(4.35 P.M.).—­We have shifted the teams a bit, and got out of the music.  To go back:  we have been in action all the afternoon, shelling a kopje where the Boers have several guns.  It is a wooded one, and they are very difficult to locate.  They have a great advantage, as we are on the open level ground below, and they have been fairly raining shells round us.  Fortunately most of them burst only on impact, and are harmless, owing to the soft ground, outside a very small radius; they seem to be chiefly segment shell, but I saw a good many shrapnel, bursting high and erratically.  The aim was excellent, and well-timed shrapnel would have been very damaging.  Still, we have been very lucky even so, only one man wounded, and no guns, waggons or horses touched.  Once, when trotting out of action, a shell burst just beside our team—­an excellent running shot for the sportsman who fired it!  It made a deafening noise, but only resulted in chipping a scratch on my mare’s nose with a splinter.  She thought she was killed, and made a great fuss, kicking over the traces, etc.; so that we had to halt to put things straight.

In this case, again, the veldt was alight everywhere, but it was only short grass, and we could trot safely through the thin lambent line of flame.  I’m afraid we shall be short of ammunition soon.  We started yesterday with only one hundred rounds per gun.

Can it be that De Wet has got round here, and that we are up against his main position?  What is happening elsewhere I don’t know.  There are a lot of cavalry, Yeomanry, infantry, etc., about somewhere, but here we seem alone with a small infantry escort, and no sound but the opposing guns.  It shows how little a single Tommy sees or knows of a fight.

At dark we marched away about a mile, and bivouacked.  Williams and I minced our meat in one of the battery mincing machines, and made a grand dish of it over the cook’s fire.  There was a red glare over half the sky to-night, as though a Babylon were burning.  It was only a veldt-fire.

July 17.—­Tuesday.—­Reveille at six.  Our horses are grazing, harnessed.  We are waiting for the Staff to say if this is a good position.  It appears that De Wet retreated in the night, and went towards Lindley, which will complete the circle of the hunt.  Our sections are separated again.  The right, under Lieutenant Lowe, has gone on with the convoy to Senekal, and we and the 38th Battery (who have now fresh officers), and most of the brigade, have taken up a position just under one of the remarkable kopjes I spoke of, and are told we shall stay here four days.  I suppose we are part of some endeavour to surround De Wet, but the whole operations seem to get more obscure.  He has played this game for months in this part of the Free State, and is no nearer capture.  Thinking over it, one’s mental state during a fight is a strange paradox.  I suppose it arises from the nature of my work, but, speaking for myself at least,