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Updated: May 24, 2025
Thought you were still far away in the misty Orient, doing the grand among the little brown Japs, while here you are in flannel and canvas as though you were a major-general in the regular army. What does it mean? Are you one of us? Have you too become a man of war, a fire-eater, a target for Mausers? Have you enlisted under the banner of the screaming eagle?"
Six miles southeast of Ghent, we ran into a regiment of Belgian infantry moving back from the direction of Brussels, and farther on a squad of cavalry and some more cavalry outposts; then two companies of bicycle patrol, the men with their heads bent over the handlebars, Mausers slung over their shoulders, pedaling heavily through the mud and slush of a cold September storm.
At 7.30 A. M. General Young gave the command to the men at the Hotchkiss guns to open fire. That command was the signal for a fight that for stubbornness has seldom been equalled. The instant the Hotchkiss guns were fired, from the hillside commanding the road came volley after volley from the Mausers of the Spaniards.
Before I was off my valise, the reports of Mausers rang around the camp from every side; these, mingled with the smack of the bullets as they hit the ground and stripped the "zipzip" of the leaden hail through the tents, and the curses and groans of men who were hit as they lay or stumbled about trying to get out, made a hellish din.
For Boer marksmen with Mausers and pompoms, a wrecked railroad train at thirteen hundred yards was as easy a bull's-eye as the hands of the first baseman to the pitcher, and while the engine butted and snorted and the men with their bare bands tore at the massive beams of the freight-car, the bullets and shells beat about them.
The commandos, meanwhile, were reorganised; the buried Mausers and ammunition were once more resurrected, and soon it became clear that the Orange Free State was far from conquered. The fall of Pretoria, indeed, was but a sham victory for the enemy.
We set off, unarmed, as we had sent our Mausers back to the Transvaal some time before, and mounted on a pair of nags that were plainly unfit to make the journey. Long before we reached Frankfort, in fact, my companion's horse gave in. We rode to a farmer's house near the road to try and find another mount. A boy of thirteen was the only male person on the farm. Yes, he had a pony.
He scented the Relief before the besiegers, undertook to scout for Young Eybel in the direction of Diamond Town, and ingeniously warned Colonel Cullings of a Boer plan for cutting off the Flying Column on the scorching western plains, which resulted in the capture of two waggon-loads of burghers, their rations, ammunition, and Mausers a most satisfying haul.
The excitement was tremendous; we were riding slap into what looked like a hornets' nest. There were kopjes flanking us now on both sides; I wished that I hadn't come. I expected every moment to hear the rattle of Mausers. Someone's horse kicked a tin can, and we ducked our heads like one man.
"But, MacNair told you I did, and that I had timed accurately my trip to the Southward? What else did he tell you?" "He told me," answered Chloe, "that had you not anticipated the attack you would not have armed my Indians with Mausers. He said that my Indians were armed to kill men, not animals." She paused and looked directly into his eyes. "Mr. Lapierre, where did those rifles come from?"
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