CHAPTER XXI

THE PADRE AND OUR FRIEND THE ENEMY

THE man of us all who knew the foe best was Padre Robertson, chaplain of the Highland Brigade, welcome mess-fellow with valiant Wauchope, man among men, and man of God.

Towards the close of each battle, before the Boers had done killing us, and before we had stopped firing at nothing all day long, Padre Robertson mounted a horse and rode over to the enemy's lines to ask permission to gather in our dead and wounded.

"I knew they wouldn't harm me," he said to me once, "because they could see by my riding right up to them that I was either a minister or a madman."

Ah, but there's good stuff in our padres! Think of the behaviour of the one called Hill at Belmont. The Grenadiers were still scaling the steep and rocky kopje like flies, and the leaden drift of bullets was still whistling down from the Boer eyries as the wind of a gale searches the deck and rigging of a ship. But Padre Hill was there, moving from man to man, lifting a head here, and giving water there, and, once, actually

standing up, book in hand, reading the office for the dying.

"Go back, padre, go back!" said an officer, “this is no place for a man of your calling; you've no right to risk your life here."

"No," said he, "I'm in my right place here."

But, as I was about to say, Padre Robertson went over to the Boer lines either three or four days after the battle of Maaghersfontein, and got to know more about the enemy in action than any man I have yet seen. He told me that there were Englishmen, Irishmen, and Scotchmen among them, as well as the mercenary Germans and Scandinavians, serving for a gold Kruger a day—which is to say a pound sterling Dutch. He found ministers among them of the Reformed Presbyterian, or Dutch Reformed, faith, who got their professional training in Scotland. Everybody was courteous to our padre, and he found many well-dressed men of polished manners, distinctly men of the better class. Some tried to argue, saying that the war was being waged for the sake of a few capitalists and mining speculators, but our padre would not argue.

"I am neither a politeecian nor a soldier," said he, with his rich accent, "I am but joost a meenister o' God, come to fetch away the dead."

They blindfolded all the ambulance men and stretcher-bearers who were obliged to go within five hundred yards of their trenches, and led them hither and

thither to gather the dead, but they did not blindfold the padre. Nor did they put him under oath as to what he might tell or hide. One day they said that if he would give his word to bring back a list of the Boers taken by us they would furnish such a list of the English whom they held.

He carried out his promise, and perceived that they have a nearly perfect identification department, and system of tracing all who are in their army, no matter what befalls them; and this is a department not possessed by every other army in the world, to put the case so as not to offend any one in particular.

It has been told how, when this humane work was going on, on the morning after the day of battle, our ́big naval gun burst out, and flung a lyddite shell over into the enemy's lines. The Boers were surprised and nonplussed at that, but the padre assured them it was all a mistake, and cantered back to his own lines to have the firing stopped.

"You'll become a Boer yet," said an officer of high rank, "if you keep going over to them after each fight."

"No fear of that," said the padre, “but I'm bound to say they've been very courteous and good and kind to me, and very helpful as well."

His experiences in that field were almost too shocking for description. The sun was playing havoc with the dead, and the ambulance men, uninspired with the

fervent zeal of our padre, turned sick, and were only kept in a condition to work by a liberal supply of spirits.

On the final day even the padre was overcome, and then-what do you think? Some kindly Boers came out of the trenches and held his head, until the first violence of the nausea was spent.

From an ambulance man I heard an anecdote of quaint flavour. The Boers rode out to him and chatted with him as he did his work.

"Have you any water in your bottle?" they asked, adding, “we are very thirsty."

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The Briton said he had water in one bottle, and whisky and water in another.

"I'll give you the whisky and water," said he, "if you'll say, 'God bless the Queen.'

"We've no objection," one Boer replied; "we've nothing against the Queen. Let's have the whisky."

He lifted the khaki-clad bottle, drank, and said, "God bless the Queen." The second man took the bottle, drank a deep draught, and echoed the prayer of the first. The third man kept the promise—but in a peculiar way. He drank, and, pausing before he handed back the bottle, said, "God bless the Queen, andCecil Rhodes."

I talked to several of our men during the days when we were taking in our dead and wounded, and heard much about the Boers. Not one had been seen to wear a uniform. They were clad precisely as so many

men would be if gathered up in city streets and country roads. After they left the trenches it was seen that every man had a horse, that nearly all the horses were very good ones, and that the Boers sat them like centaurs, "so graceful and easy-like," as one man put it.

When we get to the point where we can write and speak freely of the Boer's defects, it will be time to tell the other side of the story of the Boer upon the battle-field. For there is another side-no matter how "gude and helpfu' and courteous" they have been to brave Padre Robertson.