ivable that this may have an effect
like some horrible nightmare amid all the glare of daylight on some
minds. The man is held there in terror by the worse terror of running
away; a comrade on his right grows callous by waiting, and to relieve
the wants of nature raises himself up and gets hit; the thirst of
another overcomes him, and he runs to fill his water-bottle and falls;
and all day long, through heat and hunger and thirst, he is held there
in a vice of increasing terror, like a child left in the dark denied
the language of a cry. It takes strong nerves to stand that strain, we
all must admit who have any personal knowledge of what it means; and
what a gathering up of the reins of self-control we often experience!
What wonder, then, that weak nerves cannot stand it, but sometimes
break down under the strain? Such a collapse has a way of being
regarded as the uttermost sign of abject cowardice, which by no means
follows--nervous men are frequently the bravest of the brave. The
refinement of modern shooting-irons seems to call for a certain
corresponding refinement of courage--the cold, steel-like courage that
can stand and wait, and win by the waiting of their stand.

III

ELANDSLAAGTE

Up before daybreak, but still not early enough, as the Imperial Light
Horse and a battery of Natal Artillery had already gone towards
Elandslaagte, about sixteen miles from here, at three o'clock.

It was bitterly cold when we started, and for a couple of hours of our
journey. About half a mile beyond Modder's Spruit Station we met a man
walking along the road in his socks, carrying a pair of heavy boots.
He told us he had just escaped from the Boers, after having been, with
thirty other miners, their prisoner since Thursday last. His feet were
sore from running in the big boots, and he was nearly exhausted.

The Boers had looted the stores, station, and mining office at
Elandslaagte, and in addition had looted a lot of luggage taken in
the captured train. The evening before he had seen a drunken Boer
strutting about dressed in a suit of evening clothes belonging to an
English officer. There were a lot of low-class Boers amongst the eight
hundred there who spent riotous evenings, getting drunk on the liquor
found in the stores; but others of them seemed decent sort of farmers,
and all the prisoners were very well treated by General Koch, and were
allowed to go about on parole, being merely required to report
themselve