rs must be accepted
from those with whom we have a long and bitter quarrel, from those who
feel fiercely that we seek to do them cruel injustice. The dog who has
been whipped must be thankful for the bone that is flung to him.

When the prisoners captured after the destruction of the armoured train
had been disarmed and collected in a group we found that there were
fifty-six unwounded or slightly wounded men, besides the more serious
cases lying on the scene of the fight. The Boers crowded round, looking
curiously at their prize, and we ate a little chocolate that by good
fortune--for we had had no breakfast--was in our pockets, and sat down
on the muddy ground to think. The rain streamed down from a dark leaden
sky, and the coats of the horses steamed in the damp. 'Voorwaerts,' said
a voice, and, forming in a miserable procession, two wretched officers,
a bare-headed, tattered Correspondent, four sailors with straw hats and
'H.M.S. Tartar' in gold letters on the ribbons--ill-timed
jauntiness--some fifty soldiers and volunteers, and two or three
railwaymen, we started, surrounded by the active Boer horsemen. Yet, as
we climbed the low hills that surrounded the place of combat I looked
back and saw the engine steaming swiftly away beyond Frere Station.
Something at least was saved from the ruin; information would be carried
to the troops at Estcourt, a good many of the troops and some of the
wounded would escape, the locomotive was itself of value, and perhaps in
saving all these things some little honour had been saved as well.

'You need not walk fast,' said a Boer in excellent English; 'take your
time.' Then another, seeing me hatless in the downpour, threw me a
soldier's cap--one of the Irish Fusilier caps, taken, probably, near
Ladysmith. So they were not cruel men, these enemy. That was a great
surprise to me, for I had read much of the literature of this land of
lies, and fully expected every hardship and indignity. At length we
reached the guns which had played on us for so many minutes--two
strangely long barrels sitting very low on carriages of four wheels,
like a break in which horses are exercised. They looked offensively
modern, and I wondered why our Army had not got field artillery with
fixed ammunition and 8,000 yards range. Some officers and men of the
Staats Artillerie, dressed in a drab uniform with blue facings,
approached us. The commander, Adjutant Roos--as he introduced
himself--made a polite salu