..
and I'd risked my hide at my own expense. I got that man's address from
Van Zyl; he was a mining man at Kimberley, and I wrote him the facts. But
he never answered. Guess he thought I lied.... Damned Southern rebel!
"Oh, say. Did I tell you my Captain gave me a letter to an English Lord in
Cape Town, and he fixed things so's I could lie up a piece in his house? I
was pretty sick, and threw up some blood from where the rib had gouged
into the lung--here. This Lord was a crank on guns, and he took charge of
the Zigler. He had his knife into the British system as much as any
American. He said he wanted revolution, and not reform, in your army. He
said the British soldier had failed in every point except courage. He said
England needed a Monroe Doctrine worse than America--a new doctrine,
barring out all the Continent, and strictly devoting herself to developing
her own Colonies. He said he'd abolish half the Foreign Office, and take
all the old hereditary families clean out of it, because, he said, they
was expressly trained to fool around with continental diplomats, and to
despise the Colonies. His own family wasn't more than six hundred years
old. He was a very brainy man, and a good citizen. We talked politics and
inventions together when my lung let up on me.
"Did he know my General? Yes. He knew 'em all. Called 'em Teddie and
Gussie and Willie. They was all of the very best, and all his dearest
friends; but he told me confidentially they was none of 'em fit to command
a column in the field.
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