stared them in the face.  The kopjes on the farther side of the stream were bristling with Boers, and away on the veldt beyond was drawn up the Staats artillery.  And then one realized a most awful blunder of the Reform Committee, from their point of view.  The Boer forces, arriving hereabouts in hot haste, from a rapid mobilization, had been almost entirely without ammunition.  We were told on good authority that each burgher had but six rounds, and that the field-guns were without any shells at all.  During the night the necessary supply was brought by rail from Pretoria, actually right through Johannesburg.  Either by accident or mature reflection on the part of the conspirators in that city, this train was allowed to pass to its destination unmolested.  It proved to be one of those small happenings that completely alter the course of events.  If the burghers had not stopped the Raiders there, nothing could have prevented them from entering Johannesburg, for after another three miles the long-sought-for chimneys—­the overhanging cloud of smoke—­would have come into view.  The very stars in their courses seemed to have fought for the Boers, and justified President Kruger’s belief that his people were specially under the protection of Providence.[11] Neither will anyone ever determine the number of Boers killed at Krugersdorp.  One Veldtcornet inserted in all the papers that he defied anyone to prove that more than four burghers were shot, and of these two were killed accidentally by their own rifles.  Residents on the spot, however, averred that many more fell; but I think the point was not disputed in view of President Kruger’s famous claim for “moral and intellectual damages,” which was then already beginning to be mooted.

The lengthening shadows at last reminded us that we had to return to town for a dinner-party given in our honour.  It usually takes some time to catch a team of six mules and two horses turned out to graze on the veldt; it is endless, however, when they are as frightened of their drivers as ours appeared to be.  At length they were collected and we made a start, and then our adventures began.  First the leader, a white horse, jibbed.  Off jumped the Kaffir coachman, and commenced hammering the poor brute unmercifully over head, ears, and body, with what they called in Africa the shambok.[12] In consequence the team suddenly started off, but the long whip, left on the carriage roof, slipped down, and was broken in two by the wheel passing over it.  Anyone who has driven behind mules knows how absolutely powerless the Jehu is without a long whip; so here we were face to face with a real misfortune:  increasing darkness, jibbing leaders, no whip, and fifteen sandy miles to traverse before dinner-time.  With every sort of ejaculation and yell, and a perfect rain of blows with the shambok from the Kaffir still on foot, we lurched forward at a gallop, escaping by a hair’s-breadth another gold-prospector’s