ce
more on the bare ground, well sheltered behind a sheet of corrugated
iron, which I fortunately found stuck on end as though put there by
some unknown Boer benefactor for my special benefit. In fashion thus
lordly were all my wants continually supplied. The wild wind that
night blew away a second sheet of iron that another young officer,
with almost filial thoughtfulness, placed over me after I had gone to
rest, but the original sheet maintained its perpendicular position,
and by its welcome protection supplied me with a fresh illustration of
the familiar saying, "He stayeth His rough wind in the day of His east
wind."

[Sidenote: _An Invisible Sniper's Triumph._]

Thus toiling we reached at last a plateau about 5000 feet above sea
level, from which we looked down into the famous Waterfall Gorge, a
sheer descent of 1000 feet. Down into it there drops from Waterval
Boven the cogwheel section of the Delagoa Bay Railway, and in it there
nestles a Swiss-like village, with hotel and hospital and railway
workshops. As at Abraham's Kraal we captured the President's silk hat
but let the President's head escape, so here we captured the
President's professional cook, but the day before we arrived the
President's private railway car,--his ever-shifting capital,--had
eluded our pursuit, together with the President himself and the golden
capital, in the shape of abounding coin he carried with him. The
tidings proved to us a feast of Tantallus, so near and yet so far! How
our men sighed for a sight of that car, and for the fingering of that
coin! "At last I have him," said the exulting French General Soult of
Wellington, at the battle of St Pierre, but his exultation proved
distressingly premature. So did ours! Car and capital vanished just in
the nick of time through that Waterfall Gorge, and to this day have
never been disgorged.

From even descending into that gorge the whole brigade of Guards was
held back for four-and-twenty hours by a solitary invisible sniper,
hidden, no one could find out where, in some secure crevice of the
opposite cliff. One of our mounted officers riding down to take
possession of the village was seriously wounded; and some of the
scouts already there were compelled through the same course to keep
under close shelter. So the naval guns, the field guns, and the
pom-poms were each in turn called to the rescue, and gaily rained shot
and shell for hours on every hump and hollow of that opposite cliff,