me
waggon for the mess, and carefully searching a farmhouse belonging to
the Bezuidenhouts.

On the 14th there was a considerable amount of firing in the
neighbourhood, but nobody seemed to take much interest in it. As,
however, it resulted in the loss of twelve mules and some waggons, and
one gunner wounded, it is hoped that we did some damage in return.

On the 15th Colonel Hicks again took out a small force of all
arms,[14] for the purpose of getting in more stores, of burning
Bezuidenhout's farm (it being now clear he had murdered two
telegraphists), and to hold the kopjes we were on the 13th, while the
Somersetshire Light Infantry marched to join us from Pochefstroom. The
country was now thoroughly infested with Boers, who made some slight
effort to oppose Colonel Hicks. He very soon brushed them aside,
however, and, marching his force along two parallel ranges of low
hills, arrived at the place where we had bivouacked on the night of
the 12th-13th. Dinners were cooked on arrival before the companies
went out marauding. Whilst they were being prepared a cartridge went
off in one of the fires, and severely wounded one of the cooks, the
bullet penetrating his chest. This poor fellow was later on sent into
hospital at Krugersdorp, and, as the wound never improved, was
eventually invalided home. But the line was blown up just in front of
his train, and he was brought back to hospital. He soon began to
recover, and one day went wandering about without his hat, got
sunstroke, and died, one piece of bad luck on the top of another, and
a melancholy example of how 'when sorrows come, they come not single
spies, but in battalions.'

[Footnote 14: Royal Dublin Fusiliers, two guns, twenty-five
Yeomanry.]

A convoy under Captain H. W. Higginson, arrived at Frederickstadt at
this time, after having been considerably pestered by some Boers who
had shelled him with a nine-pounder Krupp, and severely wounded one of
our men. Luckily, the General had sent out a small force with two guns
to meet this convoy, or it might have had a very much worse time.

Next day Bezuidenhout's farm was duly burnt, and at 3 p.m. the force
started to march back to Frederickstadt, the Somersetshire Light
Infantry (wing) under Major Williams, with eighty prisoners, a large
number of refugees and waggons, starting an hour earlier, having of
course further to go. The march was not interfered with, and the force
reached its old quart