eral fights describe as the hottest they have known, was something
like that. There was no cover; everyone was under fire; so there was
nothing to do but to dismount and lead one's horse along beside the
convoy. Every now and then with the clear high "phit" of the Mauser
bullet would come the hideous twisting whistle of the Martini--really a
horrible sound. There was something like a panic amongst the native
drivers; they walked along bent almost double, taking what shelter they
could; one I saw crawling along on his belly, and the sight made me
laugh, although I had at heart too much sympathy with him to be really
amused. The mules and horses, alarmed by these strange whistlings in the
air, began to neigh and scream, and they added to the general tumult.
One gave up wondering whether or no one would be hit, but merely
wondered if it would be a graze or a "plug." There were the usual number
of miraculous escapes; the driver of the waggon beside which I was
walking tumbled off his seat like a sack, stone dead; a mule in the
waggon behind me leapt and kicked, and sank on the ground; my horse
jumped as a Martini bullet smote the sand at his heel; yet I think there
was never a bullet nearer me than a dozen feet. Major Baden-Powell, who
is accompanying the expedition for his brother's relief, had his watch,
worn in the left breast-pocket, smashed to atoms, but his skin was not
even scratched.

They were ten very long and, to put it frankly, very hateful minutes
that passed until M Battery opened with a roar. It was a welcome sound,
and still more welcome the "pom--pom--pom--_pom_," like the bark of a
good dog, that sounded immediately afterwards. And it was like oil on
water, or water on fire. Immediately the enemy's fire slackened; in two
minutes it had almost ceased; in five it had stopped entirely, and one
began to get one's breath. There were men lying all round and about the
wood, and the small ambulance staff had more work than they could do; my
cart made three trips, carrying wounded men from the column to the
dressing-station. Only ten minutes of fighting, and over thirty
casualties; six killed, twenty-four wounded, one missing.

But when one had been through those ten minutes, it was not the men
lying stark and still in the grass beside the ambulance that made one
astonished; it was the sight of people walking about and talking that
made one wonder whether or no one had been dreaming. It was decided to
halt. Everyo