Part 37 (1/2)

That night as Hansie lay on her sleepless pillow, she felt as if all the batteries of the gold mines were thumping on her heart.

Mrs. Malan's last words to her rang continually in her ears:

”Willie Botha will be executed without a doubt.”

But before day dawned Hansie's heart was at rest and she slept, for she had solved the problem in her mind.

She would go to General Maxwell and plead with him for the life of her friend.

He was human and tender-hearted, that she knew, and she would tell him how an innocent young life hung in the balance, how the lives of both mother and child would be imperilled if such a cruel fate befell the father. If her pleadings were of no avail, she would offer to give, in exchange for his life, the name of one well known to her as a dangerous enemy to the English.

And when she had made sure of his release, hers would be the name she would reveal.

During the dark days which followed Hansie found her strong support in the thought of this resolve.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 4: The writer was misinformed on this point. After the age of fourteen, boys are liable to be executed.]

CHAPTER XXVIII

HANSIE EARNING THE VOTE

Events moved quickly in those days.

The conspirators had hardly had time to recover from the shock of the recent arrests, they were just beginning to wonder what would happen if their unsuspecting friends from commando walked into the pitfalls prepared for them, racking their brains for plans to avert such a catastrophe, when the very thing they feared took place.

Instead of the familiar figure of Willie Botha coming up the garden path with news, Mrs. Malan drove up with Jannie Joubert's fiancee, Miss Malan.

Their appearance at Harmony brought all that had happened most forcibly to the minds of the stricken inmates, filling them with the sense of acute loss; and when they heard what their visitors had to tell, four women more forlorn would have been hard to find.

In short sentences Mrs. Malan told how four young men, all ignorant of the fate of their fellows in town, had tried to come in from the High Veld, bearing with them dispatches from Captain Naude to the President and to the Committee of spies in town.

These men had gone to and fro for months without a single encounter with outpost or guard, but on this occasion, when they reached the wire enclosure, they were unexpectedly met by a storm of bullets.

One of them, as he stooped to get through the fence, felt the hot air of a bullet pa.s.sing under his nose.

He hastily gave the order to retreat over the ”koppies” and across the railway line, thus entering Pretoria on the opposite side.

When they met again, before entering the town, one of them was missing!

Young Els had disappeared, and no one knew whether he had been shot or taken, or whether he had fallen into some hole and perhaps been so severely injured that he could not follow them. His comrades were in deep distress. To go back and search for him was impossible, so they entered the town at the utmost peril of their lives. Torn and bleeding, they slunk through the streets of Pretoria, avoiding the light of the electric lamps, and concealing themselves behind trees at the sight of every man in khaki, until they reached Mrs. Malan's house.

Their guardian angels must have kept them from going to Mrs. Joubert's house, as usual, that night.

Imagine their surprise and horror when they heard of the betrayal of the Committee, for the warning sent out to Skurveberg did not reach them, they having come from the High Veld.

The news of Jannie's arrest and of Mrs. Joubert's house having been searched, and now being so closely watched that they could not possibly take shelter there, came as a crus.h.i.+ng blow.