ing our
own, stuck in a drift some way back, so that we had no tea, and the
drivers no blankets to sleep in (gunners carry their kit on the
gun-carriages and limbers and ammunition-waggons). However, I got up
at midnight and found the kit-waggon had arrived, and got mine; also
some tea from a friendly cook of the 38th, so I did well.

_August 17._--Reveille at 4.15. Started at five, and to our surprise
marched back about a mile and a half. Picked up the rest of our buck
waggons on the way, and halted for a hurried breakfast at dawn. Then
marched through what I hear is called Wonderboom Port, a narrow nek
between two hills, leading due north, to judge by the sun. We forded a
girth-deep river on the way. The nek led out on to a long, broad
valley, about six miles in width, bordered on the Pretoria side with a
line of steep kopjes, and on the north by low brown hills. Long yellow
grass, low scrub, and thorny trees, about the size of hawthorns; no
road, and the ground very heavy.

_(2 P.M.)_--We are halted to feed. There is some firing on the left
front. Had a good sleep for an hour. Later on we went into action, but
never fired, and in the evening marched away behind a hill and camped.
The Wilts and Montgomery Yeomanry are with us, and at the common
watering-place, a villainous little pool, with a steep, slippery
descent to it, I recognized Alexander Lafone, of the latter corps. I
walked to their lines after tea, found him sergeant of the guard, and
we talked over a fire. We had last seen one another as actors in some
amateur theatricals in a country town at home. They had been in action
for the first time that day, and had reported 500 Boers close by. A
warm night. Quite a change of season has set in.

_August 18._--A big gun was booming not far off, during breakfast. A
hot, cloudless day. Started about 8.30, and marched till twelve,
crossing the valley diagonally, till we reached some kopjes on the
other side. A pom-pom of ours is now popping away just ahead, and
there is a good deal of rifle-fire.

_(3.15.)_--The old music has begun, a shell coming screeching overhead
and bursting behind us. We and the convoy were at once moved to a
position close under a kopje between us and the enemy. Shells are
coming over pretty fast, but I don't see how they can reach us here. A
most curious one has just come sailing very slowly overhead, and
growling and hiccoughing in the strangest way. I believe it was a
ricochet, having fi