They did
not rush madly to the top and stand on the sky-line to be a mark for their
foes. When they almost touched the summit they paused, formed their broken
lines, and carefully and wisely topped the black brow; and as they did so
the Boer rifles spoke from a line of kopjes that lay behind the first. Then
our fellows dropped to cover, and sent an answer back that a duller foe
than the Boers would not have failed to understand. The Mauser bullets
splashed on the rocks, and spat little fragments of lead in all directions;
but few of them found a resting-place under those thin yellow jackets.
By-and-by the shells began to follow the Mauser's spiteful pellets, but the
shells were less harmful even than the little hostile messengers; for,
though well directed, the shells never burst--they simply shrieked, yelled,
and buried themselves. Our gunners got the ground they wanted, and soon gun
spoke to gun in their deep-throated tones of defiance. The Boers were not
hurting us; whether we were injuring them we could not tell.

In the meantime our whole transport came safely inside a little
semi-circular valley, and arranged itself with almost ludicrous precision.
The nigger drivers chaffed one another as the shells made melody above
their heads, and made the air fairly dance with the picturesque terms of
endearment they bestowed upon their mules, between the welts they bestowed
with their long two-handed whips. When two of their leaders jibbed and
refused to budge, they howled and called them Mr. Steyn and Ole Oom Paul;
but when they got down solid to their work they laughed until even their
back teeth were showing beyond the dusky horizon of their lips, and endowed
them with the names of Cecil Rhodes and Mistah Chamberlain, which may or
may not appear complimentary to the owners of those titles--anyway, the
mules did not seem to be offended. One thing was made manifest to me then,
and confirmed later on, viz., the nigger is a game fellow; give him a
little excitement, and he is full of "devil"--it's the doing of deeds in
cold blood that finds him out. After seeing the way the transport was
handled, I moved along to look at the ambulance arrangements, and found
them practically perfect. The medical staff was cool and collected, the
helpers were alert and attentive to business; the waggons, with their
conspicuous red crosses, were all well and carefully placed--though in such
a fight it was a sheer impossibility to dispose them so