nty. So naturally they welcomed
the column as the sign of an open road to Kimberley.

I went to see the railway station, which has been much damaged. The only
two locomotives here have been outraged; vacuum gauges have been broken,
dome-covers torn, and taps smashed; and bullets have been fired at the
steel-plated boilers, which, however, they did not penetrate. But it is
only outrage, and it seems that with materials left in the workshops
here the engines can be repaired in a couple of days. The Boers have
been very clumsy over this; a dynamite cartridge might have been
strapped under a driving axle in far less time, and its explosion would
have been more effectual.

Our chief joy has been in straying about the town, revelling in the
sense of things to be bought. No man can withstand shops after having
experienced for several days conditions under which money is not of
value. There is really nothing to buy that is of much use, but we stand
agape at the window of an ironmonger's shop, fingering the money in our
pockets, and wondering whether to buy an axe or a mincing machine. On
the whole, the axe has it; one must have fires; and bully beef _can_ be
eaten in the slab form.

XXI

NEARING THE GOAL

JACKAL'S PAN, _Saturday, May 12th_.

Colonel Mahon's column left Vryburg on Thursday at sunset in a cloud of
purple dust, and as long as the light lasted, we could see the rather
pathetic-looking little crowd of residents waving handkerchiefs and
flags. It was intended only to march for three hours; but our
information about water proved to be incorrect, and the column wound
along in the moonlight over mile after mile of the most sterile veldt I
have yet seen in the country. I was riding with Colonel Mahon for the
last few hours, and was to some extent buoyed up by the repeated
assurances of the guide that there was water "just round the bend"; but
even so it was a weary correspondent who got off his horse at 2 a.m.,
after eight hours of walking and riding at a foot-pace. Of course, the
poor mules suffered most. Even four hours in harness without a rest is
considered too much for them; here they had twice that time, over very
rough ground, and in consequence half of them had bad breast-galls. It
was a mistake to go on for so long, especially as we had to halt after
all without water; but the Colonel could not be persuaded to halt until
his transport officer warned him that the mules were at the end of their
end