Читать книгу Reports from the Boer War - Edgar Wallace - Страница 10
ОглавлениеReproduced from The West Coast Times (New Zealand), April 26, 1901
THE DEATH OF QUEEN VICTORIA
Mr Edgar Wallace describes in the Daily Mail the anxious, watching on the veldt for the news of the Queen. We quote the following:—
"TICK—TICK—TICK—PRINCE—WALES— TELEGRAPHS—LIFE—BELOVED—QUEEN— GREAT—DANGER."
An Australian patrol has come in from Damslaagte, and the men have trotted their horses up to the door of the office.
"Say—what's the news? It isn't really true, is it?"
They are grimy, unshaven, and white with dust of the trek. They are tired men, who have ridden forty miles since "sun up", but they have forgotten their fatigue, forgotten their hardships of the past week, forgotten even to report that they bad been sniped at, oblivious to all things save that somewhere six thousand miles north, in a place they did not know, somebody whom they had never seen was passing into the shadow.
The night passes; a troublesome night, and silent save for the sough of the wind and the tick of the tape. A night in the centre of an unpeopled world, among restless shades and whimpering, whispering voices. Now and again a form appears from nowhere in particular, and an anxious voice demands the latest news, and then disappears unsatisfied. If the word "empire" bonds the hearts of people of the seven seas together, surely this sorrow which is pressing on us to-night is knitting the very souls of men into one. In our loneliness we experience the companionship of kindred suffering, and to-night we are one with Brisbane as we are with Ottawa
And she has played so great a part in this war—if you at home will only realise it. Hers was the word that numbed the sting of the rebuff. Hers was the message that put hope and life and a new courage into the battered brigades that struggled back from the scene of the disaster. Her thanks and solicitudes were the crowning triumphs of the hard-won field.
"It's the Queen's gift to me," said a hard-faced private of the line when I approached him at the Modder River with a view to purchasing his chocolate box; "it's the Queen's gift to me, and money wouldn't buy it."
She has ever been a sacred subject among the rank and file cf the Army. They are very broad-minded, the men who served and loved her; Papist or Buddhist or Jew are one with our Protestant selves. This is the rule of the barrack room. Talk lightly of creeds, of faiths, or of strange gods; but there is one who must not be brought within the range of controversy. They require no regulations to guide them in this matter. They are governed in their thoughts toward her person by a love which cannot be commanded.
"Tick—tick—tick." Message after message comes up.
The clerk drops the festoon of tape and listens to the instrument. He is reading by ear, and as the chattering sounder speaks he raises a tremulous hand to his lips to hide a tell-tale shiver.
"Her Majesty died last night."
Outside the wind had dropped, the veldt was silent and peaceful, and the eastern sky was gold and crimson. So I left the clerk with his bowed head on his arm and went and told his men.
