forts he had got half through his girths and the saddle
was back on his rump. A pretty spectacle we must have looked, I sitting
back on his tail, my hat in my hand, both stirrups dangling, and the
bullets whistling round both of us like hailstones. However, I lugged
him out at last, and we went up the side of the fence broadside on to
the shooters, as hard as ever we could lay legs to the ground. It is a
difficult thing to bring off a crossing shot at that pace, and in a few
hundred yards we were over the slope and out of shot. I have seen lots
of our men have much narrower escapes than this.

Well, after all that, we will get back to the action. Having located the
enemy, the Guides all collected behind the conical hill, climbed up, and
from the edges of it began shooting down into the Boer position. Here we
were joined by the Black Watch, who carried on the same game. It was
not, however, at all a paying game, and the fact that the Boers had not
held this hill themselves, though so close to their position, is
sufficient of itself to show their remarkable skill in choice of ground.
For the hill, conical and regular in shape, was perfectly bare, and
while they behind the sharp ledges and in the fissures of the rocks
below were well concealed from the men above, these as they crept round
the smooth hillside came into immediate view against the sky. The sleet
of bullets shaving the hill edge was like the wind whistling past. The
Black Watch lost a lot of men here. In the afternoon the Guides and some
of Lovat's Scouts pushed forward on the left and gained a low ridge,
where, lying down, we could command a part of the enemy's position, and
send in a flanking fire. This manoeuvre was useful and suggested a plan
for next day. That night I had to take out a picket on a hill on our
south-east front and had but a sorry time of it; for it was a bitterly
cold, rather wet night, and the position was not without its anxiety. I
got little sleep.

Next morning, July 24, soon after light, the main body of the Guides and
Lovat's Scouts (who are under Rimington at present) came out, and we
rode down to the slopes on the left of the Boer valley again. Here we
crept up as far as we could and began to put in our fire. It must have
been very annoying for them, for a part of their position was quite
exposed to us. We could see the short white cliff at the edge of the
basin and the Boers moving about and running up and down, diving into
fissu