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Denham and I went out early next day with a small party and an empty wagon to go over the ground between our laager and the Boer lines, following the route taken with the captured wagons, to make sure that no wounded and helpless men were left on the veldt, and to collect such rifles and ammunition as had been left. A sharp lookout was kept against surprise; but there was no need.
A few Boer scouts were seen hurrying with the news of his coming to the head laager. By next morning they were there in considerable numbers, and began an attack upon a crest held by the Seaforths. Macdonald threw two companies of the Black Watch and two of the Highland Light Infantry into the fight.
They do not seem to understand the first principles of the laws of sanitation, and had this season been a wet, instead of a peculiarly dry one, I venture to assert that typhoid fever would have wrought far more havoc amongst them than our rifles. I saw no literature in laager except Bibles. I witnessed no sports of any kind, and the only sport I heard them talk about was horse-racing.
As he seemed well disposed toward me, I did not annoy him by continuing the discussion, and he went on to inform me that he was the General's Adjutant, and had been away on business, therefore had only just heard that I was in the laager, and he had come at once to see if he could be of any service.
No matter how secure he may fancy himself from attack, no matter if there is not a foe within fifty miles of him, the Boer commander always pitches his laager in a place of safety between two parallel lines of hills, so that no attack can be made upon him, either front or rear, without giving him an immense advantage over the attacking force, even if the enemy is ten times as strong in numbers.
As they did so, with an awful roar of "Bulala Amaboona" "Slay the Boers," the entire line, numbering nearly a thousand men, bounded forward like a buck startled from its form, and rushed down upon the little laager.
To the very end they were shouted in deaf ears. What of that letter sent from the Resident Commissioner's office at Gueldersdorp, that little frontier hamlet on the north-east corner of British Baraland, September 4, 1899, little more than a month before the war broke out, the war that was to leave Britain and her Colonies bleeding at every vein? The Boers were in laager over the Border.
Should the exhortation not have the desired effect, and the offender continue to stir up strife in laager, as a lame mule stirs up mud in midstream, then the commandant sends a guard of young men to gather in the unruly one. He is captured with as little ceremony as a nigger captures a hog in the midst of his mealy patch.
Ralph looked at them and was thankful that it was not we white people who lay thus, as it might well have been. Then, just as he was turning towards the laager, he thought that he saw something move in a tussock of thick grass, and rode towards it.
To this they agreed, so I indited the following letter, couched in terms which the secretary might peruse: "December 2, 1899. "I am at the laager. General Snyman will not give me a pass unless Colonel Baden-Powell will exchange me for a Mr. Petrus Viljoen. I am sure this is impossible, so I do not ask him formally.
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