(8.30.)—­The Boers seem to have some special dislike to our waggon.  They have just placed two shells, one fifty yards in front of it, and the other fifty yards behind; one of them burst on impact, the other didn’t.  The progress of a shell sounds far off like the hum of a mosquito, rising as it nears to a hoarse screech, and then “plump.”  We mind them very little now.  There is great competition for the fragments, as “curios.”  It is cold, grey, and sunless today.  Last night there was heavy rain, and our blankets are wet still.  It seems the Boers are firing a Krupp at 7000 yards; our guns are only sighted up to 5000 yards, but we have managed to reach them by sinking the trail in the ground, and other devices.

(12.30 P.M.)—­A long halt here, with nothing doing.  The Boer gun has ceased to fire, and we call it “silenced,” possibly with truth, but the causes of silence are never quite certain.  As far as I can make out, it was on the extreme left of their position, while our main attack is threatening their centre.  It is raining hard, but we have made a roaring fire of what is the chief fuel in this country, dry cow-dung, and have made cocoa in our mess-tins, from a tin sent me a month ago; also soup, out of the scrapings of Maconochie tins.

——.  What seemed likely to be a dull day turned out very exciting.  About two a staff officer came up with orders, and we marched down from our kopje and attacked another one[A] (which I made out to be their centre), taking up several positions in quick succession.  The Boers had a gun on the kopje, which we dislodged, and the infantry took the position. (About 2.30 it began to rain again and poured all the afternoon in cold, slashing torrents.) We finally went up the kopje ourselves, over a shocking bit of rocky ground near the top, fired on the retreating Boers from there, and then came down on the other side.  Soon afterwards came an old story.  It was about five, and had cleared up.  A staff officer had said that there were no Boers anywhere near now, and that we were to march on and bivouac.  We and the Munsters and some Yeomanry were marching down a valley, whose flanks were supposed to have been scouted, the infantry in column of companies, that is, in close formation, and all in apparent security.  Suddenly a storm of rifle-fire broke out from a ridge on our right front and showed us we were ambushed.  The Munsters were nearest to the ridge, about 600 yards, I should say.  We were a bit further off.  I heard a sort of hoarse murmur go up from the close mass of infantry, and saw it boil, so to speak, and spread out.  Our section checked for a moment, in a sort of bewilderment (my waggon was close behind our gun at the time), but the next, and almost without orders, guns were unlimbered and whisked round, a waggon unhooked, teams trotting away, and shrapnel bursting over the top of the ridge in quick succession.  All this time the air was full of a sound like the