on both
flanks. Have not been molested." Here the signaller broke down.

"Something has gone wrong, sir. They have gone out!"

For a moment the light again twinkled in frenzied haste. "Breaking
station--shooting!" then all was dark.

"I think, sir," ventured the signaller, "that they have broken up the
station because some one was shooting at them."

"Very likely. Here, Mr Intelligence, just you get on your horse and
gallop up to the main body. Tell Colonel Washington that I want to
send an officer on to the advance squadron, now twenty-five miles in
front of us: would he be so kind as to send one back to me. Don't
waste time!"

Down the steep hillside, threading through the rumbling mule-trollies,
with their teams zigzagging in the throes of a heavy drift, and their
groups of chattering drivers, whose black polished faces are aglow
with negroid bonhomie. "_Aihu, Aihu. Bom-Bom. Scellum_[13] Oom Paul.
_Scellum_ President Steyn." Then a crack from the great 12-foot
whip-thong, sounding like a well-timed volley. At the bottom of the
incline a small spruit. There on the bank stands Willem the Zulu. A
dilapidated coaching-beaver on his head. A square foot of bronzed
chest showing between the white facings of an open infantry tunic. His
nether limbs encased in a pair of dragoon overalls, with vivid green
patches on the knees. Was there ever such a picture of savage good
nature and childishness as the giant Willem swung the great bamboo
haft of his whip above his head, and chided or exhorted his team
straining in the drift! "Come up, Buller," to a favourite ass.
"Kruger, you _scellum_," to a refractory lead, while the great thong
cracked like a pistol as the leather hissed between the culprit's ears
without touching a hair on its hide.

Splash through the drift. "D--n it, sir, can't you let a horse water
in peace." And as you feel the springy Karoo beneath your animal's
stride, you catch the lament of some officer whom you have hustled in
the drift.

That first gallop in the morning! Although we who have been out here
for months may hate the very mention of the veldt, yet if we live to
go home we shall live to regret that we ever left it. We may curse its
boundless wastes--curse that endless rise which so often has lain
between our tired bodies and the evening bivouac; but the curses will
die over the rail of an ocean steamer and with the fading lights of
Cape Town, while the memory of the exhilarating air, the freedo