heard the Liverpools and Devons were likely to be
engaged in some feat of arms before midnight. So I stumbled out in the
dark along the Helpmakaar road, where those two fine regiments hold the
most exposed positions in camp, and I spent the greater part of the
night enjoying the hospitality of two Devon officers in their
shell-proof hut. Hour after hour we waited, recalling tales of Indian
life and Afridi warfare, or watching the lights in the Boer laagers
reflected on a cloudy sky. But except for a hot wind the night was
peculiarly quiet, and not a single shell was thrown: only from time to
time the sharp double knock of a rifle showed that the outposts on both
sides were alert.

_November 24, 1899._

Though there was no night attack a peculiar manoeuvre was tried, but
without success. On the sixty miles of line between here and Harrismith
the Boers have only one engine, and it struck some one how fine it would
be to send an empty engine into it at full speed from our side.
Accordingly, when the Free State train was seen to arrive at the Boer
rail-head some eight miles off, out snorted one of our spare
locomotives. Off jumped the driver and stoker, and the new kind of
projectile sped away into the dark. It ran for about two miles with
success, and then dashed off the rails in going round a curve. And there
it remains, the Boers showing their curiosity by prodding it with
rifles. Unless it is hopelessly smashed up, the Free State has secured a
second engine for the conveyance of its wives and daughters.

It is a military order that all cattle going out to graze on the flats
close to the town should be tended by armed and mounted drivers, but no
one has taken the trouble to see the order carried out. The Empire in
this country means any dodge for making money without work. All work is
left to Kaffirs, coolies, or Boers. Two hundred cattle went out this
morning beyond the old camp, accompanied only by Kaffir boys, who, like
all herdsmen, love to sleep in the shade, or make the woods re-echo
Amarylli's. Suddenly the Boers were among them, edging between them and
the town, and driving the beasts further and further from defence. The
Kaffirs continued to sleep, or were driven with the cattle. Then the
Leicester Mounted Infantry came galloping out, and, under heavy rifle
fire, gained the point of Star Hill, hoping to head the cattle back. At
once all the guns commanding that bit of grassy plain opened on
them--"Fait