June 26—­Eight A.M.—­We are in action, my waggon at present halted in the rear.  We harnessed up at 3.45 this morning, and marched some miles to the top of another hill, overlooking another plain, a crescent of steep kopjes on the left, occupied by Boers.  The convoy halted just as a spattering rifle-fire ahead struck on the still morning air (it was just dawn), and the chatter of a Maxim on the left flank.  We were all rather silent.  A staff-officer galloped up, “Walk,—­March,” “Trot,” rang out to the Battery, and we trotted ahead down the hill, plunged down a villainous spruit, and came up on to the level, under a pretty heavy fire from the kopje on our left.  For my part, I was absorbed for these moments in a threatened mishap to my harness, and the dread of disgrace at such an epoch.  My off horse had lost flesh in the last few days, and the girth, though buckled up in the last hole, was slightly too loose.  We had to gallop up a steep bit of ascent out of the drift, and to my horror, the pack-saddle on him began to slip and turn, so I had to go into action holding on his saddle with my right hand, in a fever of anxiety, and at first oblivious of anything else.  Then I noticed the whing of bullets, and dust spots knocked up, and felt the same sort of feeling that one has while waiting to start for a race, only with an added chill and thrill.

The guns unlimbered, and came into action against the kopje, and we and the limbers trotted about 300 yards back, and are waiting there now.  A gunner and a driver slightly wounded, and some horses hit.  One bullet broke our wheel-driver’s whip.  Our shrapnel are bursting beautifully over the Boer lines.

(Later.)—­We have just taken our waggon up to the firing line, and brought back an empty one with our team.

(Later.)—­We have been back to the convoy, and refilled the empty waggon from the reserve, and are back again.  The Boers seem to be dislodged from the ridge, and infantry have occupied it.  I hear some Boers made for a farm, but we plumped a shell right into it, and they fled.  The convoy is now coming on, and crossing the drift with discordant yells.  Infantry and mounted infantry pressing on both flanks.  Our guns have taken up another position farther on.  The Captain asked after the broken whip, and told us we could not have gone into action better.  He has been riding about all day on his stumpy little Argentine, radiant and beaming, with his eternal pipe in his mouth!

(Later.)—­We marched on a few miles, and bivouacked, while the whole convoy slowly trailed in, and formed up in laager.  This operation, and the business of posting the troops for the night, is horribly tedious.  It has to be done in the dark, and one is continually mounting and dismounting, and moving on a bit, and making impossible wheels round mules and waggons.  Probably we get too small a space allotted, and the horses are all jammed together