The Wonder Book of Soldiers - ebook

I. SENTRY NO. 1

WHEN Ferdie van Wyk was arrested for being found in the barracks of the Larkshire Regiment under suspicious circumstances, he very naturally objected to being marched through the one little street of Simon’s Town by a military escort.

Ferdie was neither black nor white, being of that complexion which is described politely as “colored.” He had been thrown out of Cronje’s army for drunkenness and theft, and he had tasted the dread “sjambok”–that pliant length of rhinoceros hide which the backveldt Boer wields with such skill. He left, vowing vengeance upon his onetime friends, and came to the British Army at Modder River with a cock-and-bull story which secured him a post, first as transport rider, then as guide to the force. Here he was detected in the act of cruelly and unnecessarily flogging a native boy. The boy was a Fingo lad engaged as “voertrekker”–that is to say he walked ahead of an ox-team. leading them, since, as you may know, oxen are not guided by reins, and move so slowly that the “voertrekker” finds no difficulty in keeping ahead of them. For his cruelty, Van Wyk was kicked out of the British Army and carried himself to Commandant Viljoen, who was operating in the Free State. In his malice he volunteered to lead the Boers to an unprotected British post on the railway line between the Orange and the Modder Rivers.

He was so plausible with his stories of rich stores guarded only by a handful of soldiers that the commandant took his command to the attack, only to be repulsed with considerable loss. Van Wyk escaped with his life and wandered about the country, robbing isolated farmhouses and terrifying the women who had been left behind till he found himself at De Aar, in the Cape Colony, where he was suspected of having wrecked a troop train, but escaped again by smuggling himself on a southward-bound mail train.

He drifted to Simon’s Town, filled with hatred for mankind and especially soldier-kind. It mattered little to him whether the soldier were Briton or Boer, whether he wore khaki or the cartridge belt which constituted the sole uniform of the burgher army.

A tall broad-shouldered man with a dark yellow complexion, flat nose and seamed cheeks, his sullen eyes surveyed the pretty little town hatefully. Like many other men who by their own wicked acts have brought punishment upon their heads, he blamed everybody but himself, and he blamed nobody so much as the deputy chief magistrate of Simon’s Town, who, eight years before, had sentenced him to a term of imprisonment for atrocious cruelty to a dog.

It was unfortunate for Van Wyk (that was the name he adopted) that his thieving propensities should get the better of him. Thinking that the detachment of soldiers stationed in Simon’s Town was engaged in manoeuvring on the hills, he made a furtive visit to the barrack-rooms, and was captured whilst he was pilfering a soldier’s kit-bag.

Van Wyk scowled as he was led into the courthouse, for sitting on the bench was the same young magistrate who had sentenced him eight years before.

Mr. Gerald was not so young, but he bad scarcely altered, indeed he looked younger.

“I know your face,” he said, when the evidence had been given; “aren’t you Ferdie Van Wyk?”

“No,” lied the prisoner, sullenly.

“I am satisfied that you are,” insisted the magistrate.

“That’s right, your worship,” said a gaoler.

Van Wyk scowled at the official, and if a look could have killed, assuredly the gaoler would have died on the spot.

“I shall send you to Cape Town for trial,” said the magistrate, and there the matter ended.

Outside the courthouse Van Wyk waited under the care of two armed guards, planning methods of escape. He saw a native nurse wheeling a baby up and down in the shade of the magistrate’s garden.

“Whose child is that?” he asked in Dutch.

“The magistrate’s little girl,” was the reply. A malevolent gleam lit the halfbreed’s eye as they marched him away to the cells.

He found himself locked up with two choice spirits, men of his own color, also awaiting trial, and both of them apparently foredoomed to long sentences.

“I wish I could take a match and blow this town off the face of the earth,” said one bitterly.

“If we could set fire to the magazine,” said the other.

Van Wyk, his heart filled with black hate, said nothing, but he thought of the magistrate and he thought of the gaoler.

“I have a plan, brothers,” he said after a while. “At what hour does the gaoler come in the evening?”

“At seven.”

“Alone?”

“Sometimes,” said one of the men, “but he never enters the cell–he puts the food through, this trap,” and he indicated a small wicket in the aoor.

“Where does he carry his keys?” asked Van Wyk

“On his belt.”

Van Wyk thought. He was a man of tremendous strength, and his long arms, reaching almost to his knees, were more like a monkey’s than a man’s. He measured his arm against the door and nodded, satisfied.

At night came Crumps, the gaoler, with the evening meal. He came alone, but he felt safe enough with a door of thick oak between himself and his prisoners. He passed the bread and soup which formed the evening meal through the wicket, then as he was on the point of closing the little steel grating Van Wyk called him.

“What do you want?” asked the gaoler testily.

Van Wyk’s arm shot through the wicket, and his long sinewy fingers caught the gaoler’s throat. The man struggled, but was drawn to the grating, and another hand grasped him and drew him tighter to the door. He struggled madly, tore at the encircling fingers, but the assault was too sudden. He went limp and unconscious.

Van Wyk held him thus, then, gripping him by the collar with one hand, thrust his long arm through the wicket and found the keys hanging by a chain. With a wrench he tore the chain from the belt and let the inanimate figure fall to the ground.

He chose a key and reached bis arm through to its fullest extent… A minute or two later three prisoners tiptoed down the stone corridor to freedom and vengeance.

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