The covenant - James A. Michener [431]
He got his first chance during the ensuing battle for Ladysmith. Having learned his lesson, he used the best scouts available: Micah Nxumalo and two other blacks, who reported accurately the movements of the English cavalry. He moved his commando as close to the lancers' position as he could, praying that they would accept the bait he was about to throw before them: 'They'll never catch us in the open again. But let the swine think they can eat us up like they did before.'
Like an old and practiced spider, he spun his web. On five successive days he changed his guard an hour before dusk, instructing his men to walk from their posts slowly, as if weary from the November heat. Replacements were to arrive tardily and to appear listless. Six men or seven were to be visible between the tents, and there was to be desultory movement. Everything was to look like a poorly managed Boer camp, and for five days absolutely nothing happened. So he prolonged the drill, inventing new pieces of activity which would help create the illusion, and on the eleventh day the English cavalry came out again, with nearly two hundred men.
The roles given the forward actors were perilous indeed, for the thundering cavalry was allowed right into the heart of the encampment, with enough Boers running distraught to maintain the illusion, and these must be adroit enough to escape death from the stabbing lances. Two failed, and with great cries of triumph, the cavalrymen hacked them to death.
But when the sortie had passed through the camp, it found itself enfiladed not only by the survivors of the Venloo Commando but also by one hundred burghers from the Carolina contingent borrowed for this occasion, and from those grim Boers came a withering crossfire, aimed not at the lancers but at their horses. And as the beasts went down or ran wild in fury, Boer marksmen calmly shot any surviving cavalrymen. Only those who surrendered instantly were spared, and not all of them.
The Englishmen who made it through the fusillade regrouped at the far end of the camp and wanted to speed back to save their grounded comrades, and some daring horsemen tried, but when they were mowed down by concentrated rifle fire, their companions realized that this day's battle was over. In a wide sweep they galloped away from the laager, returning to Ladysmith a sadly depleted force.
There was other bad news for the English. After the fall of Dundee, many thousands of Boer horsemen had been released to join the assault on Ladysmith, and when the English infantry marched out to give battle, they were sorely thrashed, the Boers capturing more than nine hundred prisoners. This meant that henceforth the troops in the town must stay on the defensive. The English could hold on, but they could not swing over to the attack.
It was a notable victory for the Boers, but at the moment of triumph a fatal weakness manifested itself: the Boer generals began squabbling among themselves. Paulus de Groot, epitome of the daring commando leader, repeated his request to ignore stalemated Ladysmith and gallop south in wide, swinging raids, dashing right into Durban before reinforcements could be landed, but other commandants, who were frightened at the idea of leaving a redoubt in English hands, insisted that brash De Groot stay with them, help them mount a siege, and gradually wear away the English defenders.
'We must strike while we're free!' De Groot pleaded.
'Paulus,' the old commandant-general said, 'if God extends a finger to us in this great victory, we mustn't grab for His entire hand. He would not like it if you galloped off to Durban.' De Groot was ordered to remain, to dig in, and passively watch