f
conscientious, dutiful correspondents, who came galloping back as we
galloped forward, and who made wide detours at sight of us, or who, when
we hailed them, lashed their ponies over the red rocks and pretended not
to hear, each unselfishly turning his back on Ladysmith in the hope that
he might be the first to send word that the "Doomed City" was relieved.
This would enable one paper to say that it had the news "on the street"
five minutes earlier than its hated rivals. We found that the rivalry of
our respective papers bored us. We condemned it as being childish and
weak. London, New York, Chicago were names, they were spots thousands of
leagues away: Ladysmith was just across that mountain. If our horses
held out at the pace, we would be--after Dundonald--the first men in. We
imagined that we would see hysterical women and starving men. They would
wring our hands, and say, "God bless you," and we would halt our steaming
horses in the market-place, and distribute the news of the outside world,
and tobacco. There would be shattered houses, roofless homes, deep pits
in the roadways where the shells had burst and buried themselves. We
would see the entombed miner at the moment of his deliverance, we would
be among the first from the outer world to break the spell of his
silence; the first to receive the brunt of the imprisoned people's
gratitude and rejoicings.

Indeed, it was clearly our duty to the papers that employed us that we
should not send them news, but that we should be the first to enter
Ladysmith. We were surely the best judges of what was best to do. How
like them to try to dictate to us from London and New York, when we were
on the spot! It was absurd. We shouted this to each other as we raced
in and out of the long confused column, lashing viciously with our whips.
We stumbled around pieces of artillery, slid in between dripping
water-carts, dodged the horns of weary oxen, scattered companies of
straggling Tommies, and ducked under protruding tent-poles on the
baggage-wagons, and at last came out together again in advance of the
dusty column.

"Besides, we don't know where the press-censor is, do we?" No, of course
we had no idea where the press-censor was, and unless he said that
Ladysmith was relieved, the fact that twenty-five thousand other soldiers
said so counted for idle gossip. Our papers could not expect us to go
riding over mountains the day Ladysmith was relieved, hunting for a