s well as food. I rode along the
edge of an empty spruit, into the bed of which my spurs would have
propelled my horse in the unlikely event of a shot being my first
greeting. The spot where I expected to see the outpost was where the
veldt, from being bare, commenced to be thickly covered with mimosa
trees; but there was no one there--no living thing, except a little
springbuck that started up as I arrived, bounding away over the long
tufted grass, its little white rump showing like the flutter of a
girl's petticoat. It stopped and, turning its pretty head, regarded me
with great brown frightened eyes, as if I were the first human
apparition to invade its sylvan solitude. It was clear there were no
Boers immediately about; equally clear that this was a great chance
unexpectedly offered of having a try to get south to Clery's or
Buller's force, and be the first white man to bring the news from
Ladysmith out of the beleaguered town. I was already started on the
shortest route to the Tugela. I went on, and for about a mile no sign
whatever of the enemy, and I thought of the theory more than once put
forward that we were all the time being besieged by a ridiculously
small but extremely mobile force. It was not until I was well in
between Bulwana and Lombard's Kop that I caught sight between the
trees of a laager of miscellaneous tents on the lower slope of the
latter. Dismounting and going cautiously, I passed it and passed a man
cutting wood, who was fortunately too industriously intent on his work
to notice me. Bearing to the right, I was soon south of Bulwana and
past the Boer lines. The rest would be comparatively easy, as an open
stretch of country lay before me, where darkness would soon give me
cover now that I had reached the edge of the trees. While waiting, I
heard a voice behind me shout something in Dutch. Looking round, I
found a Boer covering me with his rifle at ten yards, and the dream of
a journalistic "beat," as they call it in America, vanished as he
escorted me to his field cornet's camp. After some questioning by the
field cornet, they gave me supper of meat, bread, and coffee--the
bread arrived down every morning by train from Dundee, where it was
baked by a Frenchman at what a short time ago had been our bakery.
Then, as we sat round the big tent smoking, I gradually learned from
them the first news of the outer world and the war, after being five
weeks cut off in Ladysmith. As a running commentary on