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Updated: June 24, 2025
As soon as the soldiers were out of hearing, the gallant commander and his companion sprang from their concealment, attacked the five men; two of them fled; the other three they succeeded in making prisoners and dragged them off to the boat with the mail-bags, which they also secured, and then rowed off in triumph to the Arrogant.
When the mail-bags were ready, we received a visit from the black health-officer, and we reflected severely on the exceeding 'cheek' of inspecting, as a rule, new comers from old England at this yellow Home of Pestilence. But in the healthy time of the year we rarely see the listless, emaciated whites with skins stained by unoxygenised carbon, of whom travellers tell.
And we would sprawl and kick, too, and ward off ends and corners of mail-bags that came lumbering over us and about us; and as the dust rose from the tumult, we would all sneeze in chorus, and the majority of us would grumble, and probably say some hasty thing, like: "Take your elbow out of my ribs! can't you quit crowding?"
As she passed near one of the bags, I saw the lady, whom I was closely watching, flirt her cloak, as though by accident, across the mouth of one of the mail-bags, and at the same instant her hand stole down and dropped a letter into the bag. As she did so, the clerk, who had finished reading the other letter, bowed, and said:
"Jones travelling with cattle for Wave Will," reads the Department; and that gossiping friendly wire reporting Jones as "just leaving the Powell," the letter lies in the Fizzer's loose-bag until he runs into Jones's mob; or a mail coming in for Jones, Victoria River, when this Jones is on the point of sailing for a trip south, his mail is delivered on shipboard; and as the Department goes on with its work, letters for east go west, and for west go south in mail-bags, loose-bags, travellers' pockets or per black boy each one direct to the bush-folk as a migrating bird to its destination.
This waiting for the latest mail-bags is worse than all. If we could have gone off in the midst of that last burst, we should have started triumphantly: but to lie here, two hours and more in the damp fog, neither staying at home nor going abroad, is letting one gradually down into the very depths of dulness and low spirits. A speck in the mist, at last! That's something.
Very thin cloth made by this process was a useful and somewhat durable article; but for any other purpose, it was valueless. The public and signal failure of the mail-bags, together with the imperfection of all his products except his thinnest cloth, suddenly and totally destroyed his rising business. Everything he possessed that was salable was sold at auction to pay his debts.
A row of scarlet vans was standing under a platform, into which mail-bags, apparently innumerable, were being shot. As each of these vans received its quota it rattled off to its particular railway station, at the rate which used, in the olden time, to be deemed the extreme limit of "haste, haste, post haste." The yard began to empty when eight o'clock struck.
This particular Rhenoster bridge was destroyed and rebuilt no less than three times up to the date of which I write, and the third time was only ten days previously, when Christian De Wet had also worked havoc among the mail-bags, the only cruel thing attributed to that commander, respected both by friends and foes.
"Yas," answered the man again, as he took the mail-bags which the colonel handed him. "This one," continued the rebel, pointing to a small canvas bag which one of his officers had just brought out of the house "this one contains my mail all official documents, to go to Richmond. Be careful of it. Don't let the Yankees get hold of you."
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