he edge of a low kopje about two miles in front
of us. One of us lost his head, and by speaking his fears communicated
the malady.

"There are the Boers," he said, "and if they haven't heard us yelling
they must have seen the light from our lanterns. The sooner we get out
of this the better."

There was nothing for it but to unload the waggon and carry the contents
up by hand, and this we did in an agony of excitement, staggering and
sweating up the steep path with portmanteaus, beds, valises, cases of
tinned provisions, kettles, bottles, saucepans, bags of harness, oats,
and guns. The empty waggon was easily drawn up to the top, and then we
must reload it again with a burden which seemed to have swollen
enormously since it was unpacked. We were working so frantically that we
had not even time to look at the kopje, but when at length I glanced at
it I saw that a strange thing had happened.

The light was now suspended about thirty feet above the hill.

Had they a balloon? Major Pollock and I gazed blankly for more than a
minute at that mysterious shining, which seemed to rise higher and
higher. More than a minute: just so long did it take us to remember that
Orion rises low in the west!

Now for what will remain with me as the crowning impression of this
journey. The road we took led through a fairly fertile country, and that
in the Free State means that there generally was grass instead of karoo.
There were many farms; we probably passed twenty in the course of ninety
miles. Each of those farms I visited, and at each stood aghast at the
ruin that had been wrought. Signs of looting one expected--the looting
of food-stuffs and livestock and necessaries; that, after all, is but a
kind of self-defence, and I suppose it is allowable to live upon an
enemy when one invades his land. But the destruction that had here taken
place was wanton and savage. One seemed to travel in the footsteps of
some fiend who had left his mark upon every home, destroying the things
that were probably most prized by the owners, and destroying with a
devilish ingenuity that had saved him all unnecessary labour. For
example, in one little farmhouse I found a flimsy, showy, London bedroom
suite that was clearly the pride of the establishment, with its wardrobe
and full-length mirror. The destroyer had smashed just what could not be
mended--the mirror and the marble top of the washstand. In another
cottage I found an old clock that had ticked, mo