signal in his wire of the same date to his brother at Johannesburg :

"Dr. Wolff will understand. Distant cutting British Bechuanaland Police have already gone forward. Guarantee already given.1 Therefore let J. H. Hammond telegraph instantly all right."

Meaning, presumably, as in the telegram to Harris, that the police entrusted with cutting the Pretoria wire were beyond recall. But what J. H. Hammond in reply did telegraph, under the name of "Hays," was this :-

"Wire just received. Experts' reports decidedly adverse. I absolutely condemn further developments at present."

Even more explicit was Mr. Phillips' simultaneous wire to Mr. Beit::

"It is absolutely necessary to delay floating. If foreign subscribers insist on floating without delay, anticipate complete failure."

This wet blanket Dr. Harris duly forwarded to Jameson on Saturday.

Upon receipt of Hammond's message, Jameson gives up Johannesburg as a bad job, roundly accuses it of "funking," and tries one last desperate "bluff" on Cape Town. The following was sent first thing Saturday morning :

"There will be no flotation if left to themselves. First delay was races, which did not exist; second, policies—already arranged. All mean fear. You had better go as quickly as possible and report fully, or tell C. J. Rhodes to allow me. I stand to lose fifty good B.S.A. Company's Police -time expires next week, and so on, as can tell them nothing.'

But Cape Town was not to be bluffed. The mad folly of a move into the Transvaal without so much as the pretext of a disturbance within its borders was one possible to Jameson's fevered brain, as he chafed upon the frontier, but unthinkable in the cooler distance of Cape Town. Holden was pressing

1 See above, S. Jameson's telegram.

across country to Pitsani on horseback, laden with the Johannesburg arguments to show that action at the moment was hopeless. Heany was coming round by rail to the same goal. The only thing was to

As Colonel Rhodes put it in a telegram. So Harris ordered a special train for Heany from Kimberley to Mafeking (for to go round by rail from the Rand to Mafeking you must dip down into the Colony and then northward again along the Transvaal border), and telegraphed meanwhile to Heany himself :—

"Lose no time, or you will be late."

And to Jameson :

"It is all right if you will only wait. Captain Maurice Heany comes to you from Colonel F. W. Rhodes by special train to-day."

And again, a few hours later, with a final bowing to the inevitable :-

"Goold Adams arrives Mafeking Monday, and Heany, I think, arrives tonight; after seeing him you and we must judge regarding flotation, but all our foreign friends are now dead against it, and say public will not subscribe one penny towards it, even with you as a director. Ichabcd !

It may be well to remind those who do not know their Bible as well as the conspirators apparently did, and who, therefore, have taken "Ichabod" for a dark and sinister code word, that it is, being interpreted, "the glory has departed."

That the sender of the telegram, in spite of Jameson's bluff, never doubted that he would now await the Rand messengers and abide by their message, is shown by the telegram, "Cactus" to "Toad," which was sent at noon on Saturday

"Have arranged for Heany. Dr. Jameson awaiting Heany's arrival Keep market firm."

Meanwhile, on Saturday morning, the train from Johannesburg had come in, and Messrs. Leonard and Hamilton (the

Chairman of the National Union, and the Editor of the Star,
the Uitlander organ), had laid bare the utter disunion and
chaos reigning at Johannesburg, the suspicions aroused upon
the "
'Flag Question," upon which more anon, and the con-
sequent insistence by a section that the whole question of the
Government of the future should be settled before taking a
step further against the Government of the present. Their
account was such as to make Harris echo Jameson's theory
that "all means fear." He telegraphs to Jameson at two
o'clock:-
:-

"You are quite right with regard to cause of delay of flotation, but Charles Leonard, Hamilton of Star, inform us movements not popular in Johannesburg; when you have seen Captain Heany, let us know by wire what he says; we cannot have fiasco."

And at the same time to Colonel Rhodes :

"Charles Leonard says flotation not popular, and England's bunting will be resisted by public. Is it true? Consult all our friends and let me know, as Dr. Jameson is quite ready to move, and is only waiting for Captain Maurice Heany's arrival."

*

*

*

*

*

The net result of the interview which Messrs. Leonard and Hamilton had at Groote Schuur was to convince Mr. Rhodes that the whole affair was over.

Here on the very date originally fixed for the revolution, were the border supports adjourned sine die, and the Johannesburg revolutionaries at sixes and sevens.

Perhaps Mr. Rhodes was secretly relieved. Some time before, in the presence of another confederate, he had had a talk with Jameson in which he had wavered as to the whole design. “I think, after all, we will give it up," he had said.

"No. I'm d -d if we do now," was the Doctor's curt reply; and the man of schemes yielded to the man of action.

It is not suggested here that the moment's vacillation was due to a moral scruple; but merely that, to adopt the words of the Cape Committee, "there is no evidence that Mr. Rhodes

ever contemplated that the force at Pitsani should at any time invade the Transvaal uninvited. It appears rather to have been intended to support a movement from within."

That movement from within Mr. Rhodes regarded as now in abeyance; and as the result of the conference one of the two Johannesburg deputies went from Groote Schuur to the Telegraph Office that Saturday afternoon and sent off a reassured and reassuring telegram, which has, so far, escaped the various fishing inquiries, and is here made known for the first time.

He reported Mr. Rhodes' satisfactory assurances, said that it was all right about Jameson, and told the Johannesburg leaders to "go on quietly” with their movement -a new programme" had been "agreed upon."

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As for Mr. Rhodes, he drily told Government House, which was anxiously watching the apparent signs of rising storm at Johannesburg, that the Johannesburg Reform Movement had "fizzled out like a damp squib."

Such then was the situation on Saturday evening. It was on that date that Jameson had originally arranged with Johannesburg to move. He had now been stopped. Heany and Holden were due at Jameson's camp. For them he was waiting, and Cape Town now knew how absolute a veto they were carrying. Evidently nothing was further from the minds. of Mr. Rhodes and those with him than the idea of Jameson accepting that veto for the date fixed only to "take the bit in his teeth" and dash in on the morrow.

The Chartered Company's office was closed as usual on a Saturday afternoon, and the confederates in Cape Town went to bed that night to sleep. Let us hope they slept well. It was some time before some of them got a night's sleep again.

Chapter VII

A HITCH, AND A FALSE START

HAT had caused the sudden hitch which had thus

WH brought the Johannesburg Revolt to a standstill?

The "Flag Question." And what was the "Flag Question"? Much has been conjectured about it, and in many quarters the theory is accepted that the rock on which the Johannesburg Revolt finally struck was the discovery of the Johannesburg leaders that while they were only working for reform, Mr. Rhodes was planning to "jump the Transvaal "to re-annex the Republic to England, or, as it is absurdly put by some, to the Chartered Company. It is this suspicion which more than anything else seems likely to damage Mr. Rhodes' career in Cape Colony.

The facts seem to be these.

The "Flag Question" had never bulked large in the previous history of the movement. Johannesburg is a cosmopolitan place, and to raise the question of the ultimate future of the country would be to court disunion. The platform of the National Union had always been that of simply reforming the existing Government. That was the only programme which could be avowed by a constitutional agitation, and the only one which could command the sympathies of enlightened Afrikanders in the Cape and the Free State. The most loyal Afrikander in Dutch Cape Colony, however satisfied with the British flag for himself, would be up in arms the moment anybody proposed to force it on his cousins in the Transvaal by arms or by a coup d'état. The memories of the last "War of Independence" were too fresh.