ear and musical notes when they pass high overhead, but
with a sharp and bitter ping when they pass close.

But the best sight of all is to see our gunners going out of action.
They go in at a gallop, and retire at a walk. There is something so
delightfully contemptuous of the enemy's marksmanship in this. One day
outside Ladysmith was typical. A couple of batteries went out with
some cavalry for a small reconnaissance in force, located the Boer
gun, and quickly drove the gunners to cover. The vultures had gathered
as usual at the sound of their dinner-gong, but there was no fight,
and soon the guns limbered up, and turned back across the plain.
Immediately the Boer gunners were back at their gun, and, serving it
with wonderful rapidity, sent shell after shell at our retiring
batteries. The first was just short, then the two next went over; but
on they went quietly, never breaking out of the walk. Then a shell
fell between a gun and a limber, and did not burst. The great vultures
wheeled and circled lower, waving their shadows below them on the
parched plain; but there was no dinner for them that day--not even a
horse was hit. And so always, when these field guns stop barking and
limber up, it reminds one of pulling a dog out of a fight by the tail
as they are dragged slowly, as if reluctantly, away; while the drivers
don't bother to look round, and don't look a bit like heroes full of
courage at the magnificent price of one and twopence a day.

Rattle of iron on stones--clear, sharp words of command--clink of
breech action--coldness of iron will warming the steel throat that
voices its thoughts--hard, scientific, inhumanly mechanical; yet there
is a subtle, attractive feeling that draws together the living
elements that serve the gun. I barely escaped being knocked down one
day by an artillery horse galloping furiously over the veldt. He had
got badly torn by a shell; wild with the pain, he raced around until
exhausted, and then, managing to stagger up to a gun, fell dead, with
his head against the trail.

V

IN THE TENTS OF THE BOERS

Late in the afternoon of a day in the early part of last December I
had ridden out from our lines in Ladysmith towards a certain position
usually occupied by a Boer outpost, trusting by my going out
deliberately and unarmed to get one of the men there to have a talk,
just as one of the Lancers had a few days previously. For some time we
had been on short rations of "copy" a