Chapter 6 - Page 2

who had preferred Pretoria Gaol to
the favours of Kruger, as his majors. The troopers were on fire at the
news that a cartel had arrived in Ladysmith the night before,
purporting to come from the Johannesburg Boers and Hollanders, asking
what uniform the Light Horse wore, as they were anxious to meet them
in battle. These men were fellow townsmen and knew each other well.
They need not have troubled about the uniform, for before evening the
Light Horse were near enough for them to know their faces.

It was about eight o'clock on a bright summer morning that the small
force came in contact with a few scattered Boer outposts, who retired,
firing, before the advance of the Imperial Light Horse. As they fell
back the green and white tents of the invaders came into view upon the
russet-coloured hillside of Elandslaagte. Down at the red brick
railway station the Boers could be seen swarming out of the buildings
in which they had spent the night. The little Natal guns, firing with
obsolete black powder, threw a few shells into the station, one of
which, it is said, penetrated a Boer ambulance which could not be seen
by the gunners. The accident was to be regretted, but as no patients
could have been in the ambulance the mischance was not a serious one.

But the busy, smoky little seven-pounder guns were soon to meet their
master. Away up on the distant hillside, a long thousand yards beyond
their own furthest range, there was a sudden bright flash. No smoke,
only the throb of flame, and then the long sibilant scream of the
shell, and the thud as it buried itself in the ground under a limber.
Such judgment of range would have delighted the most martinet of
inspectors at Okehampton. Bang came another, and another, and
another, right into the heart of the battery. The six little guns lay
back at their extremest angle, and all barked together in impotent
fury. Another shell pitched over them, and the officer in command
lowered his field-glass in despair as he saw his own shells bursting
far short upon the hillside. Jameson's defeat does not seem to have
been due to any defect in his artillery. French, peering and
pondering, soon came to the conclusion that there were too many Boers
for him, and that if those fifteen-pounders desired target practice
they should find some other mark than the Natal Field Artillery. A few
curt orders, and his whole force was making its way to the rear.
There, out of range of those perilous guns, they halted, the telegraph
wire was cut, a telephone attachment was made, and French whispered
his troubles into the sympathetic ear of Ladysmith. He did not
whisper in vain. What he had to say was that where he had expected a
few hundred riflemen he found something like two thousand, and that