from the near kopje.
There was only one thing to do, and that was to clear. Men and horses
appeared to be tumbling over on all sides, _Bete Noire_ swerved and I
fell off at the commencement of the fusillade. Arising, I doubled after
the sergeant whose horse had been knocked over by the first shot. After
going about a score of yards, I saw him dash into some bushes and
brambles, and following, slipped and rolled down the side of a gully
till I found myself scratched and torn sitting in a small rivulet at the
bottom with my pipe still in my mouth and my rifle, the barrel of which
was half choked with mud, in my hand. Looking round I saw two of our
fellows who had led their horses down from the other side. The place
could not have been improved on for cover, and the others falling in
with my _j'y suis, j'y reste_ remark, we sat down on the moist earth and
rocks and awaited developments, while the bullets whistled and buzzed
through the trees over our heads. Soon a volley whizzed over us from our
fellows who had succeeded in retiring and rallying behind a knoll some
distance back. This went on for a time, and at length the firing ceased.
A Fife man came up from lower down the gully; he had lost both horse and
rifle. However, crawling higher up, he found the latter in some bushes.
Presently a strange figure appeared, clad in khaki, with a dark blue
handkerchief tied over his head, a stick in his hand and leading a
horse. This proved to be another canny Scot. He had assumed this sort of
disguise and managed to secure a horse from near the laager. He was
rather apprehensive lest our own people should fire on him if they
spotted him. As he told us, on our enquiring, that there were two more
horses in the laager, though he advised us not to go out for them then,
the Fife man and I emerged from the donga and with a wary eye on the
treacherous kopjes entered the laager, which was only a score of yards
from our place of concealment, and to my great delight, of the two
horses quietly eating the forage there I recognised _Bete Noire_ as one.
Having now obtained horses, we leisurely proceeded to camp, calling on
the way at a few of the farmhouses and an orange grove we had passed on
our advance to the laager. The Boers had evidently cleared, or they
would have fired on us as we rode to the farms in full view of the
kopjes all the way. I cannot say that the simple Boer women seemed
pleased to see us when we rode up with smiling faces an