Through Shot and Flame Part 16

Not only in the districts of Vrede and Harrismith did this occur, but everywhere throughout the State. When I was in the neighbourhood of Senekal it took place there also. I have myself seen places where the skeletons of the sheep lay, and could hardly imagine anything sadder than to see them lying dead in heaps. The destroyers also frequently drove large herds of young horses or such as were unfit for service into kraals, or crowded them into ditches, and shot them there by tens, fifties, or hundreds, and the air was charged with pestilential odours.

The troops completely destroyed the houses. Where the stables and waggon-houses were not burnt down, the dwelling-houses were devoted to the flames; and where these were not burnt down, they were so utterly ruined as to become wholly uninhabitable. The floors were broken up, the panes of gla.s.s smashed with the sashes and all, the doors broken to pieces, the doorposts and the window-sills torn out. And if it was not too terrible to permit of its being so described, one might say that the work of these men was sometimes childish--as, for instance, when on one occasion they hanged the cats in a barn, and on another shot a horse inside a house, and then covered it up with a table.

To escape from the troops the women sometimes took refuge in mountainous parts of the country in caves and grottos. Often they escaped; but on other occasions the soldiers discovered them in these places of refuge.

An officer found two women with their children in a cave, and expressed himself very strongly as to what he saw there, saying that he would send a photograph of the scene to the _Graphic_, as if the picture of such misery could do credit to himself and his nation! He wrote the following letter, and handed it to one of the women to deliver to her husband:--

"TO MR. M. LOURENS.

"SIR,--I am leaving your wife and Mrs. Uys in the wretched place they have to live in. If you had any compa.s.sion on your women you would surrender to superior force and not prolong a hopeless struggle.

"R. B. FIRMAN, Lieutenant-Colonel."

27/7/01.

As one of these women was indisposed the officer left them there; but he took the little servant-girls away.

To such acts as these the officers of the British columns had fallen.

They were made the persecutors of defenceless women and children. They carried the work of incendiaries throughout the whole State. They became the butchers of thousands of horses and tens of thousands of sheep. How despicable it must have been in their own eyes to perpetrate such acts!

When I think of all this, and look to the far future, then I ask myself: What will be said of this war when the history of it shall be written and read by the coming generations?

CHAPTER XVIII

PRESIDENT STEYN ALMOST CAPTURED

The things I needed most after my escape at Graspan were clothes, for all I possessed had been on the spider that I had had to leave behind.

But even had I been able to rescue it, I should have found very little in it; for although I had heard an officer ordering the soldiers to lay their hands on nothing belonging to the burghers except arms and ammunition, from the Kaffir huts, in which I was held captive, I saw them removing from time to time from the spider, first one and then another article of clothing and concealing it about their saddles.

To provide, therefore, for my wants as far as clothes were concerned, I went to Fouriesburg. Not all at once could I recover my equanimity. The excitement of my capture and the fight at Graspan had, as may be well conceived, affected my nerves, and it was as if I could not clearly realise my escape. But when on the following Sunday, on the farm of Mr.

Heymans, not far from Slabbert's Nek, I again saw a congregation before me, I once more completely regained my serenity of mind. It was clear to me that G.o.d had shown me that He held my fate in His Hand, and that I owed to His Mercy my liberty until the day of my capture. It was as if He had said, "Behold, I delivered you over to the enemy, and closed his hand upon you so that there was no deliverance. There is therefore nothing for you to be vain of in that you were the only one of your colleagues in the Free State who had up to that time not been taken prisoner. But I have delivered you because I have further work for you to do. Go forth, and do good to your people. Encourage the burghers.

Seek out the neglected ones. Comfort the defenceless women and children in their oppression. Preach the gospel."

And I must declare it, that since the unfortunate occurrence at Nauwpoort I never had more courage than now, nor had I been able till then to address the burghers with more pleasure than now.

I arrived at Fouriesburg on Monday, the 10th of June, and was there most kindly entertained by Mr. Jacobus Bester and his wife. The English--so I heard there--had just quitted the village, and had in the previous month laid waste everything behind the Roodebergen. In the newspapers they published how many women and children they had captured, how many burghers they had killed, how many cattle they had carried off, how many tons of grain they had burned, how many ovens and stoves they had destroyed. Thus the British Generals, stern iconoclasts, had become the takers of ovens by storm. I discovered that not so many burghers by far had been captured or killed as the English accounts had stated. It was also surprising how much grain there was left, how much even had been rescued from the flames, and when on the Sunday after my arrival I held service in the church, I found the building nearly full of wors.h.i.+ppers, and all were in fairly good spirits. There was, notwithstanding all the destruction, no thought of surrender. What advantage would we gain thereby? Should we get the looted cattle back? should we see the burnt-down houses rebuilt?--No. Then let the enemy do his worst. Let him ruin us completely if it was our fate to be overwhelmed. The English had to do with a people who were no barbarians, but with a race sprung from the same stock as themselves--with the offspring of ancestors who had sacrificed everything for their Faith--with descendants of forefathers who had contended for eighty years against a great world-power. Such means, therefore, as Great Britain had for the last fifty years been in the habit of employing against barbarous or semi-barbarous races had till now failed signally when applied to the people of South Africa.

I visited our people on their farms. At one place the family was living in a waggon-shed, at another in a stable, and again at another in a house restored sufficiently to make it to some extent habitable.

Some farms had not been visited by the enemy, whilst at others no damage had been done, excepting the destruction of the grain and the _stoves_!

At one farm which I visited everything had been left as it had been.

There was still a piano, and we spent the evening pleasantly. What thoughts pa.s.sed in my mind when one of the young ladies sang well-known songs to the accompaniment of the piano, and when I remembered that the same girl, with her mother and sisters, had shortly before, whilst fleeing before the enemy, pa.s.sed the night under the open sky. Both the mother and her daughters were cheerful here, and not here only, but everywhere I went. No wonder, then, that the hope that sooner or later we would gain our independence grew stronger and stronger in me. While I was at Fouriesburg the landdrost, Mr. M. Fourie, came from the Ficksburg Commando, and told me that he, Commandant Steyn, and Field-Cornet J. J.

van Niekerk would be pleased if I could visit their commando. What else was I living for? I went gladly, and addressed the burghers, on week days as well as on Sundays. Amongst the Ficksburgers I found the song, written by the Rev. G. Thom, which has since become well known.

"Hope on, hope on, my brothers, In our beloved land, We're waiting for deliverance, Deliverance by G.o.d's hand.

Hope on, hope on, my brothers, Though war's dark clouds increase; 'Tis but a short time longer, Then He will give us peace.

Hope on, hope on, my brothers, The daylight is not far; When the long night is ended Will rise the Morning Star.

Hope on, hope on, my sisters, In our beloved land, We too lament your sorrows, We on this far-off strand.[8]

Hope on, hope on, my sisters, Your tears, your sighs, your pain By Him are not forgotten, To whom all things are plain.

Hope on, hope on, my sisters, And still again hope on; Through seas of blood and treasure Our freedom must be won!"

[Footnote 8: Ceylon. The original of this song is in Dutch, of which the above is but a feeble rendering.]

This song was not sent out by the Rev. G. Thom for any special purpose, but it seems that, as it was often sung by the prisoners-of-war in Ceylon, it was sent out in its entirety or in portions by different burghers to their relatives as their contribution to the scanty news they had to send.

Had the censor known how this song would be circulated among us, and sung everywhere, he would certainly not have let it pa.s.s. But perhaps we have a proof here that the censor, like Homer of old, was also occasionally apt to nod.

The song was sung by the burghers of Field-Cornet J. J. van Niekerk to the tune of the old Voortrekkers' hymn, "How pleasant are the days."

I afterwards had this sung wherever I held a service, always requesting the girls to make copies of it before the service. Mr. Mels' J. Meyers, then editor of the _Brandwacht_, afterwards printed a number of copies, which helped me much to spread the song. I have no doubt that these verses aided in a large measure to keep alive the courage of our people.

While I was in these parts letters came regularly from British territory through Basutoland to the farm Brindisi, under the kind care of Mr.

Middleton, the owner of the farm. I availed myself of the opportunity and sent letters to my wife, and received replies by the same means.

The relatives of the captives who had been sent to Ceylon often got news from that island, and it encouraged us much to see what a good spirit reigned amongst the exiles. Our ministers there seemed to be effecting much good by their services, and the younger captives attended schools which had been erected for them. Others pa.s.sed their time in the making of beautiful handiwork of all descriptions out of suitable stone, such as brooches and similar articles, while others again worked on the roads for small wages, and in this manner obtained enough money to purchase paper and postage stamps, as one of them stated in his letter. But what particularly impressed me was the firm conviction they all had of the ultimate deliverance of our nation. Here is an extract from a letter of a young man to his mother:--

"We are full of courage, and do not mind how long we have to remain here, if only our people get the upper hand--which they certainly will."

From the Ficksburgers I went to the Ladybrand Commando, and held services for the burghers and the women.

On the farm Peru, belonging to Mrs. A. Ecksteen, senior, I heard that the English wanted to remove, on the 19th of April 1901, the mother-in-law of Mrs. Ecksteen. As the old lady was eighty years of age, and, moreover, suffered from a weak heart, Mrs. Ecksteen protested against this deportation, whereupon the officer in command said, "She will have to go, even if she were dead." And so the old woman was forced to go on the waggon. At Karba, not far from there, the English deported Mrs. A. Ecksteen, junior, on the same day, notwithstanding her repeated a.s.surances that she could not possibly go. A son of Dr. Wilson, the pract.i.tioner at Karba, had carried a letter from his father to the military, acquainting them with Mrs. Ecksteen's condition. But the lad got his ears boxed, and was taken prisoner (he was, however, released on the following day); and the officer said to the woman, "You'll _have_ to go." Mrs. Ecksteen was thereupon taken to the _mine_ on the farm Monastery, along with the other Ecksteens; she there found shelter under a waggon, but was taken during the night into a tin shanty, of which all the doors and windows had been destroyed, and under such circ.u.mstances she gave birth to a daughter!

The following morning the English realised what an inhuman act they had committed, and left the Ecksteens there with the following note:--

"MONASTERY, _20th April 1901_.

"Mrs. A. Ecksteen, junior, having to our regret been moved from her house by mistake, when she was not in a condition to travel, Dr. Wilson has been left to take charge of her, and also her mother-in-law and grandmother to care of her. All these persons must remain on the farm Karba.

"J. (?) HALKETT,[9] A.P.M., Pilcher's Horse."

[Footnote 9: This was not the officer who had removed Mrs. Ecksteen.]

By mistake! and that with the woman before their eyes and the letter of the doctor in their hands!

But this is by no means the only case of this sort. A British officer had also, shortly before, taken away Mrs. Greyling, an old woman aged eighty-five, from her farm, Magermanshoek, at Korannaberg. The poor old woman could no longer walk and was totally blind. When her son inquired whether she could not travel in her spider, his request was refused and the vehicle burnt. She was carried to a waggon on a chair, and conveyed to Winburg.

I mention these cases not as exceptions, but as examples of what continually took place.

Having returned to the Ficksburg Commando on the 1st of July, I found that my son had had an accident through the explosion of a Martini-Henry cartridge in his face. This forced us to remain till the 16th at the farm Franschhoek, belonging to Field-Cornet J. J. van Niekerk. I wish here to record my thanks for the kindness of all the families there, and especially for that shown by Mrs. J. J. van Niekerk and Mrs. Meyer in nursing my son. Before leaving Franschhoek I heard of the narrow escape of our President at Reitz. He had gone thither with his staff on the evening of the 10th of July. Early the next morning his cook, a coloured boy named Ruiter, rushed into the tent where the President was sleeping, shouting, "The English are here." The President then hastily went out, without a jacket and with a nightcap on his head, and ran to the stable where his horse was. The saddle was not near at hand, and Mr. Curlewis hurriedly put his own saddle on the horse. Without bridle or bit, and with only the riem of the halter in the horse's mouth, the President galloped away. A soldier followed and shot at him; but the President's horse was fresh, and gained on the tired steed of the soldier, until he was out of danger. Ruiter wanted to follow the President, but when fired on he allowed himself to be captured. Subsequently, however, he escaped, and related that, when they had asked him who it was that had ridden off, he had answered, "It's only a Boer." On a former occasion the President had slept in a house, and it seems that the majority of the English had surrounded that same house, and thus they had given him the chance of escaping.