n pitch darkness--the
street full of waggons (each with its sixteen oxen), blundering about,
the waggon in front of one suddenly stopping, and the waggon behind
coming on--cries, curses, hailings, and railings of the drivers and
soldiers--everyone trying to find his camp or his waggons or his horses,
and not a light to be seen. And, in spite of it all, order emerged from
the chaos; brigade signals flashing, camps pitched, pickets posted to
keep watch over us all night, fires lighted, stations allotted; and
presently "last post" and "lights out," and in spite of the bellowing
oxen, rest.

XVII

UNDER THE RED CROSS FLAG

There was a burial party going out to Spitz Kop early the next morning,
and Major Pollock and I had leave to go with it. No one was armed, the
ambulance being preceded by an orderly carrying the P.M.O.'s bath-towel.
When we came near to the Boer pickets we rode on with the bath-towel,
while the Red Cross flag waved over the ambulance; and had come quite
close before we distinguished the two figures sitting amongst the large
brown boulders of the hill.

They both spoke English and treated us with civility. They were both
farmers from the neighbourhood of Boshof, and had a keen appetite for
news of the town. We were soon deep in an examination of their
weapons--one of them had a beautiful Mauser sporting rifle,
hair-sighted, of which he was extremely proud; altogether we had quite a
friendly chat. They gave us the best information they could as to the
whereabouts of our dead and wounded, but it seemed that the Boer
ambulance party had been out working all night, and had recovered nearly
all the wounded as well as the bodies of two dead.

We went on behind the kopje into a level space surrounded by ridges, and
as we advanced (the bath-towel well to the fore) mounted men began to
appear from behind the ridges. First by twos and threes, then by sixes
and dozens, from north and south and east and west the black figures
came cantering towards us, until our little party was surrounded by, I
suppose, three or four hundred mounted men. The babel of talk was
deafening; everyone had something to say about the fight of yesterday;
and in addition to that it was easily apparent that merely as Englishmen
we were objects of absorbing interest to these pastoral Free Staters. I
know that my tobacco-pouch was empty in about two minutes, and I
presently fell into more particular conversation with the Boer doctor