ey at a gallop. They were the
Yeomanry and mounted infantry, and numbered about 600. A more workmanlike
body of fellows it would be hard to find anywhere. They sat their horses
with easy confidence, and looked full of fight. Some of them carried their
rifles in their hands, muzzle upwards, the butt resting on the right thigh;
others had their guns slung across their shoulders. Group after group went
eastward, and the Boers knew nothing of the movement, because we were for
once employing their own tactics. I watched them out of sight, and then
turned my attention to the guns. There was very little time wasted by our
people. The gunners on our left flank poured in a heavy fire, the centre
took up the chorus, and the guns on the right repeated it. For miles along
their front the Boers must have been in deadly peril. We seldom saw them.
Now and again a group of roughly clad horsemen would flash into view and
disappear again as if by magic, with shells hurtling in their wake. Our
artillery could not locate their main force with any degree of certainty,
nor could they place us properly. They were not idle; their guns, of which
they had a decent number, sought for our position with dauntless
perseverance. Their shells soon began to drop amongst us, but they did no
harm at all. They fell close enough to our troops in many instances, but
they were so badly made that they would not explode, or if they did they
simply fizzed, and were almost as harmless as seidlitz powders.

The spiteful little pom-poms cracked away and kept us on the alert, until
one grew weary of the everlasting noise of cannon. At mid-day, tired of the
monotony of the game, I turned my horse's head towards camp, and, in
company with three other correspondents, soon sat down to a lunch of
mealies and boiled fowl; but we were destined not to enjoy that meal, for
before the first mouthful had left my plate there came a wailing howl
through the air, then a strange jarring noise, and a shell plunged into the
earth forty yards away from the tent. A few minutes later another visitor
from the same direction crashed on top of one of the transport waggons
within a stone's throw of our tent. That decided me; in a few seconds I had
scrambled up the side of a kopje, with the leg of a fowl in one hand and a
soldier's biscuit in the other. The shells had not burst, but no man could
say when one would, and I had no particular interest in regard to the
inside of any shell myself.