Читать книгу The Complete Oom Schalk Lourens Stories - Herman Charles Bosman - Страница 10

It was after the English had taken Pretoria that I first met Karel Flysman, Oom Schalk Lourens said.

Karel was about twenty-five. He was a very tall, well-built young man with a red face and curly hair. He was good-looking, and while I was satisfied with what the good Lord had done for me, yet I felt sometimes that if only He had given me a body like what Karel Flysman had got, I would go to church oftener and put more in the collection plate.

When the big commandos broke up, we separated into small companies, so that the English would not be able to catch all the Republican forces at the same time. If we were few and scattered the English would have to look harder to find us in the dongas and bushes and rante. And the English, at the beginning, moved slowly. When their scouts saw us making coffee under the trees by the side of the spruit, where it was cool and pleasant, they turned back to the main army and told their general about us. The general would look through his field-glasses and nod his head a few times.

“Yes,” he would say, “that is the enemy. I can see them under those trees. There’s that man with the long beard eating out of a pot with his hands. Why doesn’t he use a knife and fork? I don’t think he can be a gentleman. Bring out the maps and we’ll attack them.”

Then the general and a few of his kommandants would get together and work it all out.

“This cross I put here will be those trees,” the general would say. “This crooked line I am drawing here is the spruit, and this circle will stand for the pot that that man is eating out of with his fingers … No, that’s no good, now. They’ve moved the pot. Won­derful how crafty these Boers are.”

Anyway, they would work out the plans of our position for half an hour, and at the end of that time they would find out that they had got it all wrong. Because they had been using a map of the Rus­tenburg District, and actually they were halfway into the Marico. So by the time they had everything ready to attack us, we had already moved off and were making coffee under some other trees.

How do I know all these things? Well, I went right through the Boer War, and I was only once caught. And that was when our kommandant, Apie Terblanche, led us through the Bushveld by following some maps that he had captured from the British. But Apie Terblanche never was much use. He couldn’t even hang a Hottentot properly.

As I was saying, Karel Flysman first joined up with our commando when we were trekking through the Bushveld north of the railway line from Mafeking to Bulawayo. It seemed that he had got separated from his commando and that he had been wandering about through the bush for some days before he came across us. He was mounted on a big black horse and, as he rode well, even for a Boer, he was certainly the finest-looking burgher I had seen for a long time.

One afternoon, when we had been in the saddle since before sunrise, and had also been riding hard the day before, we off-saddled at the foot of a koppie, where the bush was high and thick. We were very tired. A British column had come across us near the Molopo River. The meeting was a surprise for the British as well as for us. We fought for about an hour, but the fire was so heavy that we had to retreat, leaving behind us close on a dozen men, including the veldkornet. Karel Flysman displayed great promptitude and decision. As soon as the first shot was fired he jumped off his horse and threw down his rifle; he crawled away from the enemy on his hands and knees. He crawled very quickly too. An hour later, when we had ourselves given up resisting the English, we came across him in some long grass about a mile away from where the fighting had been. He was still crawling.

Karel Flysman’s horse had remained with the rest of the horses, and it was just by good luck that Karel was able to get into the saddle and take to flight with us before the English got too close. We were pursued for a considerable distance. It didn’t seem as though we would ever be able to shake off the enemy. I suppose that the reason they followed us so well was because that column could not have been in the charge of a general; their leader must have been only a captain or a kommandant, who probably did not understand how to use a map.

It was towards the afternoon that we discovered that the Eng­lish were no longer hanging on to our rear. When we dismounted in the thick bush at the foot of the koppie, it was all we could do to unsaddle our horses. Then we lay down on the grass and stretched out our limbs and turned round to get comfortable, but we were so fatigued that it was a long time before we could get into restful positions.

Even then we couldn’t get to sleep. The kommandant called us together and selected a number of burghers who were to form a committee to try Karel Flysman for running away. There wasn’t much to be said about it. Karel Flysman was young, but at the same time he was old enough to know better. An ordinary burgher has got no right to run away from a fight at the head of the commando. It was the general’s place to run away first. As a member of this committee I was at pains to point all this out to the prisoner.

We were seated in a circle on the grass. Karel Flysman stood in the centre. He was bare-headed. His Mauser and bandolier had been taken away from him. His trousers were muddy and broken at the knees from the way in which he had crawled that long distance through the grass. There was also mud on his face. But in spite of all that, there was a fine, manly look about him, and I am sure that others besides myself felt sorry that Karel Flysman should be so much of a coward.

We were sorry for him, in a way. We were also tired, so that we didn’t feel like getting up and doing any more shooting. Accor­dingly we decided that if the kommandant warned him about it we would give him one more chance.

“You have heard what your fellow burghers have decided about you,” the kommandant said. “Let this be a lesson to you. A burgher of the Republic who runs away quickly may rise to be kommandant. But a burgher of the Republic must also know that there is a time to fight. And it is better to be shot by the English than by your own people, even though,” the kommandant added, “the English can’t shoot straight.”

So we gave Karel Flysman back his rifle and bandolier, and we went to sleep. We didn’t even trouble to put out guards round the camp. It would not have been any use putting out pickets, for they would have been sure to fall asleep, and if the English did come during the night they would know of our whereabouts by falling over our pickets.

As it happened, that night the English came.

The first thing I knew about it was when a man put his foot on my face. He put it on heavily, too, and by the feel of it I could tell that his veldskoens were made of unusually hard ox-hide. In those days, through always being on the alert for the enemy, I was a light sleeper, and that man’s boot on my face woke me up without any difficulty. In the darkness I swore at him and he cursed back at me, saying something about the English. So we carried on for a few moments; he spoke about the English; I spoke about my face.

Then I heard the kommandant’s voice, shouting out orders for us to stand to arms. I got my rifle and found my way to a sloot where our men were gathering for the fight. Up to that moment it had been too dark for me to distinguish anything that was more than a few feet away from me. But just then the clouds drifted away, and the moon shone down on us. It happened so quickly that for a brief while I was almost afraid. Everything that had been black before suddenly stood out pale and ghostly. The trees became silver with dark shadows in them, and it was amongst these shadows that we strove to see the English. Wherever a branch rustled in the wind or a twig moved, we thought we could see soldiers. Then somebody fired a shot. At once the firing be­came general.

I had been in many fights before, so that there was nothing new to me in the rattle of Mausers and Lee-Metfords, and in the red spurts of flame that suddenly broke out all round us. We could see little of the English. That meant that they could see even less of us. All we had to aim at were those spurts of flame. We realised quickly that it was only an advance party of the English that we had up against us; it was all rifle fire; the artillery would be coming along behind the main body. What we had to do was to go on shooting a little longer and then slip away before the rest of the English came. Near me a man shouted that he was hit. Many more were hit that night.

I bent down to put another cartridge-clip into my magazine, when I noticed a man lying flat in the sloot, with his arms about his head. His gun lay on the grass in front of him. By his dress and the size of his body I knew it was Karel Flysman. I didn’t know whether it was a bullet or cowardice that had brought him down in that way. Therefore, to find out, I trod on his face. He shouted out something about the English, whereupon (as he used the same words), I was satisfied that he was the man who had awakened me with his boot before the fight started. I put some more of my weight on to the foot that was on his face.

“Don’t do that. Oh, don’t,” Karel Flysman shouted. “I am dying. Oh, I am sure I am dying. The English …”

I stooped down and examined him. He was unwounded. All that was wrong with him was his spirit.

“God,” I said, “why can’t you try to be a man, Karel? If you’ve got to be shot nothing can stop the bullet, whether you are afraid or whether you’re not. To see the way you’re lying down there anybody would think that you are at least the kommandant-general.”

He blurted out a lot of things, but he spoke so rapidly and his lips trembled so much that I couldn’t understand much of what he said. And I didn’t want to understand him, either. I kicked him in the ribs and told him to take his rifle and fight, or I would shoot him as he lay. But of course all that was of no use. He was actually so afraid of the enemy that even if he knew for sure that I was going to shoot him he would just have lain down where he was and have waited for the bullet.

In the meantime the fire of the enemy had grown steadier, so that we knew that at any moment we could expect the order to retreat.

“In a few minutes you can get back to your old game of running,” I shouted to Karel Flysman, but I don’t think he heard much of what I said, on account of the continuous rattle of the rifles.

But he must have heard the word ‘running.’

“I can’t,” he cried. “My legs are too weak. I am dying.”

He went on like that some more. He also mentioned a girl’s name. He repeated it several times. I think the name was Fran­cina. He shouted out the name and cried out that he didn’t want to die. Then a whistle blew, and shortly afterwards we got the order to prepare for the retreat.

I did my best to help Karel out of the sloot. The Englishmen would have laughed if they could have seen that struggle in the moonlight. But the affair didn’t last too long. Karel suddenly collapsed back into the sloot and lay still. That time it was a bullet. Karel Flysman was dead.

Often after I have thought of Karel Flysman and of the way he died. I have also thought of that girl he spoke about. Perhaps she thinks of her lover as a hero who laid down his life for his country. And perhaps it is as well that she should think that.