case of a stray shot"; and then I
turned down the light, and was soon in the land of dreams.

The much-dreaded night passed quite quietly, and in the morning the
carriage windows were thickly coated with several degrees of frost. The
engines of the Netherlands Railway, always small and weak, were at that
time so dirty from neglect and overpressure during the war, that their
pace was but a slow crawl, and uphill they almost died away to nothing.
However, fortunately, going south meant going downhill, and we made good
progress over the flat uninteresting country, which, in view of recent
events, proved worthy of careful attention. Already melancholy landmarks
of the march of the great army lay on each side of the line in the shape
of carcasses of horses, mules, and oxen. Wolvehoek was the first stop.
Here blue-nosed soldiers descended from the railway-carriages in varied
and weird costumes, making a rush with their billies[40] for hot water,
wherewith to cook their morning coffee, cheerily laughing and cracking
their jokes, while shivering natives in blankets and tattered overcoats
waited hungrily about for a job or scraps of food. After leaving
Wolvehoek, we entered on Commandant De Wet's hunting-ground and the
scene of his recent exploits. There, at almost every culvert, at every
ganger's house, were pickets of soldiers, all gathered round a crackling
fire at that chill morning hour; and at every one of these posts freshly
constructed works of sandbags and deep trenches were in evidence to
denote that their sentry work was no play, but grim earnest.

We next crossed the Rhenoster Spruit, and passed the then famous
Rhenoster position, so formidable even to the unskilled eye, and where
my military friends told me the Boers would have given much trouble, had
it not been for the two outspread wings of the Commander-in-Chief's
army. A little farther on, the deviation line and the railway-bridge
were pointed out as one of the many triumphs of engineering skill to be
seen and marvelled at on that recently restored line. The achievements
of these lion-hearted engineers could not fail to impress themselves
even on a civilian. Many amongst them were volunteers, who had
previously occupied brilliant positions in the great mining community in
Johannesburg, and whose brains were the pride of a circle where
intellectual achievements and persevering resource commanded at once the
greatest respect and the highest remuneration. Some of