August 16.—­Grazing most of the morning, during which I have managed to get some letters written, but I have great arrears to make up.  Several orders countermanding one another have been coming in, to the general effect that we are probably to start somewhere to-day.  The usual crop of diverse rumours as to our future.  One says we go to Middelberg, another Lydenberg, another Petersberg.  There seem to be several forces of Boers still about, and De Wet, who ought to become historic as a guerilla warrior, is still at large, nobody knows where.  I only trust our ammunition-supply will be better managed this time.  Anyway, we are all fit and well, and ready for anything, and the horses in first-class order.  I forgot to say that I had to part with one of my pair, the riding-horse, a few days before we reached Smalldeel.  He was taken for a wheeler in our team.  I now ride the mare and lead my new horse, which is my old friend the Argentine, whose acquaintance I first made at Capetown.  Hard work has knocked most of the vice out of her, though she still is a terror to the other horses in the lines.  She looks ridiculously small in artillery harness, but works her hardest, and is very fit, though she declines to oats unless I mix them with mealies, which I can’t always do.

CHAPTER X.

WARMBAD.[A]

[Footnote A:  In this new campaign Paget’s Brigade was, in conjunction with the forces of Baden-Powell, Plumer, and Hickman, to scour the district whose backbone is the railway line running due north from Pretoria to Petersberg.  He was to occupy strategic points, isolate and round up stray commandos, and generally to engage the attention of the enemy here, while the grand advance under Roberts and Buller was taking place eastward.]

August 16, continued.—­We started at 4 P.M., and had a most tedious march for about four miles only, with incessant checks, owing to the badness of the ground, so that we arrived long after dark at the camping-ground in indifferent humour.  We had followed a narrow valley in a northerly direction.  Most of the transport waggons, including our own, stuck in a drift some way back, so that we had no tea, and the drivers no blankets to sleep in (gunners carry their kit on the gun-carriages and limbers and ammunition-waggons).  However, I got up at midnight and found the kit-waggon had arrived, and got mine; also some tea from a friendly cook of the 38th, so I did well.

August 17.—­Reveille at 4.15.  Started at five, and to our surprise marched back about a mile and a half.  Picked up the rest of our buck waggons on the way, and halted for a hurried breakfast at dawn.  Then marched through what I hear is called Wonderboom Port, a narrow nek between two hills, leading due north, to judge by the sun.  We forded a girth-deep river on the way.  The nek led out on to a long, broad valley, about six miles in width, bordered on the Pretoria side with a line of steep kopjes, and on the north by low brown hills.  Long yellow grass, low scrub, and thorny trees, about the size of hawthorns; no road, and the ground very heavy.