Man Of War

It had been his, Somervile’s, idea to make this reconnaissance of the frontier. He had wanted to see for himself the country, and the settlers who were often more cause for annoyance to Cape Town than were the native peoples. And of course those very people – Bantu, Kaffirs, Xhosa (it would be so very useful to have these names, at least, unconfused) – about whom he had read much that was contrary, and over whom his friend Colonel Matthew Hervey had lately gained some mastery. But Hervey was not with him. He was on leave, in England, recovering from his wounds and the remittent fever, and about to marry. Somervile had not wanted to undertake the reconnaissance without him, yet he could not wait for ever on his friend’s return to duty: it was autumn, and although the winters here were nothing to those of India, the nights could be bitter chill, and the rains in the mountains of the interior could swell the rivers of the frontier into impassable torrents.

And it had begun well enough, in a quiet way – an official progress through Albany and Graaff Reinet, a pleasant ride beyond the Great Fish River to Fort Willshire, where he had inspected the little garrison of His Majesty’s 55th Foot (which regiment had so distinguished itself at Umtata with Hervey and the Mounted Rifles a few months before). And he had been most attentively escorted the while by a half troop of the 6th Light Dragoons under the command of Captain the Honourable Stafford Brereton, not long joined from the regiment in England.

Hervey had originally asked for an officer to take temporary command because he was himself occupied increasingly with the Rifles, which corps he had raised, but after his wound at Umtata, and the recurrence of the malaria, the request had proved providential, and Brereton’s early arrival a particular boon, allowing him to take home leave with rather more peace of mind. Not that he knew Brereton well, or even much at all. The younger son of the Earl of Brodsworth had joined the Sixth some five or so years earlier, but had not gone out to India, having served first with the depot troop at Maidstone before the general officer commanding the southern district had claimed him as an aide-de-camp.

Brereton had bought his captaincy via another regiment and then exchanged back into the Sixth. There was nothing unusual in such a progression, although it meant that, a dozen years after Waterloo, and with India experience in short supply, there were many regiments whose officers had never, as the saying went, been shot over. Brereton had certainly not been. He had, however (doubtless in consequence), been keen to get to the frontier, and had been especially glad when the lieutenant-governor had not insisted on any larger escort, and therefore one requiring a more senior officer from the garrison.

Somervile had not been expecting trouble, though. Halting the Zulu incursion at the Umtata River had done much to quell the unease among the Xhosa, who had been so fearful of Shaka’s depredations they had been migrating ever closer to the frontier, and frequently across it. But then, when Somervile’s party had been returning, a league or so west of the Great Fish River, which marked the border for the settled population of the Eastern Cape, word had come of the Xhosa raid to the north, a much bigger foray than the frontier had seen in some time. It took even the most hardened burghers by surprise, requiring the immediate reinforcement of Fort Willshire and a doubling of the frontier patrols. By the time Somervile’s party had re-crossed the Fish into the unsettled buffer tract – ‘to see the beggars for myself’ – the reivers were back across the Keiskama River into Xhosa territory proper.

But Xhosa raids were by their nature fissiparous affairs, and the proximity of burgher cattle to the Keiskama (against the rules of the buffer treaty), and the leafy cover which the season afforded, as well as the ease of river crossing, had evidently tempted at least one sub-party to remain in the unsettled tract.

*

Serjeant Wainwright was supporting himself on an elbow. ‘There were nothing I could do, sir; not with so many spears.’

‘Half a dozen, Jobie; half a dozen,’ replied Armstrong, bemused. ‘But there were two less when you’d done with them!’

‘Noble conduct,’ echoed Somervile. ‘Finest traditions of the cavalry.’

‘Thank you, sir. But what service a shotgun would’ve been!’

‘Indeed.’

Or even one of the double-barrelled Westley-Richards which the Cape Mounted Rifles carried, thought Armstrong; though now was not the time to question why the Rifles were not with them.

‘What do we do, Serjeant-Major?’ asked Somervile, not afraid to confess thereby that he had no certain idea of his own.

Armstrong shook his head, and sighed. ‘I don’t want to leave young Parks and Danny Allott for the vultures, or the Xhosa for that matter. They’ve a nasty way with a blade.’