rom officers and men for their mothers', wives, and
lovers over seas. He was a bony young Kaffir, with a melancholy face,
black as sorrow. At six o'clock I saw him start, his apish feet padding
through the crusted slush. One pocket bulged with biscuits, one with a
tin of beef. Between his black chest and his rag of shirt he had tucked
that neat packet which was to console so many a woman, white-skinned and
delicately dressed. Fetching a wide compass, he stole away into the
eastern twilight, where the great white moon was rising, shrouded in
electric cloud.

_November 17, 1899._

A few shells came in early, and by nine o'clock there was so much firing
on the north-west that I rode out to the main position of the 60th
(King's Royal Rifles) on Cove Hill. I found that our field battery there
was being shelled from Surprise Hill and its neighbour, but nothing
unusual was happening. The men were in a rather disconsolate condition.
Even where they have built a large covered shelter underground the wet
comes through the roof and trickles down upon them in liquid filth. But
they bear it all with ironic indifference, consoling themselves
especially with the thought that they killed one Boer for certain
yesterday. "The captain saw him fall."

Crossing the open valley in front I came to the long ridge called
Observation Hill. There the rifle fire hardly ever ceases. It is held by
three companies of the K.R.R. and the 5th Lancers dismounted. It looks
out over the long valley of Bell's Spruit; that scene of the great
disaster where we lost our battalions, being less than three miles away
at the foot of the rugged mountain beyond--Surprise Hill. Close in front
is one of the two farms called Hyde's, and there the Boers find shelter
at nights and in rain. The farm's orchard, its stone walls, the rocks,
and all points of cover swarm with Boer sharpshooters, and whenever our
men show themselves upon the ridge the bullets fly. An immense quantity
of them are lost. In all the morning's firing only one Lancer had been
wounded. As I came over the edge the bullets all passed over my head,
but our men have to keep behind cover if they can, and only return the
fire when they are sure of a mark. I found a detachment of Lancers, with
a corporal, lying behind a low stone wall. It happened to be exactly the
place I had wished to find, for at one end of the wall stood the Lancer
dummy, whose fame has gone through the camp. There he stood, re