, after telling some soldiers who had come up
from General Coke's Brigade in response to my request what to do to
right the pont, I drew up my remaining gun and wagons on the south
bank, and put the gun which was already across the river out of action
under a guard below the river bank in case of any Boer swoop on it.

_Wednesday, 28th February._--A red-letter day. Before daylight I set
my men to work to bale out the pont and to get my second gun across
the river with 100 rounds of ammunition, and also off-loaded and got
over a spare wagon and 250 rounds more. All this was a terrible hard
job; two empty military wagons trying to get across the drift at this
spot were carried away before my eyes and only picked up a quarter of
a mile down stream. At 11 a.m. I was able at last to march on to join
General Coke's Brigade in Colenso, and to get my guns into position. I
was very exhausted and was feeling rather ill, but I was able to dine
with the General under a tarpaulin and had much talk over old times in
the Mauritius in 1898. It was a very wet evening, and my men who were
bivouacking with no tents had a bad time of it. The sudden cessation
of firing most of the day seemed to foreshadow some change at the
front, and we found afterwards to our joy that a detachment of the
Imperial Light Horse under Lord Dundonald had ridden into Ladysmith at
6 p.m. unmolested by the Boers who were reported to be in full
retreat.[3]

[Footnote 3: The number of killed, wounded, and missing in
the Natal Field Force, in the operations thus briefly alluded
to, from Colenso (15th December, 1899) to the Relief of
Ladysmith (28th February, 1900), amounted to 301 officers and
5,028 men.]

_Thursday, 1st March._--Everything seems to feel dull and
unprofitable; all the country round is deserted and Colenso is almost
unbearable from the odour of dead horses. At about 11 a.m. the pickets
reported Boers in force coming down Grobler's Kloof, but the party
turned out to be our own men; some of the garrison Cavalry, in fact,
riding in from Ladysmith, who told us that the Boers were in full
retreat. In the afternoon I rode round Colenso. What a scene of
desolation and dirt; huts and houses unroofed and everything smashed
to pieces! Long lines of abandoned trenches, and the perpendicular
shelters which the Boers had blasted out behind all the kopjes against
shell fire plainly showed how well they knew how to pr