ica_]

We crossed the Riet and Modder drifts, and passed over the island where
the shells and bullets had been singing so shrilly on the day of the big
fight. When we passed the birds were singing instead, sending down with
the cooing pigeons a chorus from the trees. No one could tell us whether
or not the twelve miles to Jacobsdaal were free from the enemy; people
thought so, but they were not quite sure. So we rode along, observing
the dry veldt not without interest, but the lonely road heaved up and
down over the plain and revealed little sign of human occupation. Once
we passed a convoy carrying stores to the front, and at about the eighth
mile a little Boer camp of about a dozen tents, all deserted, and
apparently in haste, for there were half-emptied tins of provisions and
a few cooking utensils scattered about, and a dead horse lay by the
roadside. The heat was very great, and was only supportable when one
kept a drenched handkerchief under one's hat. Indeed, officers who had
come straight out from India protested that they never felt there
anything like the heat of that South African drought.

Jacobsdaal, a little white town or village near the river, appeared at
last from a ridge of the plain. It contained an inn, and the inn
contained cups of tea--a fact in connection with Jacobsdaal that I shall
long remember. In about an hour we were ready to look about a little,
but at headquarters we could only learn that the front had again moved
forward. We could not advance without transport, and we could get no
quarters, so we lay down in a stony field under the stars, and made a
poor shift at sleeping through a concert of complaining oxen and cocks
cheering all night long, with an undertone of rumbling wheels on the
distant road.

Next morning early I rode back to Modder, where I collected with
difficulty two sorry but useful nags and a Cape cart. On my way out I
passed a sentry, who brought me up with the usual cry, "Halt! who goes
there?"

"Friend," said I.

"Advance, friend, and give the countersign."

Now I did not know the countersign, and I had to tell him so. The
private soldier is sometimes zealous and often stupid, and occasionally
both; and in the pause that followed my answer I heard the click of his
rifle. In that second of time I remembered a story which I had heard the
day before of a sentry at Modder, who, when the guard came up in the
dark to relieve him, made the usual challenge. "It's only us,