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Updated: June 10, 2025
Lastly, in a corner close beside the bed, I spied a long-barrelled firelock with bandoliers complete. "Martin, are you there? Are you safe?" "Indeed!" says I. "And, Damaris, I have found you treasure beyond price." "O Martin, is it Bartlemy's treasure the jewels?" "Better than that a thousand times. I have found you a real cooking-pot!" "O wonderful! Show me! Nay, let me see for myself.
As the sun got up I could see something of the host around me. I am no hand at guessing numbers, but I should put the fighting men I saw at not less than twenty thousand. Every man of them was on this side his prime, and all were armed with good rifles and bandoliers. There were none of your old roers and decrepit Enfields, which I had seen signs of in Kaffir kraals.
We could now fill our bandoliers, and requisition the necessary articles in clothing, boots, etc. But the enemy was not slow to follow us. We were just allowed sufficient time to take all we required, and then the columns came to remind us that we were strangers and intruders. As we have related our experiences in other chapters, we shall not here enter into details.
Ammunition was clipped and forced into the leather pouches of bandoliers, which equipment appeared neither to be meant for nor accustomed to such practical use. Forty-eight hours after the first warning, the last night came. A subdued murmur arose from the camp.
Then came the issue of equipment, this was rather sparse, all of it being of WWI vintage or earlier, khaki tunics with brass buttons, drainpipe trousers, second-hand boots and what seemed quite remarkable brown leather bandoliers for the 50 rounds of .303 ammunition with which we were never issued. Were we then to be cavalry?
Yonder the enemy go, bundling along a rough track not 500 yards away, half seen through whirling dust. The men fling themselves down, some tearing a handful of cartridges from their bandoliers to have handy, and settle their carbines on the rocks. Crack! goes the first shot, and at the sound, as at a signal, the covey of fleeing Boers shakes out and scatters over the veldt.
There was a shout of fury among the Boers as they found that their treacherous design had failed in success. "I will give you another five minutes," Chris shouted; "and if you don't do as I tell you we shall open fire on you." Before that time was up the Boers were seen to be taking off their bandoliers, and one by one they rose and came forward in a body without their rifles.
More still, he did, that very evening, and the gloom was redolent again of good smoke. Thereafter he slept as not for a long, long time. They spent the next day in fashioning new garments and sandals; in putting to rights the two rifles Stern had chosen from the basement of the State armory, and in making bandoliers to carry their supply of cartridges.
Lieutenant Maxwell Scott, of Abbotsford, kindred of the great Sir Walter, author of Waverley, one of the finest officers in our battalion, fell from the effects of the fumes. They succeeded in getting him out also. His life was dispaired of. The only thing the soldiers had to stave off the poisonous gas were their wet handkerchiefs or wet bandoliers where they happened to have them.
This resolution they duly carried into effect, observing the precaution to slip their loaded revolvers into their belts and to sling their loaded rifles and fully charged bandoliers over their shoulders, to guard against the possibility of accident, although they had thus far seen nothing to justify the slightest suspicion that either the king or his people meditated treachery.
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