the day. On one occasion the enemy got the
range of one of our guns with their pom-pom, and the way they dropped the
devilish little one-pound shells amongst those gunners was a sight to make
a man's blood run chill. The little iron imps fell between the men, grazed
the wheels, the carriage, and the truck of the gun; but

He, watching over Israel, slumbers not nor sleeps.

Nothing short of angel-wings could have kept our fellows safe. The men knew
their deadly peril, knew that the tip of the wand in the Death Angel's hand
was brushing their cheeks. One could see that they knew their peril. The
hard, firm grip of the jaw, the steady light in the hard-set eyes, the
manly pallor on the cheeks, all told of knowledge; yet not once did they
lose their heads. Each fellow stood there as bravely as human flesh and
blood could stand, and faced the iron hail with unblenching courage and
intrepid coolness. Had those khaki-clothed warriors been carved out of
bronze and moved by machinery, they could not have shown less fear or more
perfect discipline. The pom-pom is a gun which I have been told the British
War Office refused as a toy some two years back. I have had the doubtful
pleasure of being under its fire to-day, and all I can say is that I would
gladly have given my place to any gentleman in the War Office who happens
to hold the notion that the pom-pom is a toy.

Somehow the enemy got hold of the position where General Rundle and staff
were located, and all the afternoon they swept the plain in front of the
tents, the hills above, and the hill opposite with shells; but they could
not quite drop one in the little ravine itself. Half an hour before sundown
I had to ride with two other correspondents to headquarters to get a
dispatch away. We got across safely, but had not been there five minutes
before a grandly directed shell sent the General and his staff off the brow
of the hill in double quick time. We delivered our dispatches, and were
getting ready for a gallop over the quarter mile of veldt, when, _pom,
pom, pom, pom_, came a dozen one-pounders a few yards away right across
our track. It made our hearts sit very close to our ribs, but there was
nothing for it but to take our horses by the head, drive the spurs home,
and ride as if we were rounding up wild cattle. I want it to stand on
record that I was not the last man across that strip of veldt. There was
not much incident in the day's fighting; there seldom i