[37] Now Earl of Derby.
[38] Now Major-General Haig.
[39] Now Major Brinton.
CHAPTER XVI
MY RETURN TO CIVILIZATION ONCE MORE--THE MAFEKING
FUND--LETTERS FROM THE KING AND QUEEN
"Let us admit it fairly,
As business people should,
We have had no end of a lesson:
It will do us no end of good."
KIPLING.
On June 27 I left Johannesburg under the escort of Major Bobby White,
who had kindly promised to see me safely as far as Cape Town. We
travelled in a shabby third-class carriage, the only one on the train,
which was merely composed of open trucks. Our first long delay was at
Elandsfontein, practically still in the Rand District. There the officer
in charge came up with the pleasing intelligence that the train we were
to join had broken down, and would certainly be four hours late; so we
had to get through a very weary wait at this most unattractive little
township, whose only interesting features were the distant chimneys and
unsightly shafts of the Simmer and Jack and the Rose Deep Mines, and far
away, on the horizon, the little white house, amid a grove of trees,
which had been Lord Roberts's headquarters barely a month ago, and from
which he had sent the summons to Johannesburg to surrender. All around,
indeed, was the scene of recent fighting, and various polite transport
officers tried to while away the tedium of our enforced delay by
pointing out various faint ridges, and explaining that _there_ the
Gordons had made their splendid charge, or, again, that farther back
General French had encountered such a stubborn resistance, and so on,
_ad libitum_.
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