a foaming, panting horse brought his burden
to where the burghers stood. The exhausted rider sank to the ground, and
men patted the neck and forehead of the quivering beast.

Down in the valley, near the spruit, the foreign military attaches in
uniforms quite distinct were watching the effect of the British artillery
on the saddle belonging to one of their number. "They will never hit it,"
volunteered one, as a shell exploded ten yards distant from the leathern
mark.

"They must think it is a crowd of Boers," suggested another, when a dozen
shells had fallen without injuring the saddle. Fifteen, twenty tongues of
dust arose, but the leather remained unmarred by scratch or rent, and the
attaches became the target of the heavy guns. "I am hit," groaned
Lieutenant Nix, of the Netherlands-Indian army, and his companions caught
him in their arms. Blood gushed from a wound in the shoulder, but the
soldier spirit did not desert him. "Here, Demange!" he called to the
French attache, "Hold my head. And you, Thompson and Allen, see if you
cannot bind this shoulder." The Norwegian and Hollander bound the wound as
well as they were able. "Reichman!" the injured man whispered, "I am going
to die in a few minutes, and I wish you would write a letter to my wife."
The American attache hastily procured paper and pencil, and while shells
and shrapnel were bursting over and around them the wounded man dictated a
letter to his wife in Holland. Blood flowed copiously from the wound and
stained the grass upon which he lay. He was pale as the clouds above him,
and the pain was agonising, but the dying man's letter was filled with
nothing but expressions of love and tenderness.

In the south-eastern part of the field a large party of cavalrymen was
speeding in the direction of Thaba N'Chu. On two sides of them, a thousand
yards behind, small groups of horsemen were giving chase. At a distance,
the riders appeared like ants slowly climbing the hillside. Now and then a
Boer rider suddenly stopped his horse, leaped to the ground, and fired at
the fleeing cavalrymen. A second afterwards he was on his horse again,
bending to the chase. Shot followed shot, but the distance between the
forces grew greater, and one by one the burghers turned their animals'
heads and slowly retraced their steps. A startled buck bounded over the
veld, two rifles were turned upon it, and its flight was ended.

[Illustration: CALLING FOR VOLUNTEERS TO MAN CAPTURED CANN