That evening, in spite of the scarcity of wood, bonfires were lighted,
and the Scouts gathered round them. Every bottle of spirits and wine
that remained in the camp was broached, and a most joyous evening was
spent.
"I shall be able to breathe freely;" one of the colonists, a man from
Johannesburg, said, "on Majuba Day in future. I have made a point for
years, whenever I wanted to do any business in Natal, to put it off till
that date, so that I could get out of the Transvaal. When I could not
manage it, I shut myself up and stopped in bed all day, though even
there I used to grind my teeth when I heard the brutes shouting and
singing in the streets. Still, to me it was not half such a humiliation
as surrender day. The one was a piece of carelessness, a military
blunder, no doubt; the other was a national disgrace. And though I saw
Majuba myself, it did not affect me half as much as did the abject
backing down of the British Government after they had collected an army
at Newcastle in readiness to avenge Majuba. We could not believe the
news when it came. The fury of the troops was unbounded, and I would not
have given a farthing for the lives of any of the men who were the
authors of the surrender, had they been in the camp that day.
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