The Petticoat Commando: Boer Women in Secret Service. Johanna Brandt
a sturdy frame, containing a hidden letter for Mrs. Cloete, whilst instructing him to destroy the epistle if he could not hand it over to Mrs. Cloete personally, moreover, not to remove the letter from the cigarette-case until he arrived in London.
At Cape Town he met at the hotel a man who professed to be a great pro-Boer and with whom he soon became so friendly that he, finding it impossible to go out to Alphen himself, indiscreetly entrusted Mrs. Cloete's letter into the hands of this stranger, with the result that it was taken direct to the military authorities.
Our friend was arrested the next day as he was boarding the ocean liner, and was kept under strict surveillance while his luggage was being overhauled.
We were told afterwards by friends who witnessed the scene that, during the process, he sat on deck with the utmost unconcern, smoking cigarettes and toying with a silver case! No further evidence having been found against him, he was allowed to sail away in peace, and Mrs. Cloete too escaped without so much as a warning, perhaps because the contents of the letter were not considered sufficiently incriminating.
Mr. Stead received the documents hidden in the cigarette-case in due time and made full use of their contents in his monthly magazine, The Review of Reviews.
Although, surprising to relate, no steps were taken against the conspirators at Harmony, they soon noticed an extraordinary increase in the vigilance of the censor, so much so, that the most harmless communications failed to reach their destination, and when by chance anything was allowed to pass through it was mutilated beyond recognition, whole sentences being smirched with printer's ink or pages cut away by the ruthless hand of the censor.
It may seem a small thing now, but this state of affairs, when letters and papers were the only consolation one had, became a source of such keen annoyance and distress that Hansie decided to approach the censor and ask him the reason for such petty persecutions.
The head censor being away at the time, she was shown into the presence of a man whose very appearance excited her strongest antipathy. In the first place he had a purely Dutch name, and she knew that he could not occupy a position of so much trust under the British without being a traitor to his own countrymen.
Secondly, he seemed to derive much pleasure from her visit and, when she told him who she was, had the audacity to say:
"I always enjoy your letters very much, Miss van Warmelo; they quite repay me for my trouble!"
When taxed with confiscating and mutilating them, he was all concern and innocence personified.
No, indeed, he could never be guilty of such a breach of gallantry and etiquette, the fault must lie elsewhere; he was her friend, and if she would promise to bring all her letters to him personally, he would see that they were passed.
"Miserable Renegade!" she thought, with boiling blood.
Instantly it flashed through her mind that it would be foolish indeed to make an enemy of this man. Her whole manner changed.
"How very kind of you!" she said. "Yes, I shall come myself if you are sure I shall not be giving you too much trouble."
"A pleasure, I assure you," bowing with great gallantry, and Hansie went home to tell her mother what had happened.
After this interview with the censor, he allowed their letters to pass with unfailing regularity.
True to her promise, Hansie took her European mail to him herself every week, and this brought her into contact with him frequently. He was always affable (hatefully affable) and obliging, and the thought of this man made it more and more difficult for her to write, especially those letters destined for the north of Holland.
One day she asked her mother to think of some plan by which she could use the censor for her own purposes, without his knowledge, and this set Mrs. van Warmelo's active mind and resourceful brain working, with what result we shall see in our next chapter.
CHAPTER VIIIToC
OUTWITTING THE CENSOR
If the method of writing between the lines in chemicals presented itself to Mrs. van Warmelo's mind for a moment, it was dismissed as too crude and well-known, and, in consequence, too dangerous.
And yet she found her thoughts reverting persistently to chemicals as the only solution to the problem before her. One day she took the strained juice of a lemon and wrote a few words with it on a sheet of white paper. When dry, there was no trace of the written words to be seen until she had passed a hot iron over them. Imagine her joy and satisfaction when they showed up clear and distinct, in a colour of yellowish brown. Well satisfied with her experiment, she sought and found a square white envelope of thick paper and good quality, which she carefully opened out, by inserting and rolling the thin end of a penholder along the part that was glued. Spreading the envelope before her on the table, she wrote some sentences in lemon juice on the inside, folding it into shape again and pasting it down with great care and neatness. This envelope she placed in Hansie's hands, with an expectant look, when the latter came home that afternoon.
Hansie turned it over, examined it on all sides and shook her head, puzzled.
"Open it," her mother suggested, "and look inside."
Hansie opened it and, peering into it, shook her head again, more mystified than ever.
"I give it up, mother," she said. "Come, don't be so mysterious—tell me what it all means."
Mrs. van Warmelo then took the envelope, opened it with the penholder again, and, producing the hot iron which she had been keeping in readiness for the psychological moment, she ironed out the flattened sheet and revealed to the astonished gaze of her daughter the written words within.
At first Hansie was speechless with admiration; then she threw her arms round her mother and hugged her vigorously.
"Really, mother," she exclaimed, "I am proud of you. How we shall be able to dupe 'Miserable Renegade' now!"
The full importance of this discovery was not realised at the time, for all their smuggling had hitherto been carried on merely for pleasure and they had had no information of any importance to communicate to their friends across the seas; but, in the light of after-events, they realised that they had been led to make their preparations and to have their methods in full working order before the time came to use them in conveying dispatches from the Boer Secret Service to President Kruger in Holland.
They were now in the possession of a scheme which defied detection, and the next thing to be done was to inform some distant conspirator of this valuable discovery and instruct him in the use of it.
That this could not be done through the post, my reader will understand, and as reliable opportunities were becoming more rare, Hansie had to wait some months and to possess her soul in patience until at last some trusted friend, leaving the country, could be persuaded to convey the important instructions.
When and how they were eventually sent I cannot tell with positive certainty. There is a difference of opinion on this point between Mrs. van Warmelo and her daughter, and there is no way of settling the dispute, because Hansie's diary contains no word about the White Envelope, for reasons which it will hardly be necessary to explain.
Mrs. van Warmelo says the instructions were dispatched in a false double-bottom of an ordinary safety match-box. Hansie thinks they were either hidden behind a photo-frame or in a tin of insect-powder, both these methods having been employed on various occasions, but at present we are only concerned with the fact that the instructions reached their destination safely, and from that day until the end of the war a gloriously free and uninterrupted communication was kept up between Harmony and Alphen and one spot in the north of Holland, of