The covenant - James A. Michener [458]
But when they found De Groot and asked their first battery of questions about the impending surrender, he looked at them in amazement. 'Can you men ride horses?'
'We can.'
'Are you afraid of bullets?'
'Like everyone.'
'Good, because I don't like heroes. Ride with me and see how we surrender.'
He had regrouped with ninety men, mostly from the old Venloo Commando, but including sixteen older burghers from other districts who had little to go back to and wanted a chance to twist old Kitchener's tail. They had fine ponies and, of course, the usual complement of black retainers. They also had two wagons carrying three of the wives, and when the reporters saw Sybilla de Groot, in her sixties, they gasped.
'What's she doing here?'
'I don't go to war without my wife.'
'But the war's over.'
'Only the preliminaries.'
When the newspapermen finally grasped De Groot's plan of action, they were shocked both at the boldness and at the fact that a man nearly seventy should have concocted it.
'We want to give old Kitchener a signal that his war is still under way. He thinks he took over to receive salutes and break down the camps. He has a dreadful task ahead of him, and we want you to tell him so.'
'If you do what you threaten,' the Frenchman said admiringly, 'he won't need us to tell him.'
What De Groot proposed was to swing far west of Pretoria and Johannesburg, drop down some twenty-two miles below the latter city, and cut the railway line to Cape Town. Then, when English troops were everywhere, to gallop north as he had done before, right into the heart of their strength in Johannesburg district, there to cut the line again. Then, after a forty-six-mile gallop south, to strike the line again far from the first blow. Three nights, three directions, three strikes. It was confusing even to listen to; for an English general basking in victory it would be appalling.
Far out in the veld they left the two wagons and the spare ponies. As they prepared to ride in for their insane adventure, old De Groot took off his hat, kissed his wife, and told her, 'One day, old woman . . . one day it will end.'
Casually, the Boers and the two correspondents rode east, calculating so exactly that at two in the morning, when guards were sleepy, they would have time in which to blow up the Johannesburg-Cape Town railway. They accomplished this with dispatcha wild, violent eruption filling the night then galloped at breakneck speed right toward the heart of Johannesburg, taking cover just before dawn.
All that day they watched English troops hustling back and forth, 'In rather a panic,' De Groot said.
At dusk they stayed where they were, but well before midnight De Groot, Van Doorn and Micah again led a dozen burghers up to the railway, lugging a huge supply of dynamite, which they fastened to the rails, detonating it from a distance. The explosion ripped the entire rail system apart, but before the debris settled, the Venloo Commando was galloping south over back roads to their third appointment. Again they spent daylight hours watching the frustrated troops, and once more at nightfall they resumed their riding. This time they galloped till almost dawn, when De Groot said, 'They won't expect us this far south.' Calling upon his same team, he had one hundred yards of rail mined, and when the early dawn was shaken with the vast outburst, throwing lengths of rail high in the air, the Boers retreated out over the veld, then far north to where Sybilla waited with the wagons.
The American reporter wrote a story which covered front pages in all states: war is just starting says de groot. He was so factual and outlined the daring Boer strategy with such detail that the reader had to be impressed. When the report reached England a shudder passed through the nation, with editors asking soberly: was celebration premature?
But it was the French report that captured the world's imagination, for it told of Sybilla waiting in the veld, of Paulus taking off his top hat before kissing her, of the unbelievable daring in