Читать книгу Reports from the Boer War - Edgar Wallace - Страница 3
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Reproduced from The Star (New Zealand), August 14, 1900
GOING UP BY THE MASHONALAND RAILWAY
Twelve people in a railway carriage, bound northward—a carriage constructed exactly like a London tram-car, only not half as comfortable, with a narrow seat running down either side, and a still narrower luggage rack above. A sleepy negro boy in limbo and fez squatting on the platform at the end of the carriage, and as the train turns a curve a glimpse of a dozen plumed khaki figures in an open truck ahead.
This is on the road to Marandellas, Sir Frederick Carrington's first camp, and is somewhere between Bamboo Creek and Mandegos.
The passengers are: three Portuguese officials, who swap lies with many gesticulations and much noise—stories generally of how they got the better of Somebody Else, illustrated by killing imitations of Somebody Else's voice, manner, despair, or indignation, delivered with raucous gusto; two nondescript individuals who "know every inch of the country" and are walking gazetteers of Rhodesia, but are otherwise perfectly harmless; three fever-stricken railway men stretched out on rugs spread on the floor of the carriage—uncomplaining, haggard Englishmen on their way to the Umtali Hospital with their annual dose of malaria; a Buluwayo stockbroker returning from England; a German lady tricked up in faded finery who speaks English, French, and Portuguese with suspicious fluency; and myself.
WHERE HAVE WE MET?
Does the lady object to smoking? The lady does not, and on the strength of that tries to open a conversation. Hadn't she met me at Beira? No; then perhaps it was in Paris—then perhaps in London? I emphatically deny ever having met her either in London or in Paris, or, in Timbuktoo—or in Port Said either; which last crushed her and caused her to relapse into silence for at least ten minutes. The nondescripts open a tin of lunch tongue, and the elder and more decayed finds a bottle of brandy—these are their provisions for the three days' journey to Salisbury. They had also some aged crabs, which they stored beneath the seat and forgot all about. The passengers detected these during the night and thought it was the swamp.
"You remember the Massi-Kassi raid, don't you, sir?"
This, after the third application of the three-starred reviver, and is addressed to the stockbroker.
"You talk about raids," went on nondescript senior, glaring at the unoffending and unconscious Portuguese trio, " why, when the blooming Portygese raided our blessed territory what did we do?"
Nobody volunteered to answer this.
"I know,"—triumphantly—"because I was with Colonel Heyman—and it was only in '90. Why; if we had our rights the whole of the Portygese territory would be Rhodesia—though Heaven knows it is only fit for dagoes and niggers."
NATURE IN ABANDON
One looks out on the country rolling past. Great stretches of grassy land, with here and there a clump of trees and the gleam of a distant river winding through the mangoes. Very beautiful for the eye to see, but the grass hides a swamp reeking with malaria, and every night brings the fever-laden miasma. Now the train winds through a tangled mass of jungle and undergrowth—a veritable botanical garden run wild. Here rises from the interlacing bush bamboo, and creeper, the gaunt, white, lifeless branches of a thorn tree; here, growing amidst the bananas and wild tomatoes, is a clump of lordly palms: It is Nature in abandon. A covey of partridges rises with a whirr from beneath the very wheels of the locomotive, and a zebra crashes through the jungle and appears for an instant on the crest of a rise, and is gone.
"There was forty of us," went on the speaker, pausing a moment to protest against the nondescript minor's appetite, "or it might have been forty-one. Jim Harvey was there. You remember Jim Harvey, the butcher of Salisbury, don't you, 'Arry? Turned miner and blowed hisself up with a dynamite cartridge down at the Geelong—or it might have been at Shangani—anyhow, he's dead. Well, there was forty of us, and up come the Portygese army, and that about 900 strong, with six machine guns, while we only had a seven-pounder."
This was interesting, for my friend the stockbroker had given me a confirmation of these facts in an undertone.
"We was on a hill, somewhere north of Massi-Kassi—old Massi-Kassi, I mean, not the place they call Macequece now—go easy with that meat, Jim, we shan't get anymore this side of Umtali—and when the colonel saw the army coming he hid the seven-pounder in a tent, and made all of us except seventeen lie down in the bush."
FEVER
One of the sick men on the floor groaned, and clasped his head between his long white hands.
Nondescript junior leant over and felt the dry, burning skin with a touch begotten of experience.
"Hi, boy "—this to the squatting attendant on the platform—"Manzi."*
[Manzi (Zulu)—water. ]
Then he fumbled in his pockets till he discovered the remedy, which, being put up in 5-grain tabloids, is easy to carry.
"Quinine is a useful thing," went on the elder man, "if you don't take too much. I take whisky myself. Well, up come the Portygese Governor, and he kow-tows to the Colonel. 'Hullo!' he says—he had left his army at the foot of the hill. 'Hullo,' he says. 'Do you know where you are?' —and all the time he was looking round to see how many guns we had.
"'Rather fancy I do,' says the Colonel, winkin' at me. 'I haven't taken the sun yet, but I'm under the impression that I'm somewhere off the stormy isle of Massi-Kassi.'"
A QUESTION OF FRONTIERS
"'You'll find it pretty, stormy if you don't clear,' says the Gov'nor, having reckoned up our strength on his fingers and seven of his brass buttons. 'Don't you know you're in Portygese territory,' he says.
"'Can't say that I do,' says the Colonel.
"'Well, consult your map,' says the Gov'nor.
"'Don't put no faith in maps says the Colonel; 'fact is, I'm in the map-making line myself. Many's the little bit if Africa I've helped to make red,' he says.
"'Well,' says the Gov'nor, thinking of his six machine guns at the foot of the hill and cursing hisself for not having brought a war correspondent along with him to describe his glorious victory in the morning. 'Well,' he says, 'the top of this hill will be red enough if you ain't gone by sun-up.'
"'I'll think about it.' says the Colonel.
"'You'd better,' says the Gov'nor. 'Good afternoon.'
"'Won't you have a drink before you go,' says the chief. So they had a whisky-and-soda, and as they drunk each other's health each says to hisself, 'To-morrow morning I'll cook your goose, my boy.' What station's this?"
A HALT FOR FUEL
It isn't a station, but a fuel halt. The fuel used on the Mashonaland Railway is wood. At every few miles along the line the train passes great stacks of logs placed ready for on-loading and now and again a little saw-mill buzzing away merrily in the forest. Timber is very plentiful in the Portuguese territory, and this alone makes the railway workable. One strange feature of the line is that nowhere—as far as I could see—are wood and water loaded together.
We start off again with that jerk, inseparably associated with African railways. It is getting towards evening, and the aspect of the country has already undergoing a change. The smooth, wide grassy plain has given place to more uneven ground from which rise high tree-covered so many exaggerated ant-hills.
Through the valleys and creeping along the lowland a miasma sluggishly laves the base of the hills and covers the swamp ground till the kopjes* are Alps above the clouds, and one can almost picture the slumbering village ten thousand feet below.
[Kopje (Afrikaans, literally "little head")—a small hill rising up from the African veldt. ]
Nondescript the elder is not poetical; he eyes the mist and shivers, and resorts once more to the cognac.
"I got caught in a mist like that one night, and had to sleep in it. It was round in the Zoutpans district in the Transvaal, and was in 1881, long before the Transvaal was worth fighting about, and I was in the Kimberley Hospital for five months. Well, about the Portygese raid. That night there was happiness and revelry in the dagoes' camp while we sat dark and silent with a double allowance of whisky, just like the old Saxons and Normans at the battle of Hastings.
"Next morning before daybreak we had the 7-pounder in position and all the men with ammunition to hand waiting for the Gov'nor's army to eat us up.
FEARFUL ODDS
"Up came the army—skinny little men with yellow faces that hadn't been shaved for a month—on they came, having first tried their machine guns to see if they would go off. I expect the Gov'nor made a speech—'On top of the hill, my children, there are seventeen desperate raiders. In spite of our overwhelming odds we will attack them.'
"So up they came, firing wildly and charging the front of the kopje just as though they were under an English general. Well, somehow, they stopped when they was halfway up, and after waiting a little while to see if we really meant it, or if it was all by way of a joke, they went back again; leaving all their nice new machine-guns at the bottom of the hill—we've got one in Buluwayo to this day. After that we had a little peace, although the war was carried on down Beira way, where the Portygese man- o'-war fired three shots at an English ship, but gave up after the third shot because the shock of the gun going off broke the captain's looking-glass. Then the Magicienne came round from Simonstown and wanted to know what all the trouble was about, and the Portygese skipper looked up the Magicienne in the Navy List, and finding she was a second- class cruiser with six guns realised the horrors of war, and said he only fired for a lark. Then a commission sat on the boundary line and gave out that Massi-Kassi was Portuguese territory, and they're welcome to it, for of all the fever-stricken cribs I've ever been in the Macequece district takes the bun."
I have taken down my fellow-traveller's narrative almost as he gave it. There are, I find on inquiry, many inaccuracies in it, but the main facts are as he gave them.
Living among the people who helped to make history in these parts, one learns to appreciate the labours of the many Judsons for the English.
AT MANDEGES
The train is now rushing through the lowlands, and the white, sticky, clinging mists swirl and sway on either side. A pale moon stares wanly down; the plumed Queenslanders in the truck ahead are singing appropriately enough—for we are passing through the fly-belt—The Place Where The Old Horse Died and the German lady, under the encouraging influence of Portuguese admiration, has recovered her volubility. The train jars into a siding which may be found marked on any respectable map of the world as "Mandeges."
