There must have been a drug in the milk, for I had
scarcely drunk it before a tide of sleep seemed to flow over my brain.
The white rampart faded from my eyes and I slept.

CHAPTER XIX

ARCOLL'S SHEPHERDING

While I lay in a drugged slumber great things were happening. What I
have to tell is no experience of my own, but the story as I pieced it
together afterwards from talks with Arcoll and Aitken. The history of
the Rising has been compiled. As I write I see before me on the
shelves two neat blue volumes in which Mr Alexander Upton, sometime
correspondent of the Times, has told for the edification of posterity
the tale of the war between the Plains and the Plateau. To him the
Kaffir hero is Umbooni, a half-witted ruffian, whom we afterwards
caught and hanged. He mentions Laputa only in a footnote as a renegade
Christian who had something to do with fomenting discontent. He
considers that the word 'Inkulu,' which he often heard, was a Zulu name
for God. Mr Upton is a picturesque historian, but he knew nothing of
the most romantic incident of all. This is the tale of the midnight
shepherding of the 'heir of John' by Arcoll and his irregulars.

At Bruderstroom, where I was lying unconscious, there were two hundred
men of the police; sixty-three Basuto scouts under a man called
Stephen, who was half native in blood and wholly native in habits; and
three commandoes of the farmers, each about forty strong. The
commandoes were really companies of the North Transvaal Volunteers, but
the old name had been kept and something of the old loose organization.
There were also two four-gun batteries of volunteer artillery, but
these were out on the western skirts of the Wolkberg following Beyers's
historic precedent. Several companies of regulars were on their way
from Pietersdorp, but they did not arrive till the next day. When they
came they went to the Wolkberg to join the artillery. Along the Berg
at strategic points were pickets of police with native trackers, and at
Blaauwildebeestefontein there was a strong force with two field guns,
for there was some fear of a second Kaffir army marching by that place
to Inanda's Kraal. At Wesselsburg out on the plain there was a biggish
police patrol, and a system of small patrols along the road, with a
fair number of Basuto scouts. But the road was picketed, not held; for
Arcoll's patrols were only a branch of his Intelligence Department. It
was perfectly easy, as I ha