Our first outspan was at the spot where Van Vooren had tried to murderRalph and carried off Suzanne upon her wedding-day. We did not stopthere long, for the place was bad for Ralph, who sat upon the box of thewaggon staring moodily at some blackened stones, which, as one of thedrivers told me--the same man who accompanied them upon their weddingjourney--had been brought from the kloof and used by Suzanne to set thekettle on when they took their meal together. Led by this same driverI walked to the edge of the cliff--for I had never visited the placebefore--and looked at the deep sea-pool, forty feet below me, into whichSwart Piet had thrown Ralph after he had shot him. Also I went down tothe edge of the pool and climbed up again by the path along which Zintiand Sihamba had staggered with his senseless body. Afterwards I returnedto the waggons with a heart full of thankfulness and wonder that heshould still be alive among us to-day, although alas, there was much forwhich I could not feel thankful, at least not then.
Now it is of little use that I should set down the history of thistrek of ours day by day, for if I did my story would have no end. Itis enough to tell that in company with other emigrants we crossed theOrange River, heading for Thaba Nchu, which had been the chief townof Maroko before Moselikatse drove him out of the Marico country. Hereseveral bands of emigrants were to meet, and here they did meet, but notuntil a year or more had passed since we left the colony and wanderedout into the veldt.
Ah! I tell you, my child, the veldt in those days was different indeedfrom what it is now. The land itself remains the same except where whitemen have built towns upon it, but all else is changed. Then it was blackwith game when the grass was green; yes, at times I have seen it soblack for miles that we could scarcely see the grass. There wereall sorts of them, springbucks in myriads, blesbok and quagga andwildebeeste in thousands, sable antelope, sassaby and hartebeeste inherds, eland, giraffe and koodoo in troops; while the forests werefull of elephant and the streams of sea-cow. They are all gone now, thebeautiful wild creatures; the guns of the white men have killed themout or driven them away, and I suppose that it is as well that they aregone, for while the game is in such plenty the men will not work. StillI for one am sorry to lose the sight of them, and had it not been fortheir numbers we Boers should never have lasted through that long trek,for often and often we lived upon buck's flesh and little else for weekstogether.
At Thaba Nchu we camped, waiting for other bands of emigrants, butafter four or five months some of our number grew so impatient that theystarted off by themselves. Among these were the companies under the HeerTriegaart and the Heer Rensenburg, who wished us to accompany him, butJan would not, I do not know why. It was as well, for the knob-nosedKaffirs killed him and everybody with him. Triegaart, who had separatedfrom him, trekked to Delagoa Bay, and reached it, where nearly all hispeople died of fever.
After that we moved northwards in detachments, instead of keepingtogether as we should have done, with the result that several of ourparties were fallen upon and murdered by the warriors of Moselikatse.Our line of march was between where Bloemfontein and Winburg now standin the Orange Free State, and it was south of the Vaal, not far from theRhenoster River that Moselikatse attacked us.
I cannot tell the tale of all this way, I can only tell of what I sawmyself. We were of the party under the leadership of Carl Celliers,afterwards an elder of the church at Kronnstadt. Celliers went on acommission to Zoutpansberg to spy out the land, and it was while he wasaway that so many families were cut off by Moselikatse, the remainderof them, with such of their women and children as were left alive,retreating to our laager. Then Celliers returned from his commission,and we retired to a place called Vechtkop, near the Rhenoster River;altogether we numbered not more than fifty or sixty souls, includingwomen and children.
Here we heard that Moselikatse was advancing to make an end of us, sowe made our laager as strong as we could, lashing the disselboom of eachwaggon beneath the framework of that before it and filling the spacesbeneath and between with the crowns and boughs of sharp-thorned mimosatrees, which we tied to the trek tows and brake chains so that theycould not be torn away. Also in the middle of the laager we made aninner defence of seven waggons, in which were placed the women andchildren, with the spare food and gunpowder, but the cattle we wereobliged to leave outside. Early on the morning when we had finished thelaager we heard that the impi of Moselikatse was close to us, and themen to the number of over thirty rode out to look for it, leaving but afew to defend the camp.
About an hour's ride away they found the Kaffirs, thousands of them, anda Hottentot who could speak their tongue was instructed to call to themand ask them why they attacked us. By way of answer they shouted out thename of their chief and began to charge, whereupon our men dismountedfrom their horses and opened fire upon them, mounting again before theycould come near. So the fight went on until the laager was reached, andmany Kaffirs were killed without any loss to the Boers, for luckily inthose days the natives had no firearms.
I remember that we women were moulding bullets when the men rode in,and very thankful we were to find that not one of them was even wounded.While they ate something we washed out their guns, and at intervals nearthe places where each man must stand behind the waggons we piled littleheaps of powder and bullets upon buckskins and pieces of canvas laid onthe ground; also we did all we could to strengthen our defences stillfurther by binding ox-hides over the waggon wheels and thrusting in morethorns between them.
Then, as the enemy was still preparing to attack us, the Heer Cellierscalled us together, and there in the laager, while all knelt around him,even to the smallest child, he put up a prayer to God asking that wemight be forgiven our sins, and that He would look upon us and protectus in our great need.
It was a strange sight. There we all knelt in the quiet sunshine whilehe prayed in an earnest voice, and we followed his words with ourhearts, every one of us, men and women, holding guns or axes in ourhands. Never had human beings more need for prayer, for through thecracks between the waggons we could see Moselikatse's Zulus, six orseven thousand of them, forming themselves into three bodies to rushupon us and murder us, and that was a dreadful sight for fifty or sixtypeople, of whom some were little children.
When we had finished praying, husbands and wives and parents andchildren kissed each other, and then the little ones and some of thewomen who were sick or aged were put behind the seven waggons in thecentre of the laager, round which were tied the horses, while the restof us went to our stations, men and women together. I stood behind Janand Ralph, who fought side by side, and, assisted by a girl of fourteenyears of age, loaded their spare guns. Now there was a great silence inthe camp, and suddenly in the silence, Jan, who was looking through hisloophole, whispered:
"Allemachter! here they come."
And come they did, with a rush and a roar from three sides at once,while men drew in their breath and set their faces for the struggle.Still no one fired, for the order was that we were to save our powderuntil Celliers let off his gun. Already the savages were within thirtypaces of us, a countless mass of men packed like sheep in a kraal, theirfierce eyes shewing white as ivory in the sunlight, their cruel spearsquivering in their hands, when the signal was given and every gun, someloaded with slugs and some with bullets, was discharged point-blank intothe thick of them.
Over they rolled by dozens, but that did not stop the rest, who, inspite of our pitiless fire, rushed up to the waggons and gripped themwith their hands, striving to drag them apart, till the whole line ofthem rocked and surged and creaked like boats upon the sea, whilethe air grew thick with smoke rising straight up towards the sky, andthrough the smoke assegais flashed as thick as rain.
But although some of the heavy laden waggons were dragged a foot ormore outward they held together, and the storm of spears flying overour heads did little harm. Heavens! what a fight was that, the fight offifty against six thousand.
Not more than seven feet of space divided us from that shrieking sea offoes into which we poured bu
llets at hazard, for there was no need toaim, as fast as the guns could be loaded. Suddenly I heard the girl callout:
"_Kek, tante, da is een swartzel!_" (Look, aunt, there is a black man.)
I looked, and just at my side I saw a great savage who had forced hisway through the thorns and crawled beneath the waggon into the laager.The gun in my hand was empty, but by me lay an axe which I snatched up,and as he rose to his knees I struck him with all my strength upon theneck and killed him at a blow. Yes, my child, that was the kind of workto which we wives of the voortrekkers had to put a needle.
Jan had just fired his gun, and seeing the man he sprang to help me,whereon three more Kaffirs following on the dead soldier's path crawledout from under the waggon. Two of them gained their feet and ran at himlifting their assegais. I thought that all was lost, for one hole in ourdefence was like a pin prick to a bladder, but with a shout Jan droppedthe empty gun and rushed to meet them. He caught them by the throat, thetwo of them, one in each of his great hands, and before they could spearhim dashed their heads together with such desperate strength that theyfell down and never stirred again. This was always thought something ofa feat, for as everybody knows the skulls of Kaffirs are thick.
By this time the girl had handed Ralph his second gun loaded, and withit he shot the third Kaffir; then he also did a brave thing, for seeingthat more Zulus were beginning to creep through the hole, he snatchedthe assegai from a dead man's hand, and stopped the gap with his ownbody, lying flat upon his stomach and thrusting at their heads with thespear. Soon we dragged him out with only one slight wound, pushing thebodies of the Kaffirs into his place, and over them spare branches ofthorn, so that the breach was made good.
This was the turning point of the fight, for though after it one otherKaffir managed to get into the laager, where he was cut down, and twoBoers, Nicholas Potgieter and Pieter Botha were killed by assegaisthrown from without, from that moment the attack began to slacken. Inthirty minutes from the time that Celliers had fired the first shot,Moselikatse's general, whose name was Kalipi, had given the order toretire, and his hosts drew off sullenly, for we had beaten them.