The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1900-02-25
THE SIEGE FROM WITHIN
VIVID DESCRIPTION OF ExPER-
FENCES AT LADYsMITH.
According TO a Letter Written I'm No
vember by the Late Dir. Stevens
Existence There Was MaddeninG.
London Mail of Feb. 3.

am sick OF it. Every body Is sick OF II.
They said the force which would open the
line and set US going against the enemy
would begin TO land at Durham on the 18th
and get into touch with us by the 10Th.
Now it is the 18th; the force. they tell US.
has landed and is somewhere on the line
between Maritzburg and Estcourt, but OF
advance not a sign.
Butler. they tell us one day. is at Bloen-
fontein; next day he is coming round to
Durham: the next he is a prisoner in Pre-
toria-
The only thing certain is that whatever
is happening, We are out of It. We know
nothing of the outside, and of the inside
there is nothing TO know. Weary, stale,
fiat. Improbable the whole thing At first
10 be besieged and bombarded was a thrill:
then 1t was Joke; now 1t is nothing but
weary, weary, weary bore. We do moth
ing but eat and drink and sleep-just ex
Est dismally. We have forgotten when the
siege began, and now we are beginning not
10 care when 1t ends. For my part l feel
1t viii never end. 1t will go on just as now,
languid fighting, languid cessation. for
ever and ever. We shall drop off one by
one and listlessly die OF old age.
And in the year 2099 the New Zealander
antiquarian, digging among the buried
cities OF Natal. will come upon the forgot
ten town OF Ladysmith. And he will find
a handful of Rip Van Wrinkle Beers with
white boards down TO their knees, behind
quaint. antique guns. Smelling a cactus
grown ruin. Inside. sheltering in holes. he
will find a few decrepit creatures. very,
very old. the children born during the bonn
bardment. He will take these links with
the past home to New Zealand. But they
will be afraid at the silence and security of
peace. Having never known anything but
bombardment, they will die of terror with
out it.
So be it. shall not be there to see. But
i shall wrap these lines UP in Red Cross
flag and bury them among the ruins of
MuIberry-grove, that, after the excava-
tions. the unnumbered readers of the
Daily Mail may in the enlightened year
2iOQ know what a siege and bombardment
were like.
Sometimes / think the siege would be
Just as bad without the bombardment.
In some ways it would be even worse:
for the bombardment is something to no.
tice and talk of, albeit languidly. But the
siege Is an unredeemed curse. Sieges are
out of date In the days of Troy, to be
besieged or besieger was the natural lot
of man; TO give ten years at a stretch to it
was all in lifes work; there was nothing
else to do. In the days when a great vic
tory was gained one year, and fast
frigate arrived with the news the next a
man stin had leisure in his life for years
siege now and again.
But to the man of 1S99-or, by'r Lady. in
clining to 190O-with five editions of the
evening papers every day. a siege is a
thousand-fold a hardship. We make it q
grievance nowadays If we are a day behind
the news-news that concerns US nothing.
DEADLY DULLNESS.
And here are We with the enemy all
round us, splashing melinite among US in
most hours of the day. and for the best
part of month we have not even had any
definite news about the men for whom We
must wait to get out of it. We wait and
wonder. first expectant. presently apathetic.
and feel ourselves grow old
Furthermore. We are in prison. We know
now what Dartmoor feels like. The prac-
ticed vagabond tires in fortnight of a
European capital; of Ladysmith he sickens
in three hours.
Even WHeH we COulQ rue out ten OF a
dozen miles into the country. there was
little that was new, nothing that was in
terestlng. Now We lie in the bottom of the
saucer, and stare UP at the pitiless ring of
hills that bark death. Always the same
etiff, naked ridges, flat-capped with our
Observation-Disclosures, always the same.
AS morning hardens TO the brutal clear
ness of South African midday, they march
IN on you till Bulwan seems to tower over
your very heads. There IL is close over
you. shady and Of wide prospect; and if
you try 10 go up you are dead man
Beyond is the world-war and love. Clery
marc ling on Colenso, and ali that man
hol 1; dear in a little island under the
North Star. But you sit here to be idly
shot at You are of IT, but not in it-clean
out of the world To your world and to
yourself you are every Bit as good dead
except that dead men have no time to
I'LL in.
ton feels. know how fly in a beer bot
tie feels.
know how it tastes. too.
And with IL all there is the melinite and
the shraprel. To be sure they give us the
only pin-prick of interest to be had in
Ladysmith. 1t is something novel to live
In this town turned inside out.
Where people should be, the long, long
day from dawn to daylight. shows only a
dead blank.
Where business should be the sleepy
shop blinds droop. But where no business
should be-along the crumbling ruts that
lead no whither-clatters wagon after wag-
on. with curling whip lashes and piles of
bread and hay.
Where no people should be-in the clefts
at the river bank. in bald patches OF veldt
ringed with rocks, in overgrown bitches
all these you nnd alive with men and
beasts.
The place that. a month ago. was only
fit to pitch empty meat tins into is now
priceless stable room: two squadrons of
troop horses pack fianA To flank inside it's
shelter. a scrub-entangled hole. with, per-
hapS, nobody save runaway kaffirs ever
set foot In before. is now the envied habi-
rock heap below a perpendicular slope Is
now the choicest or town lots.
The whole center of gravity of Lady
smith is changed. It's belly lies no longer in
the mulCfarious emporia along the High
street. but in the earth-reddened half-in-
visible tents that bashfully mark the COM
rnissariat stores. Its brain Is not the Town
Hall. the best target in Ladysmith but
headquarters under the stone-packed hill.
The riddled Royal Hotel is It's social CEN
ter no longer; IL Is to the trench-seamed
sailors camp or the wind-swept shoulders
of Caesars camp that men go 10 hear aud
tel the news.
EXECUTION OF THE GUNS.
Poor Ladysmith. Deserted in its markets,
repeopled IN its wastes; here ripped with
iron splinters. there rising again into rail-
rooted rock-walled caves; trampled down
In its gardens. MANFRED where nothing can
ever grow; skirts hemmed with sandbags
and bowels bored with tunnels-the Beers
hut fhaxr laff