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He went through the rest of the action, and returned with the party, but must now retire for a week or so to Intombi Camp, for the Röntgen rays to discover the ball in his leg. It is thought to be a buckshot, or, rather, the steel ball of a bicycle bearing, fired from a sporting gun. General Hunter found a letter in the gun-pit.
The natives, I should explain, named this particular gun "Intombi", which means a young girl, because it was so much slimmer and more graceful than other guns. "Is it clean?" I asked. "Never was she cleaner since she was born out of the fire, baas.
So the 53rd Battery remained in action, doing splendid service by shelling the Boers on Intombi Spruit and beating back all attempts of Boer supports to scale the height that way.
Most of these buildings at some time or other felt the force of the Boer shells, and the native minister's house by the side of the Wesleyan church was shattered. He, poor fellow, lost both wife and child during the siege, and himself was laid low by enteric fever. =Terrible Scenes at Intombi Hospital.= But let us return to Intombi. Slowly the average number of cases was increasing.
The milk question was the most serious of the day. I saw a herd of thirty-five cows which had only yielded sixteen pints at milking time. It is now debated whether we shall not have to feed the cows and starve the horses; or kill the thinnest horses and stew them down into broth for the others. The reports about the condition of Intombi Camp were particularly horrible to-day.
Enfeebled by work and want, the chaplains struggled from bed to bed, until often they were too weak to finish their task. Their only relief was to get an occasional run into Ladysmith, and to that they looked forward as a haven of rest. What mattered if shells did fly about! they had an occasional stray bullet at Intombi too and shells, much as they were dreaded, were better than enteric.
"Well, well," sighed the old gravedigger, "I never thought I should live to bury a man without a head." To-day, for the first time, we heard that Lord Roberts had lost his only son at Colenso. The whole camp was sad about it. The scandal over the robbery of the sick by the civilians at Intombi has grown so serious that at last General Hunter is sending out Colonel Stoneman to investigate.
It was during one of these occasional breaks that the four Church of England chaplains were having lunch at the Ladysmith Hotel, when a shell burst right in the hotel itself. They were covered with dust, but that was all. Not so easily, however, did they escape disease. One after the other at Intombi failed. Mr. Hordern was down with dysentery for between five and six weeks, Mr.
Meanwhile the town was becoming full of enteric cases, for Intombi camp had no further accommodation, and only the most serious cases could be sent there. The churches were then, as already intimated, utilised as hospitals, and it was in them that the chaplains left in Ladysmith and with the soldiers performed their ministry of love.
We have allowed you to have a camp at Intombi Spruit for your wounded, and yet we see red cross flags flying in the town, and we have heard that in the Church there is a magazine of ammunition protected by the red cross flag.
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