To supplement my messages
through Mr. Drake, I requested this young man to tell the General that I
could see they were taking a cowardly advantage of me because I was a
woman, and that they would never have detained a man under similar
circumstances. In fact, I was on every occasion so importunate that I am
quite sure the General's Staff only prayed for the moment that I should
depart. That afternoon I had a long talk to two old German soldiers,
then burghers, who were both characters in their way. Hoffman, before
alluded to, had been a gunner in the Franco-German War, and was full of
information about the artillery of that day and this; while the other
had been through the Crimea, and had taken part in the charge of the
Light Brigade, then going on to India to assist in repressing the
Mutiny. He had evidently never liked the service into which he had been
decoyed by the press-gang, and had probably been somewhat of a _mauvais
sujet_, for he told me the authorities were glad enough to give him his
discharge when the regiment returned to England. He had married and
settled in the Transvaal, making a moderate fortune, only to be ruined
by a lawsuit being given against him, entirely, he naively admitted,
because the Judge was a friend of the other side. In spite of this he
remained a most warm partisan of the corrupt Boer Government, and at
sixty-seven he had gladly turned out to fight the country whose uniform
he had once worn.
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