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To the westward within the ring of trenches and about a mile and a half from the town, was the Women's Laager, visited not seldom by the enemy's shell-fire, in spite of the Red-Cross Flag. Fever and rheumatism, pneumonia and diphtheria stalked among the dwellers in these tainted burrows, claiming their human toll.
We may trace it clearly in the romances of Arthur and Charlemagne and of the "Cid;" in the "Red-Cross Knight" of Tasso and Spenser; in the old ballads which paint so vividly the hero of chivalry, ever ready to draw his sword for his faith and his lady-love and in the cause of the feeble and the oppressed.
That red-cross flag was taken as a sign that the farmstead had been occupied as a hospital, and we respected it accordingly, but, as on other occasions in this curiously conducted campaign, the Boers, who stretch the Geneva Convention for all it is worth in their own favour, made it cover something else.
It is enough; let me now return whence I came; let me be gathered to my fathers and be at rest!? I should be loth to think that, if the enemy, in recognizable shape, came roaring upon us, we would not, like the red-cross knight, stagger, heavy sword in nerveless arm, to meet him; but, in the feebleness of foiled effort, it wants yet more faith to rise and partake of the food that shall bring back more effort, more travail, more weariness.
That they expected a shelling was evident, for the engineers were at work excavating pits and burrows, and the infantry were filling sacks with earth, while in the Château itself preparations were in progress for the fighting of fire. The white flag with the red-cross centre hung limp and drenched over the stables and barns. In the corn-field beyond, long trenches were being dug for the dead.
The elder Red-Cross knight was a tall, good-looking lad of sixteen, the age when a boy wears painfully high collars, shaves surreptitiously and unnecessarily with his pen-knife, talks to his juniors about the tobacco he smokes in a week, and cherishes an undying passion for a maiden older than himself.
They all wore red crosses on their sleeves, and put up a red-cross flag over the houses where they were taking care of the sick and wounded, and then no one on either side fired upon them. An Act of Parliament has given the right to vote, at the election of the House of Commons, to much poorer men than used to have it.
Once we halted at a little field hospital a dozen tents and waggons with enormous red-cross flags, tucked away in a deep hollow. We passed through Pieters without a check at the same toilsome plod and on to Nelthorpe. Here we began to approach the Dutch lines of investment round Ladysmith, and the advance of half an hour brought us to a very strong picket, where we were ordered to halt and rest.
"I know well whom ye desire most to see," said the lady. "Ye would meet with the Red Knight who bears the red-cross shield." "Ah! lady, I pray you tell me where I may find him," cried Sir Percivale. "With a good will," said the damsel; "if ye will but promise me your service when I shall ask for it, I will lead you to the knight, for I met him of late in the forest."
Through the forlorn, dust-covered vineyards they drove to San Guiseppe, where a church roof had fallen in and killed one hundred and forty people, maiming many more. The Red-Cross tents were pitched in the streets and the whole town was one vast hospital.
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