From that time until the 29th of December, a good deal of the Reformers’ time was taken up with energetic efforts to keep Jameson from coming to their assistance.  Jameson’s invasion had been set for the 26th.  The Reformers were not ready.  The town was not united.  Some wanted a fight, some wanted peace; some wanted a new government, some wanted the existing one reformed; apparently very few wanted the revolution to take place in the interest and under the ultimate shelter of the Imperial flag —­British; yet a report began to spread that Mr. Rhodes’s embarrassing assistance had for its end this latter object.

Jameson was away up on the frontier tugging at his leash, fretting to burst over the border.  By hard work the Reformers got his starting-date postponed a little, and wanted to get it postponed eleven days.  Apparently, Rhodes’s agents were seconding their efforts—­in fact wearing out the telegraph wires trying to hold him back.  Rhodes was himself the only man who could have effectively postponed Jameson, but that would have been a disadvantage to his scheme; indeed, it could spoil his whole two years’ work.

Jameson endured postponement three days, then resolved to wait no longer.  Without any orders—­excepting Mr. Rhodes’s significant silence—­he cut the telegraph wires on the 29th, and made his plunge that night, to go to the rescue of the women and children, by urgent request of a letter now nine days old—­as per date,—­a couple of months old, in fact.  He read the letter to his men, and it affected them.  It did not affect all of them alike.  Some saw in it a piece of piracy of doubtful wisdom, and were sorry to find that they had been assembled to violate friendly territory instead of to raid native kraals, as they had supposed.

Jameson would have to ride 150 miles.  He knew that there were suspicions abroad in the Transvaal concerning him, but he expected to get through to Johannesburg before they should become general and obstructive.  But a telegraph wire had been overlooked and not cut.  It spread the news of his invasion far and wide, and a few hours after his start the Boer farmers were riding hard from every direction to intercept him.

As soon as it was known in Johannesburg that he was on his way to rescue the women and children, the grateful people put the women and children in a train and rushed them for Australia.  In fact, the approach of Johannesburg’s saviour created panic and consternation; there, and a multitude of males of peaceable disposition swept to the trains like a sand-storm.  The early ones fared best; they secured seats—­by sitting in them—­eight hours before the first train was timed to leave.

Mr. Rhodes lost no time.  He cabled the renowned Johannesburg letter of invitation to the London press—­the gray-headedest piece of ancient history that ever went over a cable.

The new poet laureate lost no time.  He came out with a rousing poem lauding Jameson’s prompt and splendid heroism in flying to the rescue of the women and children; for the poet could not know that he did not fly until two months after the invitation.  He was deceived by the false date of the letter, which was December 20th.