inish. It may be expendible,
like paint, or non-expendible, like an anvil. You feel despairingly
that a pound of paint, born at Kimberley, and now at Mafeking, is
disappearing somewhere and somehow; but you have to endow it with a
fictitious immortality. An anvil you feel safer about, but then you
have to use it somewhere, and account for its surplus, if there is
any. Any one with a turn for metaphysics would be at home in Ordnance;
Aristotle would have revelled in it.

It has just struck me that 1s. 5d. a day for a charwoman, a messenger
and an accountant, to say nothing of a metaphysician, all rolled into
one, is low pay. In London you would have to give such a being at
least a pound a week.

_September 25._--Ledgers, vouchers, errands, most of the day. Melting
hot, with a hot wind. Good news from the Sergeant-major that he is
putting in an application for a railway pass for me to Waterval,
without waiting for the other formalities.

_September 26._--_Wednesday._--Hopes dashed to the ground. Commandant
won't sign the application till some other officer does something or
other, which there seems little chance of his doing.

CHAPTER XIII.

SOUTH AGAIN.

Ordered home--Back to the Battery--Good-bye to the horses--The charm
of the veldt--Recent work of the Battery--Paget's farewell speech--
Hard-won curios--The last bivouac--Roberts's farewell--The southward
train--De Wet?--Mirages--A glimpse of Piquetberg road--The _Aurania_--
Embarkation scenes--The last of Africa--A pleasant night.

September 27 was a red-letter day. News came that all the C.I.V. were
going home on the following Monday. I was overwhelmed with
congratulations in the barrack-room. I exercised the Captain's
Argentine in the afternoon, and visited the station, where I learnt
that the Battery had been wired for, and had arrived, but was camped
somewhere outside.

On the next day I got another charwoman-clerk appointed, said good-bye
to my R.A. friends and the Captain, who congratulated me too, and was
free to find the Battery and rejoin. After some difficulty, I found
them camped about four miles out, close to the C.I.V. Infantry. It was
delightful to walk into the lines, and to see the old familiar scenes,
and horses, and faces. Every one looked more weather-beaten and
sunburnt, and the horses very shaggy and hard-worked, but strong and
fit. My mare had lost flesh, but was still in fine condition. The
Argentine was lashing out at the othe