‘Mind if I join you?’ Fairfax’s gravelly voice cut into their conversation.
‘By all means, Fairy. Come sit. Duncan and I are just catching up.’
‘Thanks. Did he mention that Methuen’s lot should be in Kimberley by now?’
Dallas was surprised, recalling what he had recently seen and heard of the failed attempts to take Magersfontein.
‘The man sat on his backside for too bloody long after he crossed the Modder. It gave Cronje all the time in the world to take over and dig in where they are now. Apparently President Steyn came in person to rally his komandos. We didn’t find out what was going on until it was too late.’ Fairfax’s frustration was obvious.
They talked for an hour, maybe more, before calling it a night. Dallas lay on his back wondering what the new day would bring. A spotted hyena seemed to find the situation amusing and gave voice to his opinion. Dallas was already asleep.
All day Lindsay kept up the pretence that he had forgotten. Ellie said nothing, which made him wonder if she even realised it was 13 December, her twenty-sixth birthday.
Everybody at the field hospital in Estcourt was aware Buller had been preparing to advance on Colenso. He had already moved his troops from Frere up to Chieveley, halving the distance to their objective. That day, the distant sound of artillery announced that the long-range naval guns had commenced their barrage of the enemy’s positions. It sounded like far-off thunder. And storm that day it did, rain closing in, turning the wagon-rutted ground into slippery, bootclogging mud.
As it neared six in the evening Lindsay began to wonder if the plan he had so carefully conceived was going to work. Perhaps they couldn’t get away, he worried. If they were coming, would the weather make a difference?
Precisely on the hour two dripping wet, turban-clad Indian stretcher-bearers arrived, their upturned trench-coat collars providing scant protection against the driving rain.
‘Here we go, ’Lindsay called to Ellie, who had been unpacking a crate of medical supplies.
Quickly she joined him as their latest patient was placed on the operating table. A pair of muddy boots stuck out from one end of the blanket which covered everything else on the stretcher.
Gently Ellie peeled back the sodden cloth. Beneath it lay the contents of a Fortnum and Mason food hamper, a bottle of Champagne, four glasses, a birthday cake and two boots connected to nothing.
She stared down in disbelief as three voices behind her blended – none too harmoniously – in an enthusiastic rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’.
The mud darkening Cameron and Will’s faces was streaked from the rain but both were grinning from ear to ear. ‘Didn’t think we’d forgotten, did you, little sister?’
Ellie’s shriek of delight was spontaneous. She didn’t know who to hug first.
‘Lindsay is responsible for most of this lot. He’s been planning it for weeks. The cake is a contribution from Will. It’s his cooking so before you taste it, just remember it’s the thought that counts.’
Ellie was bubbling with excitement. ‘Thank you, Will. I’m sure it will be delicious.’
‘Hope so, doc. I’ve got more to thank you for than most but it’s like this: some of the ingredients aren’t quite as they should be.’
Ellie was not sure what he meant so to prevent any embarrassment, changed the subject. ‘Wherever did you get the turbans?’
‘That was easy, ’ Lindsay laughed. ‘One of the Indian orderlies helped us out.’
‘Father left this with me last week.’ Cameron produced an envelope. ‘It’s from everybody at home. Duncan couldn’t sign it but he sends his love as well.’
‘And here was I thinking you’d all forgotten. I hope the Champagne has been chilled.’
Later, when they were alone, Lindsay gave Ellie his real present: an 1859 first edition of Charles Darwin’s controversial work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.
‘My God, do you know what this is?’
‘Some old book I found in Maritzburg. The man’s theory may not meet with my approval but I hope you like it.’
‘Like it? It’s what life is all about. Thank you, my darling.’ Ellie put down the pristine volume, reached her arms round Lindsay’s neck and pressed her body hard against him. ‘I love it, ’she said.
Cameron and Will had left before ten pm.
‘That cake you made was quite delicious, ’ Cameron commented as they rode back to Chieveley. The rain had stopped and he was feeling strangely relaxed, even happy, any thought of the coming confrontation far from his mind. ‘You must give Ginnie the recipe.’
‘That might not be such a good idea.’ Will chuckled.
General Sir Redvers Buller was only too aware of the setbacks suffered at Stormberg and Magersfontein. He could not afford another mistake. Louis Botha’s komandos held the high ground overlooking Colenso from both sides of the river but the Boer positions were easily within range of his 4.7inch naval guns. They would plaster the enemy with fifty-pound lyddite-and shrapnel-packed percussion shells providing the prelude to a three-pronged attack across the deep and twisting Thukela.
What Buller’s field intelligence division failed to find out was that for two weeks the Boers’ African labour force had been digging lines of trenches much lower down, carefully concealed in thick scrub immediately opposite the river’s few possible crossing points. They had also removed thousands of rocks from the drifts to make them deeper.
Before dawn on 15 December, after a two-day artillery bombardment which did little more than announce his intentions, Buller’s advance from Chieveley began. Columns split into three and moved forwards with parade-ground precision. Those on the left quickly became lost, finding themselves surrounded on three sides by a loop of the river with no way out but back. Suddenly that too became impossible as shrapnel shells began bursting above the defenceless troops. Mauser fire and deadly impact-exploding bullets from quick-firing belt-fed Maxim ‘pom-poms’ tore into them from the Boers’ near-invisible trenches only yards away across the Thukela.
Buller could see the chaos unfolding before him. The enemy were not where they should have been and neither were most of his men or artillery.
Twelve 15-pounders – supposedly preparing the way for a frontal attack by the second column – had been hauled too close to the river and detached from their limbers. They too were coming under concentrated fire from the other side. As he watched, the guns fell silent, abandoned by their teams who sought refuge behind a small fold in the ground. It was not yet 0700 hours.
Also south of the Thukela and less than two miles north-east of where Buller stood, the Boer positions on Mount Hlangwane were under attack by colonial volunteers commanded by the Earl of Dundonald. Rough terrain had already made it necessary for him to dismount his men, among them the South African Light Horse. Faced with more defenders than anticipated the advance was going nowhere.
Cameron carried back an urgent request for assistance, only to be told that the whole attack might have to be called off. Two of the twelve deserted 15-pounders had been recovered but with unacceptably heavy losses. Buller himself entered the fray – his first frontline action for fourteen years – and was wounded, though not seriously, by exploding shell fragments. Without artillery cover he could not commit his main second column. The only guns available to him were those now being used to try to extricate troops still pinned down to his left.
Before midday Buller realised he had no chance of taking Colenso and gave the order for a general withdrawal. Ten field guns and their ammunition carts lay abandoned. Nearly a thousand men were wounded or had been taken prisoner, but less than a hundred and fifty actually killed. The outcome could so easily have been a lot worse.
‘Black Week’, as it quickly became known, resulted in Redvers Buller being replaced as Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in South Africa. The man chosen to take over was Field-Marshal Earl Roberts of Kandahar VC, affectionately known as ‘Bobs’ or ‘The Little Man�
�� by those who had previously served with him in India and North Africa. He was in Ireland at the time of his appointment. Only days before, Buller had the unenviable task of writing to tell him that his only son, Freddie, had been killed in action, lost in a failed attempt to save the guns at Colenso.
Although he had retained responsibility for the campaign in Natal, there was not much for Buller to celebrate at the end of 1899. His losses rivalled those suffered by Britain in the Crimean war some forty years earlier.
Ellie and Lindsay had no way of knowing how bad the situation really was but, since Colenso, they’d seen their commander’s confidence crumble to the extent that he seriously suggested that Sir George White, in the besieged Ladysmith garrison, fire off all his ordnance and surrender. Fortunately Lord Roberts had not agreed.
Morale in Estcourt desperately needed a boost. It came with the news that Winston Churchill had escaped Boer detention in Pretoria, miraculously making his way to Lourenço Marques in Portuguese East Africa. His arrival in Durban on the steam-ship Induna saw him portrayed by the press as a popular hero.
Ellie and Lindsay attended a Christmas Eve dinner in Estcourt, hosted by Sir Redvers Buller, where it was announced that Winston, in addition to his role as reporter for the Morning Post, had been commissioned a lieutenant in the South African Light Horse. Later that evening, with only their host and a few of his senior officers present, they heard how close Winston had come to being shot by the Boers for his civilian role in saving the locomotive and many lives during the armoured train incident, after which he and seventy others had been captured. As port and cigars mellowed the hour, Winston seemed happy to tell the full story. His audience listened in rapt silence as the ceiling of pungent, eye-watering smoke sank lower and lower.
The saga started with a sixty-mile march to the Boer railhead at Elandslaagte. From there they had been taken by train to Pretoria and held in officers’ quarters at the State Model School. Winston’s solo escape some three weeks later had been blessed by good fortune.
After scaling a wall and dropping into an adjoining garden, he managed to avoid detection by the Zarps – South African Republic police guards – and used the night-sky constellation of Orion to guide him south in search of the railway line to Portuguese East Africa, almost three hundred miles distant. Jumping a train proved easy though he left it before dawn and hid in the veld all the following day. The next night brought no rail traffic and walking the track in bright moonlight was fraught with danger, all halts and bridges being under guard.
Winston could not say what prompted him to seek assistance in a small mining community. As luck would have it the house he chose was that of the colliery manager, a naturalised burgher but originally English. His name was John Howard. He and two Scottish miners kept Winston hidden in the mine for three days, white rats his only companions, until they managed to secrete him in a railway wagon carrying bales of wool to Lourenço Marques. It was there that Winston read fictitious Boer newspaper reports of his capture and learned that a reward of twenty-five pounds had been posted for bringing him in, dead or alive.
Walking back to their quarters, Ellie took Lindsay’s arm. ‘What an enjoyable evening. He certainly likes the limelight, does our Winston.’
Lindsay nodded. ‘And his cigars. I don’t deny he’s an entertaining raconteur but why mention names? As a journalist he should have known better. The people who helped him could be in serious trouble if word of their actions reached the wrong ears.’ They fell silent, enjoying the clean, cool air. ‘And another thing, ’ Lindsay suddenly went on.
‘What’s that?’
‘Happy Christmas, my love. Let’s hope this war is over by the next one.’
She smiled and looked up at him, squeezing his arm closer. ‘Amen to that. And a happy Christmas to you, my darling. Do you think a private celebration might be in order?’
‘Please God, ’Lindsay said, stooping to kiss her. ‘Let there be no patients.’
They burst out laughing, their leisurely pace forgotten.
THIRTEEN
The lioness was a good mother but her cubs were almost six weeks old and their natural curiosity made it impossible for her to leave them unattended for any length of time. Twice she had come back from her ceaseless search for food only to find them romping about in plain sight outside their latest hiding place. The time had come for her to do what she knew she must – seek their safety within the pride itself. Others as well as herself would suckle and babysit the cubs. She would regain strength, teach them to hunt and eat meat. Their father, the dominant dark-maned male, would take care of everything else. If he accepted his offspring.
Slowly and with extreme caution, testing his mood every few steps, the lioness brought the first of her two remaining cubs – the female – and placed it in front of him. The lion looked down, almost surprised. Last year’s litter from another female romped up to see what this small, squeaky thing could be. The mother turned and snarled at them. They skittered away. He sniffed, licked the tiny head, sniffed again and then, with a paw large enough to crush the life from such a small creature, gently rolled her over. The lioness relaxed. Her cub had been accepted as his own. If rejected, the youngster would have been dead by now. Leaving her in his care, she ambled off to bring back his son.
They would grow into adults not averse to feeding on the flesh of man, a learned behaviour passed on within the family.
Since Lord Methuen’s costly advance on Kimberley came to a grinding halt at Magersfontein, the Fairfax Scouts had been busy reporting on the movement of Boer komandos in the Orange Free State. They were now operating almost a hundred miles north of its capital, Bloemfontein, near the Zand River.
On 10 January Field-Marshal Lord Roberts and his Chief-of-Staff, Lord Kitchener, had arrived in Cape Town. Within forty-eight hours an African runner found Fairfax and his men. Stitched into the messenger’s nondescript greatcoat were despatches from Lord Methuen outlining changes in command and saying the scouts should stay where they were pending receipt of further orders. The runner was also carrying a satchel of mail for the men.
Dallas had three letters– from Lorna, Meggie and Will – all written around the middle of December. Will spoke only of Cameron. The undated note, badly written but well meant, told of his godson’s bravery in securing the release of a dozen British regulars captured by the Boers. Buller thinks highly of the lad, Will wrote. I suspect he could be up for a medal. Gongs aside, fact is Cam brought back twelve of our boys before they could be sent by train to Pretoria. He’s a bloody hero.
No real details of Cameron’s actions were included so Dallas could only imagine his son’s efforts behind enemy lines, presumably in the company of many others. From what little Will was able to say, it certainly sounded as if Cameron had been the man who made it happen. There was no way of telling if Will’s words had been penned before or after Buller’s reverses at Colenso. Dallas could only assume that he would have heard by now had Cam or Will been wounded, captured or – heaven forbid – killed.
Thankfully the lad keeps well and shows no symptoms of the ills which plague this place. I ain’t sayin he’s perfect, mind. The cards is another matter. There’s not many will sit down with him.
Dallas smiled at that. Cameron’s wild streak included gambling, and when he did it he played hard, losses and wins taken in his stride – something those less committed found hard to emulate. Will’s epistle ended with one complaint. He was finding it impossible to focus even a portion of his young charge’s mind on matters religious. Dallas folded the note with another smile. On that score, Will could try until hell froze.
Meggie’s letter was full of snippets about daily life at Morningside, her job at the hospital and Lorna’s apparent acceptance of Frazer’s death. Schooling was on hold, but she had been making do by herself using books borrowed from a variety of sources. Things on the farm seemed to be going well although Tobacco’s son had left and Henry was acting induna, ably assisted by his younger br
other, Sabani. The cattle were thriving in a good rainy season, weaned calves sold and Lorna had bought a new bull. Dallas winced at the price. Even the acreage under sugar was expected to yield its highest ever tonnage. Quite surprisingly, Meggie’s work at the hospital was proving so fulfilling that she talked of following in Ellie’s footsteps, not as a doctor but by becoming a nurse. ‘Well, ’ Dallas reflected. ‘My little girl, another Florence Nightingale. She’s grown up so fast.’
Mother worries me sometimes. The statement had Dallas read and reread the same paragraph. There are days when I simply can’t reach her yet others where everything seems perfectly normal. She spends a lot of time at Frazer’s cairn, just speaking to him. I pray to God that you can bring him home for I hate to think what it would do to Mother if that were not possible.
Lorna’s letter showed him exactly what Meggie meant: Don’t laugh, dearest; I was talking to Frazer the other day and he said that the good Lord has no plans for the rest of you. I believe him. You will all return safe and sound. Frazer has promised me that. Only a couple of paragraphs later: I feel such despair sometimes. Will I ever see you again, my darling? What has happened to our loving family? Katie’s gone. Now Frazer. Did we have these children so they could be snatched from us? There are times when I question God’s intent. What are we supposed to learn from such grief?
‘Indeed, ’Dallas muttered. ‘A good question, my love.’
When on the subject of volunteer work, Lorna was lucid, funny and caring. She seemed vague about what was happening on the farm, going into great detail instead about moving furniture around in the parlour, sitting-room and their bedroom. In all, Lorna seemed to bounce from subject to subject, saying nothing of importance, even contradicting herself midway through a paragraph. Normally a good correspondent, her usual lucidity had been replaced by a lack of coherence. Thankfully the work she was doing at Empangeni hospital seemed to be taking her mind off other matters to a degree. The last line of Lorna’s letter was what bothered Dallas the most: Do not worry, my darling. I know you are not responsible for what happened. My son’s death was beyond your control.
Footprints of Lion Page 17
