The covenant - James A. Michener [470]
'Were you afraid?' a girl asked.
'I am always afraid,' Sybilla said. 'I am afraid that I will not be brave, but when the test comes, we can all be brave.'
And at some point in each session she spoke directly to Detlev, whose salvation was paramount in her plans. She told him of how Boer boys were supposed to act, of how they had sometimes run at night to alert the villages, and of the joys they had known during long treks. Day after day she hammered into his soul the binding nails of patriotism, and reverence, and persistence. And each day she saw him grow physically weaker.
When Jakob heard that his wife and the twins were dead, and that his son Detlev was near death, and his farm totally destroyed, he became a somber madman, eager to support the wildest schemes of his general, and when De Groot suggested that the commando make a swift foray through English lines and down into the Cape, he was first to volunteer.
'I want no more than ninety men,' De Groot said. 'Forty extra horses and some of the best scouts. There's little chance we can return. Five hundred miles down, five hundred back.'
'What are we going to do?' one young fellow asked.
'Burn Port Elizabeth.'
The crowd cheered, and within a minute the old man had his ninety, but enthusiasm was tempered when plans showed that they would be forced to cross both the Vaal and the Orange . . . twice. Some wanted to know if that could be done, and he said sharply, 'It has to be.'
The Vaal, smaller of the two, would present most dangers, because the drifts were heavily guarded with extra blockhouses and mobile troops who patrolled it constantly; Lord Kitchener, having driven the various commandos into pockets, did not want them coalescing. During a dangerous recon-noiter Micah Nxumalo located a spot where the guard seemed to be relaxed, but as he explained to De Groot: 'That's because the riverbank there is steep. Difficult to ford.'
'We can't have everything,' De Groot said, but since he treasured his men, he wanted to see the terrain himself, so he went out with Micah and saw that what he had said was true: weak defense but perilous crossing. For a whole night the two men searched the area, concluding in the end that Micah's spot was best.
'We go!' De Groot said.
It was to be a brutal affair. Cut the barbed wires, overwhelm two blockhouses, killing all the guards, and gallop the ponies over the steep banks and into the Vaal River, trusting to luck that no mounted English patrols would be astir. They would do it at twelve thirty-five, an odd and arbitrary hour, and as it approached, the ninety whispered among themselves, 'On to Port Elizabeth,' and they laughed to think how surprised those people would be when their town was ablaze. That the odds against such a success were in the order of five thousand-to-one did not distress them.
At midnight they approached the blockhouses, each with seven soldiers, two ordinary posts among the eight thousand. At twelve-thirty no armed patrols had appeared, and at twelve thirty-five the Boers rushed forward.
The wire cutters went to work, and the men reached the corrugated-iron silos before those inside could fire. All fourteen were slain before they could signal the next blockhouse in line.
But soldiers in the distant houses had detected that something was wrong, and they telephoned for help. An armed patrol in the district asked for directions and began galloping across the veld, but as they reached the threatened area, they saw only the flanks of many ponies thrashing through the dark waters. There was firing, but not to much accountand in Pretoria, Lord Kitchener was awakened with the news that General de Groot had broken loose once more.
'Do the correspondents know?'
'Everyone knows.' As Lord Kitchener had said several times, 'I'd like to shoot every damned newsman. They make these