The covenant - James A. Michener [442]
This could not be done. The officer framed an excellent message, calling for quick reinforcements to occupy the abandoned hill and explaining how victory was assured, but when he summoned the signalman and told him to use his night lantern to flash the good word to General Warren's headquarters, the man said, 'I have no paraffin.'
'Try the wick. It may burn. Even for one minute.'
The signalman lit his wick. It did not even sputter. For want of a thimbleful of kerosene, the fateful message was not sent. The Battle of Spion Kop was lost.
While those futile efforts were being made to get English soldiers back onto Spion Kop, on the northern side of the hill a few of the defeated Boers consulted at two in the morning concerning their fate, and as an occasional rifle shot echoed from some distant place where soldiers were nervous, they whispered in the darkness, 'General de Groot, what did you think of the battle? Could we have won?'
'I wasn't allowed in the battle. They never called for our reserve.'
'Our losses were heavy, General. But not like the English. Did you hear about the Carolina Commando? They had a clear shot, right down the English trenches. They killed everybody.'
It was another young fellow, only a boy, really, who asked the question that saved the day for the Boers: 'I was on the eastern hill when the English crawled up and took it. Why did they go back down?'
In the darkness General de Groot asked, 'You saw them go down?'
'Yes. They were very brave. One officer . . .'
'But they went back down?'
'Yes, they drove us off the hill. We lost sixteen, seventeen men. Jack Kloppers standing beside me. Right through the forehead.'
De Groot took the lad by his shoulders, pulling him into the flickering light of a small fire. 'You say they held the hill, then abandoned it?'
'Yes. Yes. I covered Jack Kloppers with a blanket and I went back to the summit. They went down and we didn't even fire at them.'
For some minutes General de Groot stood in silence, looking up at Spion Kop. Finally he said in a very low voice, 'Son, I think you and I should go back up that hill. I think that maybe God has been holding me in reserve for this moment.' He asked for volunteers, and Jakob van Doorn, of course, stepped forward.
So the three tired Boers, at two-thirty on that dark, forlorn morning, set out to climb the hill where so many had died. In front, walking faster than the others, was Paulus de Groot in top hat and frock coat. Behind him came the lad who had occasioned this expedition, and behind, puffing heavily, came Jakob van Doorn, who had been quite content to have his commando held in reserve: death terrified him.
They climbed slowly, for there was no moon, and from time to time they trod on the face of some fallen comrade. When they approached the crest, where the fighting had been most hazardous, they stepped on many bodies, and then the old general, his hat still in place, rose upon the horizon in a position which would have been fatal had English troops been on the hill. Slowly the other two joined him, and like scouts reconnoitering some dismal field of death, they moved forward, coming to the trench where the English lads lay stacked, bullets through the sides of their heads, and all the way to the other edge of the plateau, where they could look down upon the silent camp of the enemy.
Running back to the center of the silent battlefield, where he assured himself that this miracle had taken place, Paulus de Groot removed his hat, placed it over his heart, and kneeled in the bloody dust: 'Almighty God of the Boers, You have brought us victory, and we didn't know it. Almighty God of the Boers . . . dear faithful God of the Boers . . .'
The sky was brightening when he straightened up and walked to the edge of the hill to alert his comrades below: 'Boers! Boers!'
In their bivouac the commandos had watched as sun began to break, uncertain as to what they might have to face this day