d like a gridiron, I soon said
good-night to the blushing stars above me and to the acres of
slumbering soldiers all around. After that, few of us were in fit
condition to judge whether there were ten degrees of frost or twelve
till five o'clock next morning, when we sat on the whitened ground to
breakfast by starlight. At that unkindly hour the least acute observer
of Nature's varying moods could not fail to note that a midwinter dawn
five thousand feet above the sea-level can even in South Africa be
bitingly severe.

[Sidenote: _Capturing Clapham Junction._]

After two more days of heavy marching we found abundant and beautiful
spar stones springing up out of the barren veldt, as in my native
Cornwall; and we needed no seer to assure us that the vast and
invaluable mining area of Johannesburg was close at hand. Presently we
passed one big set of mining machinery after another, each with its
huge heap of mine refuse. If only some clotted cream had been
purchasable at one of the wayside houses, or a dainty pasty had
anywhere appeared in sight, I could almost have fancied myself close
to Camborne.

Instead, however, of marching straight towards Johannesburg, we
suddenly pounced on Elandsfontein, the most supremely important
railway junction in all South Africa--its Clapham Junction--and
following swiftly in the footsteps of Henry's mounted infantry took
its defenders delightfully by surprise. The Gordons on our far left
had about a hundred casualties, and the C.I.V.'s on our right,
fighting valiantly, were also hard hit, but the Guards escaped
unscathed. Shots enough, however, were fired to lead us to expect a
serious fight, and to necessitate a further exhausting march of five
or six miles, out and back, amid the mine heaps lying just beyond the
junction. Fortunately, the fight proved no fight, but only a further
flight; though the end of a specially heavy day's task brought with
it, none the less, an abounding recompense. Whilst most of the Boers
precipitately vanished, those unable to get away gave themselves up as
prisoners of war, and thus without further effort we secured a
position of vast strategic importance, including the terminus of the
railway line leading to Natal; but it was also the terminus of the
long line from Johannesburg and the regions beyond; so that there was
now no way of escape for any of the rolling stock thereon. It might
peradventure be destroyed before the troops could rescue it, but got