read.  One is muttering maledictions over a tin of treacle he has spilt on his bed (he thought it was empty and stuck a candle on the bottom); one is telling stories (which nobody listens to) of happy sprees in far-off London.  The air is thick with tobacco-smoke.  Outside there is a murmur of stablemen trying to fit shrunk nose-bags on to restive horses, varied by the squeal and thump of an Argentine, as he gets home in the ribs of a neighbour who has been fed before him.”

On the day after this was written our long period of waiting came to an end with orders to go at once to Kroonstadt.

CHAPTER V.

LINDLEY.

We were off for the front at last, and I shall now, making a few necessary alterations, transcribe my diary, as I wrote it from day to day and often hour to hour, under all sorts of varying conditions.

June 21.—­7 A.M.—­I am writing this on the seat of a gun in an open truck on the way by rail to Kroonstadt.  I have been trying to sleep on the floor, but it wasn’t a success, owing to frozen feet.  Now the sun is up and banishing the hoar-frost from the veldt, and the great lonely pasture-plain we are travelling slowly through looks wonderfully pleasant.

But I must go back.

Yesterday afternoon things looked profoundly settled.  I walked down to town with a lot of clothes, and left them to be washed by a nigger, and also left my watch to be mended.  But when I got back to “stables” it was announced that we were to leave for Kroonstadt that night.  There was great joy, though I fear it means nothing.  It’s true De Wet and some rebels have been giving trouble round there, and even held up a train, and captured a battalion of militia not long ago; but I believe it’s all over now.  It was soon dark, and camp had to be struck and horses harnessed in the dark.  I got leave, ran down to town and fetched up my unwashed clothes, and put most of them on there and then.  There was the usual busy scene of packing kit, striking tents, drawing rations, filling water-bottles; the whole scene lit up by blazing bonfires of rubbish.  In leaving a camp no litter may be left; it has to be left as clean as the surrounding veldt.  At nine hot coffee was served out, and at 9.45 “boot and saddle” went.  Harnessing in pitch dark is not very easy, unless you have everything exactly where you can lay your hand on it.

We marched down to the station, and unharnessed near the platform in a deposit of thick mud.  Entraining lasted all night, the mules and buck-waggons giving a lot of trouble.  Some exciting loose-mule-hunts round the station in the dark.  Hours of shoving, hauling, lifting, slamming.  At last all was in but ourselves.  There were evidently no carriages, so we hurriedly shovelled our kit and ourselves into the open gun-trucks, squirming into cracks and corners; and at 6.30 A.M. to-day, with the sun just topping