y meant nothing else than
butchering men like sheep, quietly, methodically, and without any pomp
or circumstance.

"A sad sight!" I remarked to the British chaplain.

"They only did their duty," was his unfeeling reply. Duty! Is it any
man's duty to kill and be killed without knowing why? For what did these
poor Lancashire lads know or care about the merits of the war?

"What do you think the confounded English have had the cheek to do?"
asked a friend. "You know they always keep our wounded as prisoners when
they get the chance. Well, this morning their ambulance came here and
coolly carted away all their wounded! Louis Botha says they might have
asked permission first. I should have turned a Maxim on them!"

We went down to the laager, found the line in order, and wired the news
of the victory to Pretoria. I had not been able to get into
communication the day before because the chief had taken a hand in the
fighting instead of attending to the instrument.

Believing that Warren would make another attempt, this time more to our
right, we shifted the office a few miles in that direction and pitched
our tent next to a farmhouse, which was being utilised as a hospital.

GLORIOUS WAR

Late that evening I heard someone outside the tent asking where the
hospital was. It was my father. We had no idea of meeting each other
here, as I had parted from him in Johannesburg before the war began,
when he had no intention of going to Natal. He himself had been under
the impression that I was still at Ladysmith.

He told me he had come to see my young cousin, Johannes, who had been
wounded on Spion Kop the day before. We walked over to the hospital. The
wounded lad, a frail boy of fifteen, looked terribly exhausted lying
there on the floor, his left arm completely shattered.

"We were two together," he said, "myself and another boy. We crept
closer and closer to one of the small sangars, firing into it as we
crept, until there was only one Englishman left alive in it. He called
out 'Water!' and I ran to give him my flask. When I got close to him he
pointed his gun at me and fired. I sprang aside, and the bullet
ploughed up my arm. My chum then shot him dead. Our doctor was too busy
with the English officers to attend to me, so I fear I shall lose my
arm."

Poor child! his fear was only too well founded. His arm was amputated,
after which he went to his uncle's farm to recuperate. When the British
arrived there he w