s in an artillery
duel, carried on by men who know the game, in hilly country. Once during
the afternoon the big gun belonging to the Boers became so troublesome that
half a dozen of ours were trained upon it, and for best part of an hour it
sounded as if a section of Sheol had visited the earth, so deadly was the
fire, so fierce the bursting missiles, that not a rock wallaby, crouching
in its hole, could have lived twenty minutes in the location. We heard no
more from that gun.

As I rode from position to position our fellows greeted me with the cry:
"Any news, sir? Heard if we are going to have a go at 'em with the spoons
(bayonets)?" One midget, a bugler kiddie, so small that an ordinary
maid-of-all-work could comfortably lay him across her knee and spank him,
yawned as he knelt in the grass, and desired to know when "we was goin' ter
'ave some real bloomin' fightin'. 'E was tired of them bloomin' guns, 'e
was; they made his carmine 'ead ache with their blanky noise. 'E didn't
call that fightin'; 'e called it an adjective waste of good hammunition. 'E
liked gettin' up to 'is man, fair 'nd square, 'nd knockin' 'ell out of
'im." He meant it, too, the little beggar, and I could not help laughing at
him when I considered that lots of the old fighting Boers I had seen could
have dropped the midget into their lunch bags, and not have noticed his
weight.

The Yeomanry did a lot of useful work, and are as eager for fight as a bull
ant on a hot plate. They are as good as any men I have seen in Africa, full
of ginger, good horsemen, wear-and-tear, cut-and-come-again sort of men.
They adapt themselves to circumstances readily, are jolly and good-humoured
under trying circumstances. Their officers are, as a rule, first-class
soldiers, equal to any emergency. On Tuesday the Boers kept their guns
going at a great rate, and we really thought that they had made up their
minds to see the thing right out at all costs. Personally I did not for a
moment think that they were ignorant of General French's rapid advance. I
do not believe it possible for any large body of hostile troops to move in
South Africa without the Boers being thoroughly cognisant of every detail
connected with the move, partly because they are the most perfect scouts in
the world, and partly because the scattered population on every hand is
positively favourable to them. Our artillery dropped a storm of shells
during the day, and that night it was whispered in camp t