,
outposts having reported some Boers tampering with the rails. The rest
of the train was sound asleep, but we, being awake, got leave to go
with the patrol. Williams borrowed a rifle from somewhere, but I could
not find a weapon. They made us connecting files between the advance
party and main body, and we tramped up the line and over the veldt for
about an hour, but nothing happened, and we came back and turned in.

De Wet let us alone, and for five days we travelled peaceably through
the well-known places, sometimes in the pure, clear air of true
African weather, but further south through storms of cold rain, when
Scotch mists shrouded everything, and we lay in the bottom of our
truck, on carefully constructed islands of kit and blankets, among
pools of water, passing the time with books and cards. Signs of war
had not disappeared, and at every station down to Bloemfontein were
the same vigilant camps (often with parties posted in trenches), more
charred remains of trains, and ever-present rumours of raiding
commandos.

One novel sight I saw in the interminable monotony of desert veldt.
For a whole afternoon there were mirages all along the horizon, a
chain of enchanted lakes on either side, on which you could imagine
piers, and boats, and wooded islands.

At Beaufort West we dropped our "boys," the Kaffir mule-drivers; they
left us in a great hubbub of laughing and shouting, with visions
before them, I expect, of a golden age, based on their accumulated
wealth of high pay. We passed Piquetberg Road about midnight of
October 6th. Plumbley, the store-keeper, was there, and the belle of
the village was holding a moonlight levee at the end of the train.
There was a temporary clear from the rain here, but it soon thickened
down again. When we steamed away I climbed out on the buffers (the
only way of getting a view), and had a last look at the valley, which
our wheels had scored in so many directions. Tulbagh Pass, Bushman's
Rock, and the hills behind it were looking ghostly through a humid,
luminous mist; but my posture was not conducive to sentimentality, as
any one who tries it will agree; so I climbed back to my island, and
read myself to sleep by a candle, while we clattered and jolted on
into the night.

When I woke at dawn on October 7th we were standing in a siding at the
Capetown docks, the rain coming down in torrents, and Table Mountain
blotted out in clouds. Collecting our kit from sopping crannies and