and for his country, these are the common incentives of every
soldier. But to the men of the Imperial Light Horse, recruited as they
were from among the British refugees of the Rand, there was added a
burning sense of injustice, and in many cases a bitter hatred against
the men whose rule had weighed so heavily upon them. In this singular
corps the ranks were full of wealthy men and men of education, who,
driven from their peaceful vocations in Johannesburg, were bent upon
fighting their way back to them again. A most unmerited slur had been
cast upon their courage in connection with the Jameson raid--a slur
which they and other similar corps have washed out for ever in their own
blood and that of their enemy. Chisholm, a fiery little Lancer, was in
command, with Karri Davis and Wools-Sampson, the two stalwarts who had
preferred Pretoria Gaol to the favours of Kruger, as his majors. The
troopers were on fire at the news that a cartel had arrived in Ladysmith
the night before, purporting to come from the Johannesburg Boers and
Hollanders, asking what uniform the Light Horse wore, as they were
anxious to meet them in battle. These men were fellow townsmen and knew
each other well. They need not have troubled about the uniform, for
before evening the Light Horse were near enough for them to know their
faces.

It was about eight o'clock on a bright summer morning that the small
force came in contact with a few scattered Boer outposts, who retired,
firing, before the advance of the Imperial Light Horse. As they fell
back the green and white tents of the invaders came into view upon the
russet-coloured hillside of Elandslaagte. Down at the red brick railway
station the Boers could be seen swarming out of the buildings in which
they had spent the night. The little Natal guns, firing with obsolete
black powder, threw a few shells into the station, one of which, it
is said, penetrated a Boer ambulance which could not be seen by the
gunners. The accident was to be regretted, but as no patients could have
been in the ambulance the mischance was not a serious one.

But the busy, smoky little seven-pounder guns were soon to meet their
master. Away up on the distant hillside, a long thousand yards beyond
their own furthest range, there was a sudden bright flash. No smoke,
only the throb of flame, and then the long sibilant scream of the shell,
and the thud as it buried itself in the ground under a limber. Such
judgment of range woul