y and presently I was fast asleep.

"Wake up! They're coming round to cut us off. We must clear!" And away
went my friend.

Knowing their horses would soon out-distance my heavily laden pony, and
trusting to get away unobserved, I took his bridle and led him away. For
about twenty yards all went well. Then suddenly there broke loose over
us the thickest storm of lead I ever wish to experience. Whether it was
a Maxim or not I could not say, but it seemed to me as if the whole
British army was bent on my destruction. Like raindrops on a dusty road
the bullets struck around me. The pony snorted, shivered, and sometimes
stood stock still. I jerked the bridle savagely and struggled on,
without the slightest hope of escaping, and thinking what a cruel shame
it was that I should be shot at like a deer. Finally the shelter of a
dry watercourse was reached. Following this for some distance, I
encountered another party of our men, to whom I handed my charge, too
shaken to repeat the experiment. The firing now slackened off, and I
returned to my chief, full of mortification over my failure.

It was evident the hill would not be taken that afternoon, so we
returned to our tent, intending to come back the next morning. Late that
evening, however, Colonel Villebois passed and told us our forces had
been withdrawn, General Botha being ordered to Colenso, where Buller had
made a feint attack to help Ladysmith.

Our struggle was therefore a failure, but it had not been made in vain,
since it proved once again that we also could storm a fortified hill,
and fight a losing fight--the hardest fight of all.

SPION KOP

Something peculiar began to be observed about the British camp at
Chieveley. The naval guns still flashed by day, the searchlight still
signalled to Ladysmith of nights, the tents still glistened in the sun,
but the soldiers, where were they?

Marching somewhere up the river. Buller meant to try his luck once more.
More than one of our present leaders had in former days fought by
Buller's side against the Zulus. They knew him tenacious, able; no mere
theorist. It was here in Natal, under their eyes, that he had gained his
Victoria Cross--the same priceless bit of bronze that young Roberts had
just died to win; and they felt that to ward off his second blow would
ask all our energy and cost many useful lives.

The commandoes on our side of the river were extended to keep pace with
the enemy's movements on the o