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Updated: May 12, 2025
If we chose to turn them loose upon the wide veldt, then it was our fault more than theirs that they were forced into the ranks of the enemy. To their credit be it said that even under such pressure many of them were true to their oath. But if their guilt is indeed no greater than our own, then how are we justified in burning down their houses?
But Leonora would not let him; she had heard awful stories of the extravagance of the hussar regiment in war-time how they left hundred-bottle cases of champagne, at five guineas a bottle, on the veldt and so on. Besides, she preferred to see how Edward was spending his five hundred a year. I don't mean to say that Edward had any grievance in that.
I have rigged up a shelter from the sun with my blanket, a rock, and a thorn-bush; thirteen thousand flies are, unfortunately, staying with me, and are awfully attentive.... I am looking out on the yellow veldt and the blue sky; the veldt with its grey hazy clumps of thorn-bush is shimmering in the heat, and its vast expanse is only broken by the gleaming white sand of the river-bed and the green reeds and bushes which fringe its banks."
Without any order, we had all instinctively vacated the right half of our trench and crowded into the left half, which by great good luck could not be enfiladed from any point on the south side of the river, nor indeed by rifle-fire from anywhere, as, owing to the ground, its prolongation on the right was up above ground into the open air, and to the left did not touch ground for some 3,000 yards away on the veldt on the north bank.
Thirty miles brought us to the south-western frontier of the Transvaal, from whence we travelled on, through the most dreary, flat, uninteresting, barren, treeless plain, for two or three days more, sleeping every night on the veldt, until we reached Klerksdorp, about 120 miles from Vryburg.
As soon as there was sufficient light we rose, and, leaving Tota still asleep, crept cautiously in the direction in which the horse had vanished. When we had gone fifty yards or so, we made out its remains lying on the veldt, and caught sight of two great cat-like forms slinking away in the grey light.
"The Doppies can't be coming on, or they'd have been seen before now." Almost as he spoke the two officers strode to one end of the rampart and began to inspect the veldt again. The next minute they were making for the opposite side of the great building, to examine the country in that direction; and here they stood for a long time. "Oh dear!" groaned Denham at last.
If your Australians, who are of British blood, came here to fight for your Motherland, believing that her cause was a just and a holy one, and that she needed your aid, you did right, for a son will help his mother, if he be a son worth having; but if the Australians came here merely for the sake of adventure, merely for sport, as men come in time of peace to shoot buck on the veldt, then woe to that land, for though God may make no sign to-day nor to-morrow, yet, in His own time, He will surely wring from Australia a full recompense in sweat and blood and tears; for whether we be right or wrong, our God knows that we are giving our lives freely for what we in our hearts believe to be a holy cause."
To advance upon your enemy singing about his lack of cleanliness and method went out of fashion altogether! The dirty retrogressive Boer vanished from our scheme of illusion. All through my middle Cambridge period, the guns boomed and the rifles crackled away there on the veldt, and the horsemen rode and the tale of accidents and blundering went on.
Later, as they rode together across the barren veldt, Burke told her a little of his finding of Guy at Brennerstadt. He did not dwell upon any details, but by much that he left unsaid Sylvia gathered that the task had not been easy. "He knows about me?" she ventured presently, with hesitation. "Yes," Burke said. "Was he surprised?" she asked. "No. He knew long ago." She asked no more.
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