started to climb the heights and cover the "boys" if
necessary. Soon a rifle report was heard, and then another. The guides
said it was a picket of ours firing on us in mistake from the kopje on
the left, and suggested that one of us should work round and let them
know who we were. Most of us argued that the report was a Mauser one.
However, the guides prevailed, and I was deputed for the job, when the
"boys" came running in breathless and told us pantingly that Boers had
been sniping them. So seeing that it would be impossible under the
circumstances to lift the cattle, we retired on our horses, mounted and
moved off. And then the beggars, who had evidently moved up closer, gave
it to us fairly warm, and we had to open out and break into a gallop in
the direction of the camp. We were about clear of the Mausers and riding
through some bush, when, suddenly above a stone wall not a hundred yards
in front of us, helmets and heads appeared, also glistening rifle
barrels, which pointed, oh no, not on the kopje behind, but on us. [This
is where the civilian clothes and shirt sleeves came in.] An officer
shouted "Don't fire! Don't fire!!! Down with those rifles." This order
was obeyed reluctantly, then "Who are you?" "Friends! Yeomanry!" "What
Yeomanry?" "Sussex." "All right." They proved to be a picket of the
Northumberland Fusiliers. Then we crossed a drift, our horses nearly
having to swim, and finally reached camp. This morning (Saturday,
September 8th) our squadron and the Fifes had to go back about
half-a-dozen miles to meet Ridley. Our troop acted as advance party. It
was rather an interesting sight to see the two parties meet; the advance
of Ridley's force was Kitchener's Horse. When we met, we halted and
chatted, waiting for orders. As we did so, the merry snipers started a
desultory fire, which gradually became more rapid. Several suspected
houses in the vicinity, whose owners had, as usual, taken the oath of
neutrality and broken it--_Punica Fides_ will have to give way to a new
phrase, Boer Faith--were then burnt down. War is not altogether a game,
it has its stern aspect. The women and children were loud in their
lamentations as the red flames blazed and the dense smoke rolled away on
the fresh breeze which was blowing. They cursed us and wept idle tears,
but they had their own dear friends, husbands and sons, to thank after
all, as nearly all the sniping in this lovely valley is being done by
the farmers who live