tering dusty drills,
often in sand-storms, under a blazing mid-day sun, of "fatigues" of
all sorts, when we harnessed ourselves in teams to things, or made and
un-made mountains of ammunition boxes--a constant round of sultry
work, tempered by cool bathes on white sand, grapes from peripatetic
baskets, and brief intervals of languid leisure, with _al fresco_
meals of bully-beef and dry bread outside our tents.

Time was marked by the three daily stable hours, each with their
triple duty of grooming, feeding, and watering, the "trivial round"
which makes up so much of the life of a driver. As a very humble
representative of that class, my horses were two "spares," that is,
not allotted to any team. Much to my disgust, I was not even provided
with a saddle, and had to do my work bareback, which filled me with
indignation at the time, but only makes me smile now. My roan was
always a sort of a pariah among the sub-division horses, an
incorrigible kicker and outcast, having to be picketed on a peg
outside the lines for his misdeeds. Many a kick did I get from him;
and yet I always had a certain affection for him in all his troubled,
unloved life, till the day when, nine months later, he trotted off to
the re-mount depot at Pretoria, to vex some strange driver in a
strange battery. My other horse, a dun, was soon taken as a sergeant's
mount, and I had to take on an Argentine re-mount, a rough, stupid
little mare, with kicking and biting propensities which quite threw
the roan's into the shade. She also had a peg of ignominy, and three
times a day I had to dance perilously round my precious pair with a
tentative body-brush and hoof-pick. The scene generally ended in the
pegs coming away from the loose sand, and a perspiring chase through
the lines. I had some practice, too, in driving in a team, for one of
our drivers "went sick," and I took his place in the team of an
ammunition-waggon for several days.

Abrupt contrasts to the rough camp life were some evenings spent with
Williams in Capetown, where it already felt very strange to be dining
at a table, and sitting on a chair, and using more than one plate.
Once it was at the invitation of Amery of the _Times_, in the palatial
splendour of the Mount Nelson Hotel, where I felt strangely
incongruous in my by no means immaculate driver's uniform. But _how_ I
enjoyed that dinner! Had there been many drivers present, the
management would have been seriously embarrassed that eve