a kind of dignity. We asked who he was. He said: "I am Kock, the father
of Judge Kock. No, I am not the commandant. _He_ is the commandant." But
the old man was wrong. He himself had been in command, though instead of
fighting he had read the Bible and prayed. One bullet had passed through
his shoulder, another through his groin. So he lay still and read no
more. Near him was a boy with a hand just a mixture of shreds and bones
and blood. But he too was very quiet, and only asked for a handkerchief
to bind it together. Others were gradually dying. Many were not found
till daylight. The dead of both sides lay unburied till Monday.

In the mud and stones just above the captured guns, General French stood
giving directions for the bivouac, and dictating a message to Sir George
White praising the troops, especially the infantry who had been
commanded by Colonel Ian Hamilton. The assemble kept sounding over the
hill, and Gordons tried to sift themselves from Manchesters, and Light
Horse from Devons. All were shouting and questioning and calling to each
other in the dark. Soon they settled down; the Boers had left scores of
saddles, coats, and Kaffir blankets, provisions, too, water-bottles,
chickens, and in one case a flask of carbolic disinfectant, which a
British soldier analysed as "furrin wine." So, on the whole, the fellows
made themselves fairly comfortable in spite of the cold and wet. Then I
felt my way down over the rocks, taking care, if possible, not to tread
on anything human, and then sought out the difficult twelve-mile track
to Ladysmith over the veldt and hills, lighted towards midnight by a
waning and clouded moon.

CHAPTER V

BATTLE OF TINTA INYONI

LADYSMITH, _October 27, 1899_.

If you want to "experience a shock," as the doctors say, be with the
head of a column advancing leisurely along a familiar road only six
miles from camp, and have a shell flung almost at your feet from a
neighbouring mountain top. That was my fortune about the breakfast time
of peaceable citizens last Tuesday morning. A squadron of Lancers and
some of the Natal Carbineers were in front. Just behind me a battery was
rumbling along. A little knot of the staff was close by, and we were all
just preparing to halt. We stood on the Newcastle road, north of the
town, not far from our first position at the Elands Laagte battle of the
Saturday before. The road is close to the railway there, and I was
watching an engine