f
all our contests, was also a Sunday fight; and though in the face of
such facts no man may dogmatise, such coincidences, all happening in
the course of a few weeks, in the conduct of the same war, make one
wonder whether Sunday is really a lucky day for purposes so dread, and
whether the Boers are not justified in their supposed refusal to
fight on Sundays excepting in self-defence. In that respect, I at any
rate, am with the Boers as against the Britons.

[Sidenote: _A problem not quite solved._]

When night at last arrived, we had neither tents nor shelters of any
sort provided for us, though the cold was searching, and everything
around us was wet with heavy dew. Men and officers alike spread their
waterproof sheets on the bare ground, and then made the best they
could of one or two blankets in which to wrap themselves. Through the
kindness, however, of my quartermaster friend, since dead, I was
privileged to push my head and shoulders under a transport waggon
which effectually sheltered me from wind and wet; and there, in the
midst of mules and men, mostly darkies, I slept the sleep of the
weary.

Brief rest, however, of a more delicious kind I had already found in
the course of that toilsome afternoon tramp described above. During a
short halt by the way I lay upon my back watching a huge cloud of
locusts flying far overhead, and thinking tenderly of those just then
assembling at our Aldershot Sunday afternoon service of song, not
forgetting the gentle lady who usually presides at the piano there.
Then I took out my pocket Testament, and read Romans xii.: "If thine
enemy hunger, feed him." But about that precise moment the adjoining
kopje, with a shaking emphasis, said to me, "pom-pom," and again
"pom-pom." But how to feed one's enemy while thus he speaks with
defiant throat of brass, is a problem that still awaits a
satisfactory solution!

[Sidenote: _A touching sight._]

In the course of the day I was greatly touched by the sight of an
artillery horse that had fallen from uttermost fatigue, so that it had
to be left to its fate on the pitiless veldt. It was now separated
from its team, and all its harness had been removed; but when it found
itself being deserted by its old companions in distress and strife, it
cast after them a most piteous look, struggled, and struggled again to
get on to its feet, and finally stood like a drunken man striving to
steady himself, but absolutely unable to go a single step