detrained with soot, inflamed eyes, tired and filthy, at Johannesburg
station.
Jan Paulus Leroux checked his horse and behind him the tiny fragment of
his commando bunched up and all of them peered eagerly ahead.
The Vaal is a wide, brown river, with sandbanks through which it cuts
its own channel. The banks are steep and along them are scattered a
few of the ugly, indigenous thorn trees which provide no cover for an
army of three thousand men and horses. But Leroux had chosen the
rendezvous with care. Here the tiny Padda River looped down through a
complex of small kopjes to join the Vaal and among these kopJes an army
might escape detection, but only if it exercised care. Which ZietsMann
was not doing.
The smoke from a dozen fires hazed out in a long pale smear across the
veld, horses were being watered on one of the sandbanks in the middle
of the river, and a hundred men were bathing noisily from the bank,
while laundry decked the thorn trees.
'The fool,' snarled Leroux and kicked his pony into a run.
He stormed into the laager, flung himself off his horse and roared at
Zietsmann.
'Menheer, I must protest.'
Zietsmann was nearly seventy years old. His beard was pure white and
hung to the fifth button of his waistcoat. He was a clergyman, not a
general, and his commando had survived this long because it was so
ineffectual as to cause the British no serious inconvenience. Only
great pressure from De la Rey and Leroux had forced him to take part in
this wild plan. For the last three days, as he waited for Leroux to
join him, he had been harassed by doubts and misgivings. These doubts
were shared by his wife, for he was the only Boer general who still had
his woman with him in the field.
Now he stood up from his seat by the fire and glared at this red,
bearded giant Leroux, whose face was mottled with fury.
'Menheer, ' he growled. 'Please remember you are speaking not only to
your Elder, but also to a Dominie of the Church. ' In this way was set
the tone for the long discussions which were to fill the next four
days. During this time Leroux saw his bold design bog down in a welter
of trivialities. He did not resent the loss of the first day which was
spent in prayer, indeed he realized that this was essential.
Without God's blessing and active intervention the enterprise must
fail, so the sermon he delivered that afternoon lasted a little over
two hours and the text he selected was from Judges,
'Shall I yet again go out to battle against the children of Benjamin,
my brother, or shall I cease?'
and the Lord said,
'Go up; for tomorrow I will deliver them into thine hand.'
Zietsmann bettered his time by forty minutes. But then, as Leroux's
men pointed out, Zietsmann was a professional while Oom Paul was only a
lay, preacher.
The next and most critical question was the election of the Supreme
Commander for the combined enterprise. Zietsmann was the older by
