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Lyttelton's Brigade had stormed the hill at two, and nothing more was done during the long evening, while officers chafed and soldiers swore, and the busy Boers worked furiously to bring up their guns and to bar the path which we must take. General Buller remarked a day or two later that the way was not quite so easy as it had been. One might have deduced the fact without the aid of a balloon.
Can you do with me, dear Mrs. Buller?" "Pray come," said Aunt Theresa warmly, with an amiable disregard of two engagements and some arrears of domestic business. I was in the drawing-room next day when Mrs. O'Connor arrived. "May I come in, dear Mrs. Buller?" she said, "I won't stay two minutes; but I must hear about the Duchess. Now, are you busy?"
How far Sir George White can co-operate with Sir Redvers Buller depends partly upon the mobility of his force. His horses after three months in Ladysmith can hardly be in much condition, even supposing that they have not already begun to be used as food for the troops.
I understand it all now." "Yes, but avoid wrestling with him; he is good at the cross-buttock, I hear. May I be your second?" "Certainly you may, if you like; Robarts is the other, and thank you for wishing it, Buller." Beyond the fields where cricket was played there was a little wood, and in this wood a circular hollow, like a pond, only there was no water in it.
But though he spoke like this to quiet Edwards, Saurin did not care whether Buller got into serious trouble or not. He was a friend of Crawley's, had seconded him in the fight, and given him advice which contributed as much as anything else to Saurin's defeat.
Nobody here had credited the Boers with a determination to attack, unless chance should give them overwhelming superiority in all respects, and for that chance they have waited so supinely that it seemed probable the game of long bowls with heavy artillery, varied by "sniping" from behind rocks a mile off, would continue to be played day after day in the hope of starving us into subjection, before Sir Redvers Buller could bring up his relieving force.
No one but "the Bull" could have reported him; and, "the Bull" after all, was an old Fernhurstian. He knew the school customs, and unless his memory was decaying, must have remembered the wild way in which boys boast. He must have known it; but "for the sake of Fernhurst," Buller would say, "this leprosy has to be rooted out."
If the Boers are raising the siege the forces of Buller and White will in a few days be united, and need only good leading to force the passes and invade either the Free State or the Transvaal. If the Boers are determined to hold on to Ladysmith, they cannot effectively check the advance of Lord Roberts. While the war is going on the Nation ought to set its military forces in order.
Buller administers what the vulgar call “a hair of the dog that bit us,” as the most sovereign remedy for all our evils. The country is like a sick man with a whitlow, for the cure of which his physician prescribes a slight, but clearly necessary, operation. Another medical Dr. Buller is, however, standing by.
If before the arrival of Sir Redvers Buller and his men the Boers could destroy a considerable fraction of the British forces now in South Africa, their chance of prolonging the struggle would be greatly improved. These forces were in two groups.
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