he decided to enlist in the Boer army. Before
parting the two made an agreement that neither should make the other
prisoner in case they met. At Spion Kop, King captured his friend unawares
and, after a brief conversation and a farewell grasp of the hand, King
shot him dead. King took part in almost every one of the Natal battles,
and when there was no fighting to do he passed the time away by such
reckless exploits as going within the British firing-line at Ladysmith to
capture pigs and chickens. He bore a striking resemblance to Napoleon I.,
and loved blood as much as the little Corsican. When the Scouts went out
from Brandfort in April and killed several of the British scouts, King
wept because he had remained in camp that day and had missed the
opportunity of having a part in the engagement.

The lieutenant of the Scouts was John Shea, a grey-haired man who might
have had grand-children old enough to fight. Shea fought with the Boers
because he thought they had a righteous cause, and not because he loved
the smell of gunpowder, although he had learned to know what that was in
the Spanish-American war. Shea endeavoured to introduce the American army
system into the Boer army, but failed signally, and then fought side by
side with old takhaars all during the Natal campaign. He was the guardian
of the mascot of the scouts, William Young, a thirteen-year-old American,
who was acquainted with every detail of the preliminaries of the war.
William witnessed all but two of the Natal battles, and several of those
in the Free State, and could relate all the stirring incidents in
connection with each, but he could tell nothing more concerning his
birthplace than that it was "near the shore in America," both his parents
having died when he was quite young. Then there was Able-Bodied Seaman
William Thompson, who was in the _Wabash_ of the United States Navy, and
served under MacCuen in the Chinese-Japanese war. Thompson and two others
tried to steal a piece of British heavy artillery while it was in action
at Ladysmith, but were themselves captured by some Boers who did not
believe in modern miracles. Of newspaper men, there were half a dozen who
laid aside the pen for the sword. George Parsons, a _Collier's Weekly_
man, who was once left on a desert island on the east end of Cuba to
deliver a message to Gomez, several hundred miles away; J.B. Clarke, of
Webberville, Michigan, who was correspondent for a Pittsburg newspaper
whene