‘Well, you know,’ said the gunner, ’you English don’t play fair at Ladysmith at all.  We have allowed you to have a camp at Intombi Spruit for your wounded, and yet we see red cross flags flying in the town, and we have heard that in the Church there is a magazine of ammunition protected by the red cross flag.  Major Erasmus, he says to me “John, you smash up that building,” and so when I go back I am going to fire into the church.’  Gunning broke out into panegyrics on the virtues of the Afrikanders:  my companion dropped his voice.  ’The Boers have had a terrible beating at Belmont; the Free Staters have lost more than 200 killed; much discouraged; if your people keep on like this the Free State will break up.’  He raised his voice, ’Ladysmith hold out a month?  Not possible; we shall give it a fortnight’s more bombardment, and then you will just see how the burghers will scramble into their trenches.  Plenty of whisky then, ha, ha, ha!’ Then lower, ’I wish to God I could get away from this, but I don’t know what to do; they are always suspecting me and watching me, and I have to keep on pretending I want them to win.  This is a terrible position for a man to be in:  curse the filthy Dutchmen!’

I said, ‘Will Methuen get to Kimberley?’

’I don’t know, but he gave them hell at Belmont and at Graspan, and they say they are fighting again to-day at Modder River.  Major Erasmus is very down-hearted about it.  But the ordinary burghers hear nothing but lies; all lies, I tell you. (Crescendo) Look at the lies that have been told about us!  Barbarians! savages! every name your papers have called us, but you know better than that now; you know how well we have treated you since you have been a prisoner; and look at the way your people have treated our prisoners—­put them on board ship to make them sea-sick!  Don’t you call that cruel?’ Here Gunning broke in that it was time for visitors to leave the prison.  And so my strange guest, a feather blown along by the wind, without character or stability, a renegade, a traitor to his blood and birthplace, a time-server, had to hurry away.  I took his measure; nor did his protestations of alarm excite my sympathy, and yet somehow I did not feel unkindly towards him; a weak man is a pitiful object in times of trouble.  Some of our countrymen who were living in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State at the outbreak of the war have been placed in such difficult positions and torn by so many conflicting emotions that they must be judged very tolerantly.  How few men are strong enough to stand against the prevailing currents of opinion!  Nor, after the desertion of the British residents in the Transvaal in 1881, have we the right to judge their successors harshly if they have failed us, for it was Great and Mighty Britain who was the renegade and traitor then.