disposed to take any
special notice of me. There was a passage between the barn and some
stables at the back and I went down to prospect the latter. What luck
if there had been a horse for me there! Of course I should only have
wanted to borrow it, but there was a big iron padlock on the door,
though inside the stables I heard the movements of an animal. A horse
meant to me just then considerably more than three kingdoms to King
Richard. For the first time in my life I did some delicate burglary
and housebreaking to boot. But the English declare that all is fair in
love and war, and they ought to know.

I discovered an iron bar, which enabled me to wrench off the lock from
the stable door, and, having got so far with my burglarious
performance, I entered cautiously, and I may say nervously. Creeping
up to the manger I fumbled about till I caught hold of a strap to
which the animal was tied, cut the strap through and led the horse
away. I was wondering why it went so slowly and that I had almost to
drag the poor creature along. Once outside I found to my utter disgust
that my spoil was a venerable and decrepit donkey. Disappointed and
disheartened, I abandoned my booty, leaving that ancient mule brooding
meditatively outside the stable door and clearly wondering why he had
been selected for a midnight excursion. But there was no time to
explain or apologise, and as the mule clearly could not carry me as
fast as my own legs, I left him to his meditations.

At dawn, when the first rays of the sun lit up the Biggersbergen in
all their grotesque beauty, I realised for the first time where I was,
and found that I was considerably more than 12 miles from
Elandslaagte, the fateful scene of yesterday. Tired out, half-starved
and as disconsolate as the donkey in the stable, I sat myself on an
anthill. For 24 hours I had been foodless, and was now quite
exhausted. I fell into a reverie; all the past day's adventures passed
graphically before my eyes as in a kaleidoscope; all the horrors and
carnage of the battle, the misery of my maimed comrades, who only
yesterday had answered the battle-cry full of vigour and youth, the
pathos of the dead who, cut down in the prime of their life and
buoyant health, lay yonder on the veldt, far away from wives and
daughters and friends for ever more.

While in a brown study on this anthill, 30 men on horseback suddenly
dashed up towards me from the direction of Elandslaagte. I threw myself
f