FIRST ATTEMPTS AT DISCIPLINE IN CORPS—PREPARE TO START FOR THE FRONT—DIFFICULTY OF GETTING MEN ON BOARD SHIP—REVIEW AND SHAM FIGHT—FIRST FEATS OF ARMS—EMBARKATION—ARRIVE AT FORT ELIZABETH—ONWARD MARCH TOWARDS GRAHAM’S TOWN—FIRST ENCAMPMENT IN THE BUSH—MUTINY AND PUNISHMENT—FURTHER ADVANCE—PANIC AND FLIGHT.

To return to my men at the Cape;—Happy Jack and I, after many a good look at one another, were gradually nearing the point of trying conclusions as to which of the two really commanded the corps. On his part it was one perpetual scene of half-drunken, half-intentional defiance. He rolled about the streets in uniform, followed by besotted comrades, to gain, as he said, by their jolly appearance, fresh adherents. No one, he pretended, could look at their happy condition and refuse to join such companions. The fact is, he did bring in many recruits, and I hardly knew how to get on with or without him. Providence, however, decided in my favour. Colonel Ingleby, commandant of the town and castle, a fine old soldier, and extremely kind to me, sent a small detachment of artillerymen to keep order in the barracks. Happy Jack’s fate was sealed. A picket of regulars sent to scour the public-houses for absentees, brought Jack to barracks in a woful plight. He had had a frog’s march—that is to say, on hands, belly, and knees—almost from one end of the town to the other. Refusing to obey the picket, and march to barracks on his legs, he had been kindly allowed to come on all-fours, held up by the collar of his coat, for fear of stumbling, and the seat of his unmentionables. Poor fellow! he felt sorely his abject degradation in the eyes of his associates, male and female, and kept ever afterwards well in the background.

The day now approached for our starting to the front. Captain Hall, who commanded the man-of-war on the station, had prepared to take us all on board, but the difficulty was how to get the men there. Every one knew perfectly well, from their many loud boastings on the point, that they had not the least intention of going; and as no means existed in the town by which forcible coercion could be attempted on so large a body of men with a reasonable chance of success, it did look a very dubious question.

The matter, however, was finally arranged after this fashion, between Captain Hall, Colonel Ingleby, the police, and myself. We were to have a grand field-day, to end by a display of military prowess on the part of the men in a sham engagement, and thereby prove their fighting capacity against her Majesty’s sable foes. The general plan consisted in the police, and all the artillerymen Colonel Ingleby could spare, landing on the beach just outside the castle, under the protection of the guns of Captain Hall’s ship. They were then to proceed inland towards Wineberg, and, on arriving about two miles from the shore, were to be suddenly confronted by my corps, and driven back to the ship. The first part of the plan was carried out as intended. In the first place, Colonel Ingleby, in full uniform, attended by a sub-lieutenant, Dr B——, and two commissariat officers in regimentals, passed a review of the men, 167 rank and file. They looked very well in line, and knew enough drill to take open order for inspection; so that the first part of the programme gave every appearance of having a happy issue, by the way in which it was being carried out.

Colonel Ingleby, however, had the unfortunate idea to make the men a speech in praise of their gallant appearance. This was not in the order-book, so I scarcely knew what to say in reply. Happy Jack, however, was equal to the occasion. He stepped boldly out of the ranks and walked up to the Colonel, and said that as he was so pleased with their trim, he hoped he would, man-o’-war fashion, order a glass of grog all round. The good-tempered Colonel, rather taken aback, replied, “You had better ask Captain Lakeman for that.” “No, no,” said Jack; “I know better than to ask the skipper when the admiral is present, so please order the grog.” It was ordered. The Colonel drank to our success, I returned thanks, the men cheered, and then broke out with “We won’t go home till morning.”

In the course of half an hour passed in this agreeable manner, the men fell readily enough into the ranks, and proceeded in a rollicking, spirited manner towards the position assigned us in the forthcoming engagement. We had hardly taken up our post in the bend of the road that led to the Observatory, when the continued booming of Captain Hall’s guns told us the enemy were disembarking. Shortly afterwards they could be espied feeling their way through the brushwood that led up the valley. In approaching the cross-road that wound its way towards Wineberg they divided their forces. One party—the police—took the road; the other—the regulars—continued their way through the scrubby brushwood. They advanced but slowly, taking all due precautions, probing the ground right and left, with an advance and a rear guard. The police, on the contrary, came up the dusty road in a most disorderly, unhesitating manner—looking like a swarm of blue-bottles on a white, smoking, Cambridge sausage. This was setting such a bad example to my recruits that I determined to give them a profitable lesson; so, calling in the outposts, I prepared to meet them suddenly with the whole force at my disposal.

On they heedlessly came to the bend of the road, when they found themselves confronted by an impassable barrier of prickly cactus, that I had hastily strewn there. They evidently thought this a warning of approaching danger, for, hastily unslinging their carbines, they prepared for action. But I left them no time for this ceremonious proceeding. The order to fire was given, and these brave but misguided invaders received such a peppering discharge from both sides of the road that the error of their ways became pungently manifest; and, without the slightest demur, they wriggled their bent forms into the smallest possible shape, and bolted in the opposite direction. But my men were most anxious to prove their capacity for far harder fighting than the evanescent police force allowed them to display; so, with loud shouts and exulting halloos, they jumped up from behind the fence which had hitherto concealed them, and started off in pursuit of the scuttling foe.

Many a long itching grudge was feelingly rubbed off that day upon the heads of the police. Happy Jack was particularly conspicuous, as, with tucked-up sleeves, he laid the butt of his rifle (much to my dread of its breaking) upon the heads and shoulders of his natural enemies, in a manner quite uncalled for by the stricken.

But there is a turn in the tide of events which, taken at the flood, makes one at times feel somewhat giddy as it whirls us round. This dizzying ebb of fortune ran counter to Happy Jack, and threw him on his beam-ends in the most reckless fashion.

It happened that Sergeant Herridge of the police force, and in command of that party, seeing the discomfiture of his men, had had the discretion to lead them back to Cape Town, and was showing the way as fast as his portly person, under the sweltering heat of the sun and the battle combined, allowed him to do. Happy Jack espied the retreating chief, and took up the pursuit like Achilles after affrighted Hector, chevying him round and round his admiring followers. At length he reached the spent chieftain, and placing the muzzle of his firelock between the outspread coat-tails of the flying victim, blew a cartridge off at that part upon which people usually sit. The effect was startling. Hector cut a double-shuffle high up in the air like an exploding cracker, and while still wreathed in smoke, swung round his truncheon with Parthian address on the grinning face of Jack, whose head came to the ground—cracker number two.

Now was the time for the victorious sergeant to make off: the road was clear, and he had my good wishes that it should be kept so. But the foolish fellow, instead of running away, to live and fight another day, sat deliberately down in the dusty road and began bumping his hindquarters violently on the ground, to stamp out the fire the cartridge of Happy Jack had lit in his rear. This ludicrous display of stern-firing gave time for other men to come up; he was made prisoner, and Jack, recovering his senses, feelingly kicked the fire out of the singeing sergeant in double-quick time. Herridge was removed on board in a critical state, refusing in his disgraced condition to be taken to Cape Town; ultimately, upon recovery, he enlisted in my corps.

On the discomfiture of the police, the artillerymen in the valley began to retreat; but in this direction the pursuit was very slack. My men bent all their energies in scattering every vestige of civil authority; they evidently began to consider themselves as one with the soldiers—in fact, it was in recounting the mishaps that had that day befallen the police that we retired laughingly together, with those whom we were supposed to be repulsing with great vigour.

Finally, on arriving at the beach from whence the enemy had started, a still greater surprise awaited us; but this time (as if by just reprisal) it fell exclusively upon my own men, and that in a most bewildering manner.

Captain Hall had landed his marines and a detachment of blue-jackets, who, sans cÉrÉmonie, disarmed my men, as they arrived in batches of twos and threes, and placed them in files along the sea-shore. The climax had arrived; and to the astonishment, no doubt, of many beholders from the town, who had come to witness what they supposed was likely to be an exciting performance, I was quite equal to the task of stage-manager on this occasion. In a few words I explained to my future heroes that the time was come to go to the front and show to the Kaffirs what we were capable of doing. The black was pressing hard on the white man, who looked to us for help; the ship was ready to convey us; the cheers of the inhabitants of Cape Town were a token of what was expected; in fact, the time had arrived when the very humblest had a duty to perform.

Go we must; so I called for three cheers, and “Forward to the boats!” Some murmured that they had not wished friends “good-bye;” others talked of kits left behind; but they were too tired to resist physically, and without consultation they were unequal to combined action; so, nolens volens, we managed, one after another, to get them all aboard ship, excepting some twenty or so, who had come to grief in our late engagement with the police, and these I left behind. By the exertions of Captain Hall, who appeared to me a most painstaking, energetic officer, we soon got safely stowed away on board, and three days after landed at Port Elizabeth. Mr Durant Deare, a merchant of that town, kindly offered me quarters under his hospitable roof. The men were billeted in the town; and two days afterwards, with seven waggon-loads of ammunition and five gun-carriages, we started for Graham’s Town.

Foreseeing the disorderly manner in which my rough lot would probably leave the grog-shops, I started very early in the morning, before the inhabitants had got up—for I was loath to show our, as yet, disorganised state. I waited until fairly on the march before bringing a tighter hand to bear upon the many ruffians in my corps, who, half in joke, half inquiringly, looked me in the face, and called me mate, skipper, or captain, as they interpreted its meaning.

On the evening of the second day we arrived at the Ada bush; this was some twenty miles in breadth, composed of jungle-wood, free from Kaffirs, but infested with bands of marauders, consisting of native levies who had fled, weapons in hand, from the seat of war. As we were encamped that night, I strolled the greater part of it around the fires, and gathered from several parties that the next day something eventful was to take place in which my fate was concerned. I felt perfectly tranquil, however, trusting that I should be equal to the task of holding my own against such an abandoned, disunited lot—for I had also many good, God-fearing men among them.

The next morning, on the order being given for the men to fall in for roll-call, no one stirred. Sergeant Waine, who had been a non-commissioned officer in the 44th, but broken and discharged for bad conduct, to whom I had given the stripes in consideration of his regimental knowledge, stepped up to me, and said that the men wanted grog served out to them before they would budge, and if they did not get it, would return to Port Elizabeth. I did not reply to him, but, getting on my horse, rode up to the men and asked if they had enlisted with the intention of obeying orders or not. No one replied; and giving the word to fall in, they sullenly did so.

The Hottentot drivers inspanned the bullocks, and I repeated “Forward!” in a tone that seemed strange even to myself, so authoritative and full of energy did it sound in my own ear. All obeyed, and we started on the march; scarcely, however, had we entered the bush before a shot was fired. I saw from the smoke where the discharge came from, so, riding to the spot, inquired who had fired. Sergeant Waine came to the front and said he had. I reminded him of the order which had been given that no firing was to take place under any consideration, unless I or Lieutenant Pilkington gave the command. He muttered something unintelligible in reply; and I repeated the order aloud, to be heard by all around, that if any man discharged a firelock without orders I would have him punished as severely as the circumstances allowed. I then rode on again towards the head of the column, when another shot was fired, and this time the bullet came whistling very close to my head. On looking round I saw that the shot was fired from the same spot again, around which the men were now gathered in a cluster. I felt that the crisis had come, so loosening my pistol in the holster-pipe (an Adams’ revolver, one of the first made), I rode back and asked who fired. Waine replied he did. “Who gave the order?” said I. “A magpie,” he answered. I called out for Sergeant-major Herridge, the late police officer, who had quite recovered, and had become a most efficient subordinate. “Take Waine’s firelock from him,” I said. This was quickly done. “Now tie him up to that gun-carriage and give him three dozen.” Waine bawled out to the men, and asked whether they would see him flogged like a nigger. Before they could reply I drove my horse amidst them, revolver in hand, and cried out that the first man who opened his mouth, or moved, I would blow his brains out, at the same time pointing the muzzle to some of their heads, as I saw they were more or less inclined to disobey my injunctions. Sergeant Herridge was a powerful man, and Waine was soon tied up; but there being no “cat” to flog him with, I ordered it to be done with his belt. And well was it laid on. The fellow bellowed lustily, and I asked the men what they thought of such a blubbering cur. Happy Jack now began to cry “Shame.” I rode him down, and as he scrambled from between my horse’s legs in an awful state of funk, some of the men laughed outright, and he got no more openly-shown sympathy than his comrade Waine. After the flogging was over I told Herridge to give back to Waine his leather jacket. The ruffian said, “You will give me my jacket, but why don’t you give me my firelock?” “Give him that also,” said I. On getting it he began loading, and looking at me in a most significant manner. When he came to put the cap on the nipple, either from the numbing pain of the flogging, or from the violence with which Herridge had pulled off his pouch, he could not find a cap. I offered him one—it was only a pistol cap (but I did not think of that at the time); when he looked at me, threw down his firelock, and said, “No, I won’t shoot you.” Seeing this sign in my favour, I began to explain to the men that no one had a greater horror, of flogging than I had, and that I never would have had it done had it not been to punish a cowardly villain who had attempted to shoot me from behind. If any of them had a complaint to make, let them come to me, face to face, and explain, and they never would find me unwilling to listen, or to redress any just grievance. Waine was then placed on a gun-carriage alongside of Happy Jack, and we once more started on our march. From that day my orders were obeyed, and matters assumed a more orderly aspect.

On fording Sunday River, which runs through the Ada bush, the whole column nearly came to grief. All due precautions had, however, been taken as though passing through an enemy’s country, lining both sides of the ford—an advanced-guard and a rear-guard. But notwithstanding orders, some of the men had strolled down the banks of the river in order to find a favourable spot to bathe. While thus proceeding, some marauding Fingoes were espied; a cry arose that the Kaffirs were coming, a stampede ensued, and my men bolted like rabbits into the bush. The Hottentot drivers cut the traces of their oxen, disappearing with their cattle, and I was left alone with the waggons in the middle of the river, with five or six men whom I had managed to keep together—my anxiety barely sufficing to retain my laughter at the ridiculous disappearance of the whole party.

The Fingoes, however, were as much frightened as my men had been, and ran away in the opposite direction; so when my fellows had been sufficiently scratched and blown by making their way through the prickly underwood, unmolested by all except their own fears (and the thorns), they soon retraced their footsteps, and could be seen in twos and threes peeping from the outskirts of the jungle to know whether the coast had become clear. On getting them together again, I made a speech, and so enlarged upon their ridiculously discreditable behaviour, that they swore, one and all, that they would never so commit themselves again. To put their courage to the test, I determined to encamp that night where this occurred—in the middle of the bush. This was rather hazardous; but I counted upon the danger of Fingo marauders to keep them together, and in my own bold attitude to keep the latter off.

My position was a strange one; and as I lay that night upon a gun-carriage, having for companions Waine moaning over the pains in his back, and Happy Jack muttering threats of courts-martial, I thought, if Providence did not intervene, the thread of my existence would possibly snap somehow.

The night passed off calmly enough, and the next morning saw us safely on the other side of the bush; and that evening we encamped at a farm belonging to Mr Bruckyer, a Dutch settler from Haarlem—which town, by the way, was the home of my forefathers in King William III.’s reign; therefore, being somewhat akin through ancestral associations, we soon became good friends. This gentleman not only furnished my corps with an abundance of farm produce—accepting only our thanks in return—but also took charge of seven men who were incapable, from illness and sore feet, of continuing with the column. These men were afterwards sent on in a waggon to Fort Beaufort, some hundred and twenty miles off, to rejoin the corps. Mr Bruckyer again refused all remuneration.