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In front of the house, or what remained of it, so arranged that the last of them at either end we made fast to the extremities of the stoep, was arranged an arc of wagons, placed as they are in a laager and protected underneath by earth thrown up in a mound and by boughs of the mimosa thorn.
The credit is largely due to Major Lean for his prompt initiative on discovering their laager, and to Major Taylor for his handling of the force during a very critical time. Above all, it was due to the dead leader, Le Gallais, who had infected every man under him with his own spirit of reckless daring.
The girl who had stood up in defence of three nuns against a threatening gang of rowdy Transvaalers, one day in the Recreation Ground, the girl who had passed as the Staff dismounted at the Hospital gate on the day of appropriation. The Mayor had had no chance of fulfilling his promise of an introduction. The Mayor's wife, with her two children, was an inmate of the Women's Laager.
But th' war expert has to subjoo his cravin' f'r blood. He says to himsilf 'Lave others seek th' luxuries iv life in camp, he says. 'F'r thim th' boat races acrost th' Tugela, th' romp over the kopje, an' th' game iv laager, laager who's got th' laager?" he says. 'I will stand be me counthry, he says, 'close, he says. 'If it falls, he says, 'it will fall on me, he says.
An underground dwelling had been dug for them in the garden before an abandoned soft-brick-and-corrugated-iron house, formerly inhabited by one of the head officials of the railway, a personage of Dutch extraction and Boer sympathies, at present sequestered beneath the yellow flag of the town gaol for their too incautious manifestation; while his wife and young family were inhabitants of the Women's Laager.
Celliers went on a commission to Zoutpansberg to spy out the land, and it was while he was away that so many families were cut off by Moselikatse, the remainder of them, with such of their women and children as were left alive, retreating to our laager.
He knows that his comrades and the women trust him, and he values the trust as dearly as British soldier ever did. No matter how tired he may be, no matter how famished, the Boer sentinel is never faithless to his orders. When the scouts are out the laager is fixed for the night not a very exhaustive proceeding, as the Boers do not go in for luxuries of any kind.
I went on, and for about a mile no sign whatever of the enemy, and I thought of the theory more than once put forward that we were all the time being besieged by a ridiculously small but extremely mobile force. It was not until I was well in between Bulwana and Lombard's Kop that I caught sight between the trees of a laager of miscellaneous tents on the lower slope of the latter.
"At noon the burghers returned to the laager. About an hour before sunset our scouts returned with the news that the English had reoccupied Lindley, and that it was but a small column without guns. When the burghers heard that the column was only 500 strong, and had no guns, they required no other inducements, but started immediately for Lindley.
The soldiers formed a square round the gun, charged it with guncotton, shouted 'Stand back! and the next moment our gun was crashing through the sky. It all happened in a moment. Then the enemy retired, followed by some burghers, who had by this time arrived from the laager at the back of the hill.
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