o name! Soldiers on active service
seldom walk by sight. It is theirs always "to _trust_ and obey." Even
regimental officers seldom know precisely where their next
stopping-place will be, or what presently they will be called upon to
do. They often resemble the pieces on a chess board, which cannot see
the hand that moves them and cannot tell why this piece instead of
that is taken. To keep our adversaries if possible in the dark, we
have ourselves to dwell in darkness; but it is a source of sore
distress all the same. The troops hunger for information and seldom
get it; so, to supply the lack they invent it; and then scornfully
laugh at their own inventings. They would sooner travel anywhere than
"through worlds unknown"; and yet somehow that becomes for them the
commonest of all treks!

[Sidenote: _That Pom-Pom again!_]

While the afternoon was still new we heard on our near left the sound
of heavy shell firing; of which, however, the men took no more notice
than if they had been manoeuvring on Salisbury Plain. They marched on
as stolidly and cheerily as ever, chatting and laughing as they
marched. But presently there broke upon our ears the familiar sound of
the pom-pom, which months ago at the Modder had so shaken everybody's
nerves. Instantly there burst from the whole brigade a cry of
recognition, and every man instinctively perceived that some grim
business had begun. Another Sunday battle was raging just over the
ridge, and the rest of that day's march had for its accompaniment the
music of pom-poms, the rattle of rifle fire, and the thud of shells.
But at the close of the day an officer somewhat discontentedly
reported that "if" our artillery had only reached a certain place by a
certain time, something splendid would have happened. Many of our
rat-traps proved thus weak in the spring, and snapped too slowly,
specially on Sundays. Some such disastrous "if" seemed to spring up in
connection with most of our Sunday fights, though we still seem to
cling fondly to the belief that for fighting the Lord's battles the
Lord's day is of all days incomparably the best. It was on Sunday,
December 10th, the disastrous attack on Stormberg was delivered; and
on the evening of that same fatal Sunday the Highland Brigade marched
out of the Modder River Camp to meet their doom on Magersfontein.
Similarly on the night of Sunday, January 22nd, our men set out to
win, and lose, Spion Kop. The Paardeberg calamity, the costliest o