s. The
gaudy flies and beetles that hum round one, whose noise is so much
louder and nearer than the crash of shells, they fill the foreground of
reality; it is not conceivable that the man with the pleasant face and
kindly eye who is directing a battery should be attempting the lives of
his fellows on so large a scale. Yet it is the scale that makes the
difference: a man who would abhor to kill another will with a smile
direct the machine that destroys twenty; and he, if anyone, has the
right to act upon this reduced estimate of the value of human life, for
he counts his own as lightly as that of his enemy.

But I have forsaken my narrative of the fight, and I am confronted by
the fact that there are five hours of fighting to be accounted for.

Five hours! Was it for so long that one listened to the voices of guns
and rifles? I can hardly believe it, and no bare catalogue of
manoeuvres seems to fill the gap. Our artillery positions were changed
several times, and when the convoy was crowded up into a fold of the
ground the shells no longer reached it, but continued to pound at
Colonel Peakman and his rear-guard. At about five o'clock, the Boers
having cleared from our left front, the convoy was pushed on in that
direction, and we penetrated as far as the position which had been held
by the Boer 15-pounder on our front. Just as we reached that point a
note was brought in from Colonel Plumer on the right reporting that he
was checked by the Boers at Israel's Farm, and accordingly the Horse
Artillery battery was formed up in front of the convoy, and with the two
pom-poms (which followed it about like small dogs barking after a big
one) shelled the farm, which the enemy evacuated. The sun began to sink,
the firing in our rear dropped and died out gradually, and with a few
shots from a Martini, fired by someone on the left who amused himself by
sniping the staff, the fight came to an end.

The fight was over, but as the convoy began to work its way cautiously
through the bush in the dusk we began to talk about it, and to fit it
together from the pieces of our individual experience. What had they
been trying to do? What had So-and-so been doing on the left? Had we
many casualties? Should we go on into Mafeking? Ah, that was the
question. But after about an hour's trekking through the bush it was
decided to halt, as someone reported that the enemy was entrenched ahead
of us. As for the fight, we did not then fully know what