further. Ah,
the bitterness alike for men and horses of such involuntary and
irrecoverable falling out from the battle-line of life! Not actual
dying, but this type of death is what some most dread!

[Sidenote: _Rifle firing and firing farms._]

When on Monday we resumed our march, it was still to the sound of the
same iron-mouthed music; but now at last we could not only hear, but
see some of the shell fire, and watch a few of the men that were
taking part in the fight. Far away we noticed what looked like a line
of beetles, each a good space from his fellow beetles, creeping
towards the top of a ridge. These were some of our mounted men. Lower
down the slope, but moving in the same direction, was a similar line
of what looked like bees. These were some of our infantry, on whom the
altogether invisible Boers were evidently directing their fire. As you
must first catch your hare before you can cook it, so you must first
sight a Boer before you can shift him; and the former task is
frequently the more difficult of the two. In more senses than one
short-sighted soldiers have had their day; and in all ranks those who
cannot look far ahead must give place to those who can. Henceforth the
most powerful field-glasses that can possibly be made, and the most
perfect telescopes, must be supplied to all our officers; or on a
still more disastrous scale than in this war the bees will drop their
bullets among the beetles, and Britons will be killed by Britons.

Later in the day, to my sincere grief, a beautiful Boer house was set
on fire by our men, after careful inquiry into the facts by the
provost-marshal, because the farmer occupying it had run up the white
flag over his house, and then from under that flag our scouts had been
shot at. Such acts of treachery became lamentably common, and had at
all cost to be restricted by the only arguments a Voortrekker seemed
able to understand; but the Boers in Natal had long before this proved
adepts at kindling similar bonfires, though without any such
provocation, and cannot therefore pose as martyrs over the burning of
their own farms, however deplorable that burning be.

[Sidenote: _Boer treachery and the white flag._]

At Belmont a young officer of the Guards named Blundell was killed by
a shot from a wounded Boer to whom he was offering a drink of water;
and about the same time another Boer hoisted a white flag, which our
men naturally mistook for a signal of surrender, but on