he left front, and we were drawing with
all possible care the hills on that side. In front of us was a tall
peak, and I sent a few men to work round it on the left while I went
round the right. This hill really overlooked the Boer position. My left
flankers got round and rejoined me in front. Either they must have been
concealed from the Boers by the mist or have been mistaken for a party
of Boers themselves, for they had passed within a few hundred yards of
the edge where the enemy lay and were not fired at.

Damant, our captain, coolest and bravest of officers, now joined me, and
with two or three men we pushed cautiously on towards some loose rocks,
which, from the top of the rise, seemed to command a view of the valley
beneath. We had advanced to within eighty yards of the rocks, in open
order, when we thought we heard voices talking, and immediately
afterwards some one said loudly in Dutch, "Who rides there?" And then
another voice more to the right exclaimed, "Here they are!" At the same
instant one caught a motion as of heads and shoulders cuddling down and
adjusting themselves in a disagreeable way. There they were and no
mistake, all tucked in among the rocks like wood-lice.

Our position then was a curious one, for we had actually walked quite in
the open up to within speaking distance of the main Boer position, a
position that was to defy our army for a day and a half.

The ground sloped down in a slight hollow. It was thickly sprinkled with
snow and dotted here and there with little green spots where the grass
tufts showed through. A wire fence crossed the hollow lower down.
Luckily we heard their voices before they started shooting, and
instantly we turned and rode for it, the Mausers all opening
immediately and the bullets cracking and whistling round our ears. As
bad luck would have it, my pony, which, like most of them, knows and
dreads the sound of rifles fired at him (though he will stand close to a
battery or among men firing without minding it in the least), became so
frantic at the noise of the bullets that I was quite unable to steer
him. With head wrenched round he bored away straight down the hill
towards the wire. As we got to it I managed to lift him half round and
we struck it sideways. The shock flung me forward on to his neck, which
I clasped with my left arm and just saved myself falling. For an instant
or two he struggled in the wire, a mark for every rifle, and then got
clear. In his ef