Mafikeng (South Africa) -- History -- Siege, 1899-1900 -- Personal narratives, British
off the honours, replying, as it were, by a flank movement to the
frontal attack of his superior adversary.
The farmer from the Orange Free State talked much to me, giving me,
towards the end of the voyage, an invitation to his home. It was a
visit in which I should have found much pleasure, since the splendour
of his years, his gentleness and nobility of character were
attractive. It seemed to me that among all sorts and conditions of men
this one was indeed, a man, and I do most sincerely hope that the end
of the war may find him still living and enjoying his farm in his
usual prosperity. He was so set against the war, and dreaded the
consequences of hostile invasion into the Orange Free State, insomuch
that he realised, if some immunity were not guaranteed, the ruin and
desolation which would spread over the land. In August as we left
England there was nothing known about the future action of the Orange
Free State. The question was one of debate, altogether confused,
almost intangible, and this man, knowing Steyn as he knew Kruger, was
convinced that the Orange Free State would alienate itself from the
Transvaal difficulty. But who can tell? We look to the sea for our
answer, and it throws back to us only the echoes of the sighing waves,
the pulsing throbs of the screws pounding the green masses of water in
an effort to reach the Cape. Nevertheless, I am inclined to believe
that there will be war. I hope that there may be, since it is to be my
field of labour.
The journey nears its end, and the weather breaks, for a few hours
into grey cold; while the sea, where it laps the bay at Cape Town,
darkening into thin ridges of foam, tumbling and tossing amid the
eddies of the bleak water, looks menacing. A fog lies off the land,
dense and weighty, impeding the navigation and impressing no little
conception of the perils of the deep upon the minds of timorous
passengers, and folding the surface of the ocean in its expanse. The
weather threatens to be wild. All day the sea fog broke and mingled,
merging, as the day wore on, into one conglomerate mass of cloud,
impenetrable to the mariner and screening the signs of the sea from
those who were upon land. Here and there, low down upon the horizon,
the storm fiend from the shore had broken into the garland of mist
which hung so drearily upon sea as upon moor, detaching parcels of
cloud from the main and toying with them with the coy and heartless
grace of Zephyr! But as yet the wind only came in minor lapses, and
was followed by intervals in which there was no movement in the fog.
From the waste of sea came a ceaseless, muffled roar which seemed
loudest and most full of mystery when carried upon the wings of the
wind. Then these echoes of mighty waters, tumbling upon the rocks off
the land, seemed ominous and charged with deadly peril, and, as the
fog belts lifted or dispersed before the gusts of the wind, the sea
would look as though swept with growing anger, heaving in tremulous
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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