ury of wrong!' British ignorance of South Africa, Boer ignorance of
civilisation, British intolerance, Boer brutality, British interference,
Boer independence, clash, clash, clash, all along the line! and then
fanatical, truth-scorning missionaries, experimental philanthropists,
high-handed jingo administrators, colonial ministers who disliked all
colonies on the glorious principles of theoretic liberalism, bad
generals thinking of their own reputations, not of their country's
success, and a series of miserable events recalled sufficiently well by
their names--Slagter's Nek, Kimberley, Moshesh, Majuba, Jameson, all
these arousing first resentment, then loathing, then contempt, and,
finally, a Great Desire, crystallising into a Great Conspiracy for a
United Dutch South Africa, free from the flag that has elsewhere been
regarded as the flag of freedom. And so inevitably to war--war with
peculiar sadness and horror, in which the line of cleavage springs
between all sorts of well-meaning people that used to know one another
in friendship; but war which, whatever its fortunes, certainly sweeps
the past into obscurity. We have done with 'a century of wrong.' God
send us now 'a century of right.'

CHAPTER XIV

A MILITARY DEMONSTRATION AND SOME GOOD NEWS

Chieveley: January 8, 1900.

BOOM. Thud, thud. Boom. Boom. Thud--thud thud--thud thud thud
thud--boom. A long succession of queer moaning vibrations broke the
stillness of the sleeping camp. I became suddenly awake. It was two
o'clock on the morning of January 6. The full significance of the sounds
came with consciousness. We had all heard them before--heavy cannonading
at Ladysmith. They were at it again. How much longer would the heroic
garrison be persecuted?

I turned to rest once more. But the distant guns forbade sleep. The
reports grew momentarily more frequent, until at last they merged into
one general roar. This was new. Never before had we heard such
bombarding. Louder and louder swelled the cannonade, and presently the
deep note of the heavy artillery could scarcely be distinguished above
the incessant discharges of field pieces. So I lay and listened. What
was happening eighteen miles away over the hills? Another bayonet attack
by the garrison? Or perhaps a general sortie: or perhaps, but this
seemed scarcely conceivable, the Boers had hardened their hearts and
were delivering the long expected, long threatened assault.

An officer came to my tent w