Not wanting opprobrious epithets,
my steed remained nameless for the first week. I casually thought of
calling him "Black Bess," but "he" is not a mare, and I thought it
would be inappropriate. At length I struck what I consider a good name.
_Bete Noire_, my _bete noire_, and so I called him, and as he is by no
means averse to eating through his head rope when picketed, I find that
the curtailment to "gnaw" is satisfactory enough as far as names go. Now
you know something about my friend the horse, so to proceed. We moved
out of our old camp on the Saturday afternoon in question, through
Pretoria to another on the other side, where we joined General Mahon's
crowd, amongst whom was the Imperial Light Horse, Australians, Lumsden's
Horse, New Zealanders, "M" Battery R.H.A., and a squadron or so of the
18th Hussars, sometimes known as "Kruger's Own," being the captured
warriors of Elandslaagte. On Sunday we had some good luck in the ration
line, the 72nd and 79th Squadrons of I.Y., the Roughriders, had just
come up and joined us, and had been served with innumerable delicacies,
with which they did not know what to do, as they had orders that they
could only take a certain quantity with them. No sooner did we hear of
their embarrassment than, as the wolf swept down on the fold, we swept
down upon them, and most sympathetically relieved them of tins of
condensed milk, jams, and such like, and what we could not eat we
managed to carry away with us for another day. On Monday our general
advance commenced. It was a grand sight, after marching a few miles, to
come on French's camp and see the lancers, mounted infantry and guns
moving out in the early morning. A few miles on and our friend the enemy
opened fire on us, or, rather, on a kopje on which we had just placed a
4.7. They sent a beautiful shot from their "Long Tom," which pitched
within a few yards of where the gun had just been placed and close by
Generals French and Mahon. We Mounted Infantry remained behind the kopje
and dozed and lunched while desultory shells now and again whizzed over
us. Beyond this, nothing occurred worth mentioning. On Tuesday morning
we went out a few miles and took up a position to prevent the Boers
retreating in our direction. We had to collect stones and form miniature
sangars. We waited there nearly all day, during which I perused "In
Memoriam," and posed for a libellous sketch done by our troop officer,
entitled "An Alert Vedette." The laughte