end up much deeper than any at Kimberley, and the problems, therefore, of sinking these shafts would be that much more complicated.

The shafts had already reached a depth of a half mile or more, and there was every indication that there still might be major gold deposits even farther down; as far as a mile or even two miles deep. And at those depths, nobody knew if they might not run into gold-bearing quartz that might yield an ounce, or even two ounces of gold per ton of rock. Or possibly three or more. There was no way of telling, but it was always the dream, the goad that drove men to probe deeper and deeper beneath the earth’s surface. And the farther down they went, the greater the problem, Armando knew, for the heat increased proportionately the deeper they went, and there would be the problem, not just of physically building shafts that deep, but of getting air down to cool the workers at those depths. Armando had been assured by the white gold miners that the Kaffir had no problem with heat as he had no problem with the cyanide solution, and while he knew nothing about the resistance of the Kaffir to the heat in gold mines, he knew there was a problem at the lesser depths in the diamond shafts, and he was sure it would be a greater problem here.

But for whatever purpose, the shaft of the mine he was inspecting was poorly constructed for such great depths, and the huge Angolan decided that before greater depths were attempted the shaft would have to be aligned to a far more accurate degree, and the cages in which the workers were dropped to the various levels to dynamite the rock loose would have to be reinforced and constructed of far stronger materials. The same was true of the cables that held the cages in the shaft, and raised and lowered them by use of huge steam-driven geared winches that were mounted above each mine shaft.

The large Angolan stepped from the cage he had been using to inspect the shaft, closing the protective gate behind him, and breathed deeply of the clear, high-altitude air. There was a lot of work to be done if he was going to be responsible for the deepening of the shafts, but it was work he loved and he wondered if he could ever adequately thank Barney Barnato for having rescued him—“rescued” was the only word he could think of—from the circus and the dreary task of having to beat some poor soul into submission several times a week just in order to eat. Now Armando ate as well as he wished, and maintained his strength through honest work, which was the best way. He waved to the donkey-engine operator to indicate his use of the cage was finished for the day, and climbed into his trap, touching the horses with the whip, prepared to go to Barney’s office and make his report. And then pulled up short as another trap appeared around a corner of the narrow dirt road, blocking his passage. He smiled to see the occupants, for they were his boss, Barney, and Barney’s lovely wife, Fay, made even more beautiful, Armando thought, by being several months pregnant. She reminded him of his mother, who, while never being pregnant since he could remember, had been big and soft, and he often missed her and wondered why he had never gone back to Angola to visit her before her death. The reason, of course, had been his father, but those were aimless thoughts. Armando put them aside as he climbed down and walked over to the other trap.

“Hello, Miz Barnato. Hello, Barney. I was jus’ now goin’ to you office to tell you.” While Armando still had a fairly heavy Portuguese accent, his command of the English language was quite good. He shook his head sadly. “No so good news, I am afraid.”

“What kind of bad news?”

Armando shrugged. “It mean lots of work, Barney. I t’ink maybe the shaft too deep now for the cable and the winch. Should already bot’ be bigger, I t’ink, an’ cable should be steel, not rope. Also shaft should be much more straight. I dig a shaft like this in Kimberley, nobody go down. Lucky cage don’ hang up goin’ down. You wanna see? I show you.”

He climbed back into his trap, turned his horse, and returned to the mine shaft, climbing down as Barney drew up beside him and got down.

“I’ll wait here,” Fay said, smiling at both men. “Get a little sun.”

“I won’t be long,” Barney promised, and walked over to the cage beside Armando.

Armando swung open the gate and waited until Barney had entered the mesh-sided, open-topped cage before waving to the donkey-engine operator who handled the cable winch. “Slow, all the way to the bottom,” he shouted and got into the cage, ducking his unusual height under the top crossbeam of the cage, reaching back to swing shut the gate that prevented anyone from falling down the open shaft. When he stood erect his head went above the mesh sides of the cage, almost touching the large iron eye bolt that held the rope cable that raised and lowered the cage. Armando grinned down at Barney. “See shaft a lot easier from up here,” he said, and then swayed slightly as the cage began to descend. But it only went five or six feet before it stopped with a jerk. Both men looked upward with a frown at the daylight just above them. There was the voice of the operator, heard in a faint shout from above.

“Something’s caught. I’ll get it fixed right away.”

There was the ringing of a hammer on metal; Armando had to raise his voice a bit to be heard. “You see, Barney? Winch gears worn—”

He paused as the cage suddenly dropped another two or three feet and stopped again with another jerk. At the sudden stop there was a short snapping sound and one of the rope strands of the cable parted with a sharp report just above Armando’s head. Armando opened his mouth to yell for the operator to stop his hammering and drop them some ropes to secure the cage, when a second strand of the cable snapped. The beating of metal on metal continued from above. The two men looked at each other; then Armando reached up, grasping the slippery cable with one hand, used his enormous strength to raise himself enough to brace his feet under the top crossbeam and then to lift the cage a foot or more, leaving a bit of slack in the cable. His other arm was quickly inserted in the slack, taking a bite. He released his first grip and stood, the cable now wrapped about his other arm, his body stretched with the strain, and looked at Barney.

“You climb over me, get out. Tell operator drop rope. I tie her somehow. Go now. Quick.”

“If he stops that damn hammering we can call him and I can tie the ropes a lot easier while you hold her—”

“He never stop that damn hammerin’! Don’ waste time! In shaft, me the boss! Climb! Dammit, climb!”

Barney hesitated a moment and then went up the wire mesh to the top crossbeam. He stepped up on Armando’s shoulders and then to the top of the big Angolan’s head, reaching up to grip the top edge of the shaft. He drew himself up to the surface, pushing aside the swinging gate, and scrambled to his feet. Fay had come down from the trap, her face registering her concern, but Barney paid no attention to her. The donkey-engine operator, his back to Barney, was still beating against the recalcitrant gearing of the winch with his hammer. Barney ran over and tore the hammer from the man’s hands.

“Ropes!” he roared. “The cable’s breaking at the cage! It’s only a few feet down! Armando’s holding it—”

The operator stared at him in confusion. “Ropes?” he asked in a dazed voice.

“Where d’you keep spare cables? Ropes, damm it—”

There was a sudden clatter from the shaft and both men rushed over, staring down. The last strand of the cable had parted and the cage had dropped away, leaving Armando swinging in the shaft at the end of the rope. Even as the operator, finally understanding, started at a sprint for the rope shed, Armando’s arm began to slip from the greasy cable. He tried to use his other hand to reach up and halt the slide; then attempted to swing to the side of the shaft where he might try for a grip on one of the runners that guided the cage, but it was too late and Armando knew it. He looked up and tried to smile; then he slipped from the frayed cable and disappeared without a sound down the shaft. Barney squeezed his eyes shut in shock, as if to blot out the sight, and then opened them as, after what seemed an eternity, there was the muffled sound of the cage striking bottom, echoing up the shaft walls. He turned away before he could hear any sound of Armando’s body striking, tears suddenly scalding his cheeks, and bent over, vomiting uncontrollably, with Fay’s arms about him, holding him tightly.

The miners from the various levels came up in the buckets normally used for hauling the dynamited rock to the surface; Armando’s body was brought up wrapped in a tarpaulin. He was buried the following day, a closed-casket funeral, in a grave dug beside the shaft in which he died. The stone that was to cover the grave had been ordered by Barney himself, and promised to be one of the most impressive in Johannesburg: a life-sized statue of Armando as he had been twenty years before, bare-chested, in his boxing trunks and boxing shoes, a true giant of a man.

Most of the important people of Johannesburg attended the funeral, partly for Armando, but mainly in deference to Barney, for while they had their differences, primarily regarding the position of the Reform Committee, the name Barnato still meant a great deal in Johannesburg. Besides, in the face of a mine disaster, a disaster that might have overtaken any one of them when inspecting a new seam in one of their mines, they all stood together. And as the priest made his eulogy beside the open grave, the huge casket hastily made the night before waiting patiently to be interred, a trap came tearing into the open space where the mourners were gathered. The driver pulled on the reins hurriedly, as if such commotion was somehow indecent in face of the bared heads and long faces, in face of the very presence of death. He got down quietly, as if attempting to efface himself, but walked quickly, nonetheless, to the side of Colonel Frank Rhodes. He whispered something in the colonel’s ear, and then stepped back at the colonel’s startled exclamation.

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“The idiot! The damned idiot!”

The colonel looked about; the priest droned on, but now everyone was looking toward Frank Rhodes, and that included Barney. But the colonel knew, to his unhappiness, that it was far too late for secrets at this point. Frank Rhodes shouldered his way to the front of the crowd; the priest, aware that something extraordinary was going on, stopped talking as Rhodes mounted the pile of dirt beside the open grave, looking out over the crowd from his vantage point.

“Ladies, gentlemen,” he said gravely, quietly, for there was no need for speaking loudly in that sudden and complete silence, “Jameson is on his way to Jo’burg. The messenger I sent to be sure he did not move met him twenty miles inside of the Transvaal; he had left Pitsani the night before last, Sunday night. I suggest the Reform Committee meet at once to decide on a course of action.” He looked down at Barney, standing quite close to him. “I’m sorry to disrupt the funeral, Barney, but as soon as you are through here, I suggest you join us. We’ll be meeting at the Rand Club. This matter will affect every man in this town.”

He came down from the dirt pile and walked quickly toward his horse, tethered to one side, followed by a good number of the men present, including Solly Loeb. The priest looked at the large coffin resting on the two wooden horses, then at the four Kaffirs, their shovels stabbed in the dirt beside them, waiting to place the heavy coffin in the ground and cover it, then at Barney Barnato and his wife, each with a handful of dirt to cast on the coffin once it was in the ground, in proper Jewish tradition, and finally at the backs of the retreating men and horses.

“Amen,” he said sadly, and closed his Bible.

“They’re that far into the Transvaal?” Kruger asked, as if he were merely curious about the matter. “Where did you get your information?”

“From Commandant Cronje,” his aide said nervously. “They reached Malmani the day before yesterday at noon and camped there overnight. Then they left for Lichtenburg. From there the commandant expects them to head for Vetersdorp. That will bring them almost a hundred miles into our territory, Mr. President!” The aide was wondering what on earth was the matter with his President. Kruger was acting as if it were an everyday event to have the Republic invaded by an army of Uitlanders. They had been in the Transvaal three days, now, and Commandant Cronje had said nothing about attacking the invaders. As if reading the aide’s mind, Kruger spoke up.

“Did Cronje say anything about what action he has taken?”

“No, sir. Sir,” the aide said almost desperately, “they’ll be on the road to Krugersdorp, and that’s just twenty miles or so from Johannesburg …”

“That’s true. Well,” Kruger said, smiling a bit at his aide’s discomfort, “I suppose you’re right. Send a telegraph to Commandant Cronje at Krugersdorp. Advise him the tortoise has finally put his head out sufficiently. He’ll know what you mean; he won’t be surprised. We’ve been in touch. And don’t worry so much.” He waved a hand at his aide to get on with the job, and went back to reading his Bible.

“What d’yer mean, no grub ner no fresh ’orses?” Trooper Parkinson demanded angrily. “There wasn’t no fresh ’orses ner grub at Malmani, neither, but that weren’t so bad; I still ’ad some o’ me own left over. Now there ain’t nothin’ left. Me poor animal is about ready to lay down an’ give up ’is bloody ghost! ’E wasn’t in too good a shape in Pitsani, an’ two days carryin’ me plus double rifles without bein’ spelled ain’t done ’im no world o’ good. ’E needs some oats, not the muck they call grass in this ’ell-’ole! Not there’s a ’ell o’ a lot of even that in this bleedin’ sand! What’s the bloody reason?”

“I didn’t catch all the captain was tellin’ th’ other orficers,” Billy Watson said apologetically. “I don’t rightly suppose I was supposed t’ be listenin’ at all. But they was all talkin’ with this messenger bloke what jus’ rode in from Jo’burg, Major Thompson, I seed ’im afore. Anyway, it seems the bloke responsible fer seein’ our stores an’ fresh ’orses was set up every fifty mile all the way to Jo’burg, was a bloke name o’ Dr. Wolff.”

“So?” Trooper Parkinson said, a trifle dangerously.

“So the way this Major Thompson was tellin’ it, seems this Dr. Wolff allus takes ’is summer ’olidays in December, goes down t’ th’ seaside. Get away from the bloody ’eat, y’ see. Can’t say as ’ow I blames ’im,” Trooper Watson added enviously.

“Wait a bloody minute!” Parkinson said ominously. “Y’mean t’ stand there an’ tell me, the bloke what was responsible fer grub an’ fresh ’orses, took ’is bloody ’oliday when ’e was supposed t’ be settin’ up stores fer us? Is that what yer tryin’ t’ tell me?”

“That’s what th’ major was sayin’. I guess they didn’t figger Captain Jameson was goin’ t’ move when ’e did. Lack o’ communications, they calls it,” Billy said, proud of his greater knowledge in military affairs.

“A balls-up, I calls it,” Parkinson said bitterly.

“Another balls-up,” Billy Watson corrected gently.

“I’ll have Wolff’s hide for this!” Jameson said tightly. “On holiday, for good Jesus’s sake!” He, Luckner, Willoughby, and White were sitting around the dying campfire with Major Thompson, the messenger from Johannesburg who had galloped into the camp a short time before. The major considered Jameson coldly.

“It’s hardly Wolff who was at fault,” he said quietly. “You were given strict instructions not to move until further notice. It would have been both foolhardy and wasteful to stock our caches before they were needed; they could have been discovered and lost when they were most important. We had no idea you had left Pitsani until Cape Town had time to receive your final telegraph. Then they had to inform us. And then I had to ride up here to see exactly what was going on, and that was another two days.” Jameson snorted. Thompson disregarded it, going on coolly. “I can hardly see how you can possibly blame the Reform Committee because you chose to move, without instructions, before the committee was ready.”

Jameson sneered. “The Reform Committee! The Frank Rhodes Personal Committee, they ought to call it! And just why, after all these months, wasn’t your precious Reform Committee ready?”

“For one thing,” Major Thompson said evenly, “we didn’t have enough rifles or ammunition. Oh, I know you were planning on bringing an extra gun for each trooper you brought, but that wouldn’t handle the ammunition problem, and since you were coming with only a little over four hundred men, rather than the fifteen hundred you promised—” He shrugged, but there was a malicious glint in his eye.

Captain Jameson waved that away as merely being an excuse, and a weak one at that. He leaned forward, his thin body almost quivering, his dark eyes gleaming with equal malice.

“And what about the raid on the Pretoria armory? I was told that a handful of men could take the armory in Pretoria anytime they wanted; it was under repair and one entire wall was down, for God’s sake! And it was being guarded by a minimum contingent, because the others were off duty because of the Christmas holidays. There were supposed to be fifteen thousand modern rifles there, and all the ammunition for them you could dream of, piled up to the roof of the place. It could be taken anytime they wanted, the Reform Committee told me. What happened to that great plan?”

Major Thompson reddened a bit. The plan to capture the armory in Pretoria and arm the Johannesburg residents with its contents of guns and ammunition had largely been his.

“Well,” he said slowly, his embarrassment evident, “again it was just one of those things. We sent our boys up there, but only about a week ago, because we had no idea you were planning on moving when you did. And not all the troops there had been relieved as yet for the holidays. However, somebody”—he coughed slightly and then recovered himself—“had forgotten that the Boers celebrate Nagmaal at the end of December—Communion Week—and the Church Square was loaded with outspanned ox wagons. Half the farmers in the north Transvaal must have been there with their vrous, and as you know, they all carry their rifles with them when they travel, in case they run into any game, or any trouble of any kind. We would have been wiped out in minutes if we had started anything. So—” He shrugged again.

Carl Luckner broke into the conversation.

“So there seems to be enough blame to go around, if that’s the purpose of this exercise,” he said harshly. “Let’s get on with it, I say! So the men do without grub for a day or so—so what? I doubt there’s one among them who hasn’t gone more than a day hungry either on the march at some time, or in some brig or other. We’re less than thirty miles from Krugersdorp and Mrs. Varley’s Hotel and her good meals, that’s where we are! A bit of her food in their bellies—a meal the good lady will be glad to prepare and serve, I warrant—and the boys will be riding into Jo’burg like the Palace Guard, with their backs stiff and their tails in the air! We’re talking too much; we ought to be moving. If it’s somebody needed to tell the troopers they won’t be having their supper tonight, I’ll be pleased to be the one to do it, and I promise to handle any complaints personally as well!”

He paused a moment, as if suddenly realizing he wasn’t in command, and then went on in a quieter tone of voice.

“My suggestion, Captain Jameson, would be to have us on our way. We’ve nothing to gain by wasting time here.” He looked at Major Thompson with no attempt to hide his contempt. “It may take some people two days to ride here from Jo’burg, but we can be at Mrs. Varley’s Hotel by dawn, and in Jo’burg by nightfall, full bellies and all.”

“And what about sleep?” Lieutenant White asked a trifle sarcastically. He disliked Luckner intensely, especially after the incident of the hot coffee and the Kaffir’s death; besides, second in command should have fallen to him and not to some ex-sailor.

“All that sleep will do for the men is make them wake up hungrier,” Luckner said a bit contemptuously. “A good night’s quick march will take their minds from their bellies. And if we can stay awake, they can stay awake!”

There were several moments of silence; then Lieutenant Willoughby spoke up. He sounded worried. “What about the Boers we’ve had riding on both our flanks ever since the border?”

Luckner looked at him evenly. “What about them? Have they attacked? They haven’t even sniped at us, other than one or two overanxious youngsters, and they haven’t come within a mile of hitting anything, the poor blind bastards! They’re simply curious as to what we’re up to, and by the time they find out, it’ll be too late for them, the silly sods.” He turned back to Jameson. “What about it, Captain? Sit here and look at each other all night, or be in Jo’burg tomorrow night with one of Mrs. Varley’s stews beneath our belts, and the citizens cheering their bloody heads off?”

Jameson sighed. He was going over all the alternatives in his mind. What Luckner said made sense. The longer they delayed, the further the men would suffer hunger, and they wouldn’t be getting any closer to their objective. And Jameson was quite convinced that the mere entry of his forces into Johannesburg would stimulate the Reform Committee, make them get off their silly arses and get cracking on their revolution. The people would make them, if nothing else did, once he and his forces entered the city.

The Boers on his flanks bothered him not at all. To begin with they were few, and the few he had seen through his field glasses appeared to be, as Luckner had said, youngsters. As Willoughby had said, they had ridden their horses on either side of his column since they had crossed the border, but as Luckner had pointed out, there had been no attack, and the sniping had been sporadic and so erratic as to almost make the Boers’ claim to marksmanship laughable. It seemed fairly obvious that the Boer forces were too weak to do anything but observe their movements and wonder what they were about. As Luckner had also said, the Boers were merely curious. And should their curiosity get out of hand, the fact was he had over four hundred men at his command, all trained and armed, and besides, he had eight Maxims and three machine guns, weapons the Boers had probably never seen or heard of in their lives, and whose devastating firepower the Boers could not even imagine. Besides, as Major Thompson had said himself, most of them were probably celebrating Nagmaal in one church square or another throughout the region, and it was only their kids who were riding his flanks.

Still, damn Wolff, anyway! Had the caches of food and the fresh horses been available at the places they were supposed to be available, none of these problems would have arisen, minor though they were. Jameson looked up, making up his mind.

“We go on. Now,” he said quietly.

“Good-o!” Luckner said, pleased. “I’ll have one of the men skin up a pole and tap into the wires. We’ll telegraph Mrs. Varley to expect five hundred hungry troopers for food at dawn!” He came to his feet, prepared to have the telegraph sent and to get the men on their feet and then on their horses, and equally prepared to handle any arguments about the orders he gave the men. Willoughby and White came to their feet more slowly, brushing the dirt from the seat of their uniform jodhpurs.

Captain Jameson looked at Major Thompson. “And what about you?”

“I’ll ride with you,” the major said bravely, “if you can furnish me with a fresh mount.”

“You’ll have to ask Dr. Wolff,” Jameson said expressionlessly. “If I could furnish anyone with a fresh mount, it would be me.” And he stood up.

They came upon the swampy ground just outside of Krugersdorp, just as the morning sun was breaking over the low ridge that separated them from the town. In silhouette they could see Boers strung out along the crest of the ridge, most probably those who had trailed them and who had somehow gotten ahead of them in the night through superior knowledge of the area. Their horses were no longer in sight, but the men themselves could be easily seen, standing almost at rest, their rifles in their hands, watching the column approach. Jameson raised his hand to bring his column to a halt. His advance scouts had already reported the Boers apparently finally seemed ready for a stand to prevent them from advancing any farther. Jameson smiled faintly at this presumption on the part of the enemy, and spoke over his shoulder.

“The Maxims and the machine guns,” he called out. “I want them to shell that ridge clear. The Boers have been asking for a battle ever since we crossed the border. Well, let’s give it to them!”

The eight two-man-operated Maxims and the three single-man-operated machine guns were quickly unloaded and set up; the troops assigned to them fell to their knees, their eyes blurred with sleeplessness, and aimed their weapons in the general direction of the ridge crest. Upon orders they commenced their barrage, the rapid stuttering of the guns making the horses shy, the gunners weaving the muzzles of the guns back and forth across the ridge. Bodies there seemed to be flung to the ground; a few minutes of the rapid fire and the defenders had all been scattered, some lying in deathlike attitudes, others tossed like mealsacks back behind the ridge. Jameson attempted to keep track of the effectiveness of the barrage through his field glasses, but the enemy had had the sun at his back, and the reflection of the low rays in Jameson’s glasses made any true assessment of the situation impossible. The captain waved for the deadly barrage to cease and called for his scouts. They rode up sleepily, saluted, and awaited their orders, biting back yawns, while their weary horses trembled under them.

“Let’s get up there and see how many of them are left,” Jameson said curtly.

“Sor!” said the lead scout, an Irishman and a sergeant, saluting, and wheeled his horse, followed by the others.

The scouts splashed through the swampy ground before the ridge and then rode their tired mounts slowly toward the top, taking precautions not to present a broad profile to be fired at, keeping their heads low behind the ears of their mounts. But to their surprise there was no attempt to attack them, and the reason for this soon became clear. Ahead of them, on the crest of the ridge, there appeared to be no sign of life. In the distance they could see a few men fleeing on horseback, but ahead of them the carnage seemed complete. There seemed to be several hundred of the bodies sprawled there, their rifles flung at arm’s length, their twisted corpses in all the grotesque forms and shapes of unexpected death. The sergeant motioned his men to remain where they were while he rode forward a bit, his mount stepping daintily among several of the most advanced bodies; then he turned and led his men somberly down the ridge, walking the horses slowly through the swampy ground.

“The few what escaped, sor,” the sergeant reported, “are runnin’ fer they lives. But the rest,” he said, still amazed at the accuracy of the barrage, which could only be accounted for by the stupidity of the Boers standing there to be cut down like bloody idiots, “all look deader’n hell, if you’ll pardon me, sor.”

“I’ll pardon you anything for a report like that, Sergeant,” Jameson said with satisfaction. “That may teach them to argue with Maxims and machine guns. Poor bloody buggers didn’t know what hit them.” He turned and waved his arms in signals, indicating he wanted the troopers to spread into two parallel lines, prepared to ride over the ridge in a charge. Luckner, at his side, frowned at the unexpected maneuver. Jameson noted the frown. “Those running away will be spread out,” he said, giving Luckner the benefit of his greater military experience and knowledge. “I don’t want any of them to escape. Also, there may be some up there who are merely wounded and they would be scattered. We haven’t lost a man yet, and I don’t expect to lose one in a minor skirmish such as this. Besides,” he added, smiling, “the men could use the experience of the maneuver and the charge.”

He turned in his saddle to watch his men wheel their horses into position and then turn them to form the double line, proud of the easy manner in which both men and animals obeyed his orders. He could see that the men nearest him were drooping in their saddles, and that more than one horse stumbled slightly as it came into formation. Still, the charge would build up the adrenalin in the men, and a good meal for both men and horses was just a few miles away, just beyond the ridge, and they’d be there in half an hour at the most. He looked at his men, stretched out in the long double line, waiting, and felt a touch of pride, a recognition of his contribution to history. He raised his arm, his saber high.

The bugle blew.

The arm came down, the saber flashing in the sun.

“Charge!”

One of the Boers who had been faking death on top of the ridge rolled over, keeping his head down, and pulled his rifle to him slowly, making sure the grass did not ripple. “Damn hoer’s horse near stepped on me, the one come up close,” he said in an undertone, complaining in Afrikaans to a companion, and brought his rifle into position, waiting for the orders to fire. “Could have hurt me!”

“Not if he stepped on your head,” the other replied with a grin, and also snaked his rifle to him, making sure no motion on his part could be seen from below. “Can you imagine! Not a drop of blood among the lot of us and the blind bastard goes off as if we were all dead. And the others just stand there looking lost.” He glanced around. “Did anyone get hit?”

“I doubt,” said the first, and watched the twin lines below splash across the swampy ground and start up the ridge, their horses toiling in almost total weariness, fighting for each step. The troopers could be seen in detail now as they came closer to the top of the ridge; they were urging their horses on with a combination of kind words and cruel rowels, but with little enthusiasm. Five hundred yards, four hundred yards, three hundred, two hundred. The Boers on top of the crest wondered at the delay; each of them could take down a fleeing wildbok at four hundred yards. One hundred and fifty yards, one hundred yards—

“Skiet!”

The shots rang out from the top of the ridge in almost perfect unison. “Some bloody charge, at a bloody walkin’ pace—” Trooper Parkinson had been saying sardonically to Trooper Watson, when a rifle ball took him through the forehead, flinging him from his horse, dead before he struck the ground. The charge faltered under the sudden, unexpected, withering fire. The troopers attempted to return the fire but there seemed to be nothing at which to aim, and the toll of the fire could be seen in the falling bodies and the terror of their inexperienced mounts. Horses and men twisted as the charge broke, the troopers wheeling their horses and trying to escape down the ridge and across the swampy ground to the safety of the other side, but there were Boers on both edges of the swamp, hidden in the tall reeds, having waited there for hours, patiently uncomplaining of the whining mosquitoes or the possibility of water moccasins, no move or sound on their part revealing their presence. Now their deadly fire into the mass of fleeing men and frightened horses turned the retreat into a complete rout. The horses, now come alive from their fatigue by the continuous sound of gunfire from all sides and further terrified by the high, piercing neighing, the shrieking of dying horses about them, bolted in terror back across the swamp with or without riders. Jameson, trying desperately with yells and arm-waving to bring some sort of order out of the chaos, now wished he had had the horses trained to gunfire during his long wait at Pitsani, rather than accepting whatever mounts could be obtained in the barren wastes of Bechuanaland and leaving it at that. The bugler, trying his best to bugle the calls that Jameson at his side kept telling him to bugle, changing his mind every few seconds, merely added to the confusion and the noise.

It was a complete disaster, and Jameson, staring about him, his mind in shocked confusion, knew it, especially when he saw a hand on his bridle and felt himself being led at a fast gallop back across the swamp to be released out of sight of the melee on the slopes and in the swamp. Luckner had pulled him from the calamity and now rode beside him in silence as they led the remains of their forces back along the trail. A mile or so from the scene of the fiasco they pulled up at a large expanse of open land that gave ample view in all directions so they could not be followed and attacked without warning, although there was no evidence of the Boers attempting to take advantage of the rout they had inflicted upon Jameson and his forces. Luckner set guards, put the surgeons and their helpers to work on the wounded who had escaped, put Lieutenant Willoughby to the task of determining their casualties, and then squatted down beside the silent and shaken Captain Jameson, and the equally silent but angry Lieutenant White. Major Thompson had not survived the battle. The troopers in the meantime had nearly fallen from their exhausted mounts and were lying on the ground, panting, their eyes closed in total collapse.

Luckner put away both the intriguing and intruding thought of Mrs. Varley’s Hotel and the meal they had missed, and tried to concentrate on the problems facing them. He looked at Jameson. “Well, Captain?”

Jameson merely stared back at him, still in shock from the unexpected rout of his men.

Lieutenant White broke into the silence, his voice bitter. “Our mistake was in not giving the men and the animals proper rest at our last camp,” he said, looking at Luckner accusingly. “Men can go without food for days, even without water, but they can’t fight without sleep—”

“Our mistake,” Luckner said, staring at White with no expression at all on his face, although he could feel the old fury rising in him and knew in his bones that one day he’d have to teach the lieutenant a lesson with his boots, “was in trusting the report of those lying scouts. Nothing more. They should be court-martialed and shot. Someone paid them to lead us into that ambush, and I guarantee I’ll find out who did!”

“You’re insane! They were trying to do their job without rest. They were at a point of exhaustion where they couldn’t properly report. They were blind for sleep,” White said angrily, “and with the sun in their eyes—”

“I agree with Luckner,” Jameson suddenly said, forcing himself to come out of the fog that seemed to have taken control of his brain, compelling himself to once more assume command. “Fatigue is no excuse for reporting lies. But what will happen to the scouts is a matter to be determined in the future after investigation. We don’t even know if they came out of the battle alive. At the moment our problem is in getting to Johannesburg, because it’s obvious we’re not going to get to Krugersdorp.” The mere act of speaking, of making decisions once again, seemed to help bring him from his hazy state, to bring back partial control of himself. “We’ll stay here until dusk, resting the men and the animals, and then bypass Krugersdorp in the darkness. We’re only about twenty miles from Jo’burg and we’ll just have to make it under forced conditions.” He looked at each man in turn. “Do either of you know the way around Krugersdorp and back on the road to Jo’burg?”

There was silence from the two. Then Luckner cleared his throat.

“Granted the men and horses could use rest at this point,” he said quietly, “but the longer we remain here, the longer the Boers have to bring up fresh horses and fresh men. They know full well the losses they’ve inflicted on us; all they have to do is count the bodies on the ridge and in the swamp. I know the men need rest, but I don’t believe they need all that much rest. It’s barely eight in the morning, Captain; by noon the men should have had ample rest. The fact is, we’ve been badly beaten, but there’s no need for Jo’burg or the Reform Committee to ever know about it, or at least not until after the revolution, and then it really won’t matter. I estimate we still have at least three hundred men, and that’s plenty to put over the revolution, or at least to stiffen the backs of the committee. But only if we get there quickly. Why not let the men rest until noon, and then let’s get on our way? I’ll find the road around Krugersdorp somehow.”

Jameson frowned, thinking. White kept silent. Luckner clinched his argument.

“If we don’t know the road, or if it’s unfamiliar to us, then trying to push through to Jo’burg in darkness, is insane. Besides, the Boer will be expecting us to march at night; we’ve been doing it all along. He’ll probably be sleeping this afternoon.”

“That’s true,” Jameson conceded, and forced himself to make a decision. He looked at White. “Tell the men they have until noon to rest. Then we ride for Jo’burg.” His head swiveled to Luckner. “And you find the road.”

“Right,” both men said, and came to their feet. Jameson stayed where he was, staring at the ground, waiting for Lieutenant Willoughby and his casualty report, although the captain knew it was going to be bad …

The two boys were apparently tending geese, sitting on the ground beside the shallow pan with bits of sedge grass between their teeth, talking idly, watching the goslings waddle down the shallow bank and follow their parents into the water, paddling along behind them bravely, ducking their heads for food as their parents did, trying to raise their necks impressively as their parents did, but failing conspicuously. Luckner drew up his mount, looking down at the boys with no expression on his scarred face, while his horse drank thirstily from the edge of the pan, the geese and goslings hurrying away from the puffling sound. Luckner had come back along their trail the night before for several miles before he had spotted the boys; there had been no other possible road that might lead them out of their position and around Krugersdorp. Luckner studied the frightened faces. Too young to bear arms, he thought, but they’ll grow up to be as vicious as any other Boer, I’ll warrant! Still, they were probably also too young to lie, although he was sure from their nervous expressions that he could frighten them out of any tendency to lie in any event. The two had stopped talking and had scrambled to their feet at his approach, staring at him, influenced, he could see, by his hard, scarred face, and by his trooper’s uniform.

“Boys,” he said, “do either one of you know the way around Krugersdorp to hit the road to Jo’burg to the south?”

The boys remained silent, looking first at each other and then back at the man seated on the horse.

“Now, boys,” Luckner said, smiling a humorless, a dangerous smile, “I asked you a question. It isn’t polite not to answer. Didn’t your pa ever tell you that? Or your ma?”

One of the boys finally found his voice. He pointed off to the left. “There’s a kopje about three miles from here,” he said, trying to keep his voice from trembling. “Actually, two kopjes, maybe fifty yards apart, maybe a hundred yards high. You can’t miss them. They look like a woman’s tits.” The two boys giggled a bit nervously at this apt description, and then straightened their faces to see the waiting man remain with graven face. The one boy swallowed and went on. “They got trees on them, mostly sneeze-wood. You go between them and about a mile on you’ll see another pan like this one, only a little bigger. Skirt it to the left and you’ll run into the road from Krugersdorp to Johannesburg.”

Luckner scowled at the boys, his face as hard as he could make it look.

“You boys wouldn’t lie to me, would you? Because if that was the case, I’d be coming back this way, and I wouldn’t be pleased. And when I’m not pleased, I hurt people.” His voice was threatening. His one hand reached back to touch the whip he had coiled at the pommel of his saddle, and then slid to rest on the hilt of his saber a moment. “I hurt them bad.”

“Oh, no, sir!” the boy said hurriedly. He pointed again, as if to confirm his first information. “My pa took me to Johannesburg once. That’s the way we went. It’s got ox-wagon tracks you can’t miss. It’s the way lots of people from north of Krugersdorp go, to miss the town.”

“Well,” Luckner said, “in that case, thank you.” He sounded anything but thankful. He remained seated on his horse, towering over the boys, thinking. He considered the possibility that the boys might report his questioning to some adults and that, in turn, the Boer commandos might hear of it, but if they did it would be too late for them to do anything about it. And if he killed the boys and Jameson ever heard of it—and word was bound to get around, even to Johannesburg—the captain, in his lily-livered way, would probably raise all sorts of hell over the matter, knowing who had gone back to ask around and locate the road. And if Captain Jameson didn’t, then that bastard White would. The boys were staring at him a bit fearfully, as if they might have read his mind. Luckner leaned over, giving the boys a closer look at his scarred face. “And you two keep quiet about my asking you any questions, hear? Or I’ll come back and cut off your little puds, and then you’ll never enjoy a woman, tits or no tits!”

He turned and wheeled his horse, returning in the direction of their temporary campsite, intent upon getting Jameson to reduce the rest period even further, and get them on the road as soon as possible. The one boy looked at the other, his eyes twinkling.

“Nasty man, isn’t he?”

“They’re all nasty men,” the second said contemptuously. “Not very smart, but nasty. Still,” he added, thinking about it, “we’d better get away from here before they come through.”

“Why? We don’t have to get away before they come,” the first boy pointed out. “Our staying will prove we didn’t lie to the man. It’s the way their heads work.” He grinned. “Besides, I’d like to see what they look like after the swamp and the ridge.”

“A lot better than they’ll look after the twin kopjes,” the other boy predicted, and also grinned. “You’re right. Let’s get a look at them,” and he settled down again, reaching for a new bit of sedge grass. The geese marched steadily across the pond, obediently followed by the goslings.

Jameson compromised on leaving the rest area at eleven in the morning, to the satisfaction of Luckner and the profound disgust of Lieutenant White. Forty-two men had died on the ridge and in the swamp; sixty-seven had been wounded, and of these, thirty-five were too badly injured to ride their mounts at the fast pace necessary to reach Johannesburg as quickly as possible. That left the captain with three hundred and four able-bodied troopers, plus thirty-two who could ride but would be of limited use in case of any running battle with the Boer commandos as they galloped along the road to Johannesburg. Still, Jameson thought, it might have been worse. At least they did have a way around Krugersdorp, thanks to Luckner. Otherwise they would have had to pause in their ride to Jo’burg to raid one or more farms for food for the men and feed for the animals, and that delay might well have proven fatal to the revolution. Now it was just a matter of time, a matter of hours.

He rode at the head of his men with Luckner beside him to point out the trail, and with his bugler and Lieutenant White behind him, and Willoughby halfway down the column of twos, beside the one surgeon they were taking, accompanying the riding wounded. The other surgeons had been left behind, to be rescued when and if possible, together with the many more seriously wounded; a flag with a prominent white cross on it had been placed in a very visible position before the abandoned campsite, and tents, similarly marked, had been set up for a hospital.

The troop was galloping at a pace that Jameson realized could not be maintained for long by the jaded horses, but once they were below Krugersdorp and well on the way to Johannesburg, he felt they could ease their pace, for they would be in territory too close to Johannesburg and the armed men there for the Boers to seriously consider an attack without threat to themselves. They turned from the trail at the shallow pan, galloping into the trail that Luckner pointed out. The two boys, Luckner was pleased to see, were still there and watching them; he felt a touch of pride that his fierce appearance had served to seal their lips where harsher methods might have failed. More than one man in the column stared at the swimming geese with more than a touch of hunger as they swept by them, but then they set their faces resolutely ahead. They had endured too much to be deterred from their goal now. They were on their way to Johannesburg, within hours of their target, and with no bloody Boer standing between them and the town. The scouts—the new scouts—had ridden past the twin kopjes and all the way to the connection with the Jo’burg road and had reported all was quiet.

It was hot, the full heat of a South African summer at high noon, and the heavy uniforms caught the perspiration of the troopers, weighing them down; the dust ate its way through the damp cloth to attack the skin beneath. It coated the dry lips and caked the edges of their eyes; it clogged their noses and abraded their ears; it worked its way into their jodhpurs and chafed the skin of their legs and thighs. The sweat of their horses made their knees slide along the flanks of their mounts, acting almost as spurs to the weary animals; they rode in a swarm of flies. They were an army of last resort, but determined to finish their dash from Pitsani in proper style and complete their mission of saving Johannesburg from the wicked Boer. They were troopers saving the Queen, and if they were saving Cecil Rhodes and his ambitions instead, it was too late to think about that.

They came around a curve in the trail, and there, less than a thousand yards away, as the two boys had promised and as the new scouts had confirmed, they could see the rounded twin kopjes with a scattering of sneezewood trees atop them, rising from the flatness of the plain. Like hairy warts on a woman’s tits, indeed, Luckner thought, grinning, and put his spurs to his mount to keep up with Jameson. The last few hours of the long three days was almost in sight; the clear road to Johannesburg lay just to the left of the pan he knew they would soon sight once they had cleared the narrow valley between the twin hills.

The leaders were well into the small valley, the troopers crowding behind, praying for sight of the final trail, the road they would ride down with pride, their shoulders back despite their hunger and their privation, into Jo’burg to face the cheering of the residents. Each man could taste his meal that evening, piled before him in unlimited quantities and enjoyed as no meal had been enjoyed before; each man disregarded the galling of his gritty uniform against his sweaty legs as he felt the bitter tang of hops in his throat at the thought of the beer he would drink that night; each man could almost feel the soft arms of one of the town’s so-called loose women thrown about him in appreciation of his having protected her virtue. And then, even as they spurred their tired horses to even greater effort, digging spurs into already blood-flecked flanks, each man froze in his saddle as he heard, above the pounding of his horse’s hooves, what he had heard once before on that fateful day.

“Skiet!”

From the rounded, breastlike hills on either side of the narrow trail on which they found themselves, the two kopjes seemed to burst into flame and smoke as the Boer commandos, waiting for them in their ambush, each rose to his knees from behind some rock, or edged his gun from behind some tree, to pour a wave of rifle fire down on the entrapped troopers. Each end of the small valley was suddenly closed as Boers took position there, down in the deep sedge grass, unable to be seen, adding additional firepower into the panicked troopers, their mounts now frenzied beyond endurance or control, churning dust as they wheeled meaninglessly in the confined space, neighing in terror, stumbling over the bodies of fellow animals down with bullet wounds in their bodies, stepping on shot troopers, trying desperately to escape the withering fire. It was chaos. Jameson found himself, almost without volition, turning to his bugler, screaming above the bedlam.

“Give me your undershirt!”

“Sir?”

Jameson pulled his horse next to the puzzled man. He leaned across his pommel, pulling the other man’s outer shirt away, ripping the undershirt from the man’s body, hastily tying it to his saber. He drove his spurs deep into his horse’s flank, forcing the terrified animal up the side of the nearest kopje, waving the saber frantically in the air.

“Staak skiet!”

As quickly as it had come, the firing ceased. The troopers stared about themselves in a daze, unable as yet to comprehend the sudden attack and the equally sudden ending of it, looking down in shock at the bodies of their comrades lying broken beneath the hooves of their mounts, and the unbelievable sight of their captain waving the flag of surrender, unable as yet to understand the totality of the disaster that had struck. The surviving horses jerked their heads against the reins, trembling uncontrollably at the sudden silence, their flanks wet with perspiration, their mouths frothing, their eyes wild.

A figure appeared on a horse atop one of the kopjes; a hand was raised and men appeared on both kopjes, coming from behind the trees and up from the tall grass, waiting silently, looking down with dour expressionless faces at the results of their ambush, their rifles at their sides but ready. Jameson dismounted and slowly climbed the hill, the white flag trailing at his feet as his arm drooped. His mind was a blank, refusing at first to accept the fact that he had actually surrendered; then it tried to take what satisfaction it could from the fact that he had been forced to surrender, had had no choice but to surrender. But it was bitter medicine for the doctor. With each step he took he knew that the revolution had failed because of his failure. He knew that his best friend, Cecil Rhodes, would have been put in an untenable position as Premier of the Cape because of his failure. Bitter medicine indeed …

He came to stand beside the mounted man, looking up in the face of a tall, bearded man dressed in overalls, with farm boots on his feet, and who wore a wide-brimmed, leather trekker’s hat. The man looked as if he had been called from a day’s work on his farm at a moment’s notice, not at all like the neatly uniformed troopers who had left Pitsani in such high spirits. Jameson wet his lips and spoke. It seemed to him as if he were standing to one side, listening to some stranger say the words.

“We are your prisoners, sir. We have left wounded behind. My men have not eaten for over two days…”

The ill-fated Jameson raid was over.