here are no
comforts, very little food, and the medicine has run short; to see that
hospital steadily grow,--men on the bed-cots, men lying between them; to
watch men struggling in the agonies of the disease, with dying men close
beside them; to have to step over one prostrate figure to get to the
side of some dying man and whisper words of comfort and prayer, while
shrieks of agony come from either side; to feel weary, becoming
gradually weaker through want of food, to know that ere long one's own
turn would come, and the inexorable disease would claim its victim; to
go through the same daily round of loathsome duty, and find in it one's
highest privilege; to endure, to suffer, to dare, to sympathise, to
soothe, to help; evening by evening to listen to the last requests of
dying men, and morning by morning to lay them in their hastily dug
graves--all this requires heroism compared with which the heroism of
battle pales into insignificance. We do not wonder that the Intombi
chaplains were mentioned in despatches, and that the love of the
soldier goes out to these devoted men.

As Mr. Watkins felt it his duty to remain in Ladysmith Town with his
men, Mr. Murray had charge of the Wesleyans in Intombi, as well as of
the Presbyterians. But, as a matter of fact, in face of such stern
realities as disease and death, all names and sects were forgotten. The
chaplains were all brethren, the men were all human beings for whom
Christ died, and each did his best for all. Open-air parade services
were tried for the convalescents, but it soon became impossible to hold
them. The chaplains went round the marquees and prayed with and talked
to the men. The Church of England chaplains had Holy Communion every
Sunday morning, and for one month, until sickness prevented, there was
daily Communion.

By-and-by the list of dangerous cases became so large that it was
impossible to go round in one visit. Enfeebled by work and want, the
chaplains struggled from bed to bed, until often they were too weak to
finish their task. Their only relief was to get an occasional run into
Ladysmith, and to that they looked forward as a haven of rest. What
mattered if shells did fly about!--they had an occasional stray bullet
at Intombi too--and shells, much as they were dreaded, were better than
enteric.

It was during one of these occasional breaks that the four Church of
England chaplains were having lunch at the Ladysmith Hotel, when a shell
burst rig