ken without the definite
promise of a fight on the following day. Men and horses dog tired,
yearning for sleep; the hundred and one irregularities which would
find no place in daylight. The weary waiting that intervals may be
corrected, the hitch with the advance-guard, the difficulty of
loading the supply-waggons. The irritability of the chief, growing in
intensity as he strikes match after match against his watch dial.
Semi-mutinous resistance of orders on the part of Irregulars;
lamentations from the major of the battery, whose horses have been
standing hooked-in for the last half hour. How impossible it all
seems,--how heartbreaking; yet everything shakes down eventually, and
the great dark caterpillar, bristling with armed men like a
woolly-bear, creeps forward into the veiled uncertainty of night.

The advance-guard has moved off, the brigadier is just waiting to see
the baggage fairly started, when a sudden spark gleams out from a
knoll above the camp which the falling-in night picquet has just
evacuated. A bullet whirrs noisily overhead. "Martini," conjectures
the brigadier. "I wonder what that means!" Two minutes later another
spark flashes out from the same spot, and a leaden messenger buries
itself with a skirr and a thud, within ten yards of the little group
of officers.

"Not bad for a chance shot--we'll see if they are going to
persevere!" Swish, came a third shot singing away harmlessly overhead.

"Sniping!" said the brigadier. "I would hang that beast if I could
catch him. Look here, gallop down to the officer in command of the
rear-guard and tell him to send a couple of quick-witted fellows to
stalk that sniper. I will give five pounds if he is brought in alive."

The messenger galloped out into the darkness, and as the last of the
waggon transport turned into the right track, the staff cantered
northwards in the direction of the head of the column, reckless of the
solitary bullets which at intervals whistled through the still night
air.

Considerable tension attaches to the head of a night-marching column,
especially when moving through an unreconnoitred country. And in spite
of the little text-books with smart covers, it is more often in
unreconnoitred country that the soldier is called upon to operate than
otherwise. Consequently the Intelligence officer forgot all about the
sniping incident, and busied himself with being ready to answer the
many queries of an imaginative major in command of th