e has a better right than they to help their
besieged comrades. Therefore the British officer has been for once
eclipsed, and the Colonials have had it all their own way. They hovered
and bustled about the club all the evening, taking leave of friends and
settling affairs. Some of them, one knew, would not return; and the
thought never fails to lend a strange kind of solemnity to the eve of a
big enterprise. "We're going to have a tough job," Colonel Peakman had
said, and men had looked grave for a moment, and then gone on talking
and laughing; but the prospect of serious fighting was displeasing to no
one. That is always the way; the excitements and not the horrors of a
battle are remembered; every man thinks that, though all the rest should
fall, he shall stand at the last; a sense of danger in the future is a
trumpet-call. And this is a noble part of warfare, to relieve the
distressed. A duty to be done at all costs; no questions of how or why,
but a clear lead.

There is something in the very words "flying column" to appease the
impatient; wings in the air, a swoop upon the victim. But it is merely a
bold figure of speech, and means in a case like this a rapid march of
twenty miles a day, mules instead of oxen, short rations, starving and
ruined horses. These flying cavalry columns and forced marches (the only
means by which the slippery Boer is to be cornered) demonstrate to how
great an extent this is a campaign of horses. Only the shortest horse
rations can be carried, and even at the best, a fortnight's continuous
work of this kind will so knock up a good horse that he must have three
months' rest before he can be of any further use. So your flying column
must start with fat horses, and use up their reserve of flesh, arriving
at the end with skeletons. It is dreadful enough to see a good beast,
and hundreds of good beasts, starving before your eyes and working hard
all the time; but it is only one of the many horrible and necessary
accompaniments of a war. What is asked of the horses on an expedition of
this kind is that they shall carry a man say twenty-five miles a day on
the march, and at the end perhaps carry him another thirty galloping
about in a fight; and no animal will stand more than a fortnight of
that, even on full rations. So the remount officers have been busy in
Kimberley, buying up every animal that looked as though he would last
for a fortnight; and the private buyer has been hard put to it to
p