We knee-haltered our horses in case there were lions about, and collected a large quantity of wood to keep the fire going all night.  That night our talk, of course, ran upon lion-hunting and shooting expeditions.  Then we crept as close to the fire as possible, and were soon in a troubled, or untroubled, sleep, dreaming of lions and other wild animals.  But I felt the cold very much, and could not sleep without my rug, and kept turning from side to side to get as much warmth from the fire as possible.  If only I had made two fires!  In a battle I have been between two fires, and did not find it at all agreeable, but in this case it would have been different.

I lay awake, waiting for the third fire, the red dawn, but not in a poetical mood.  There is a time for everything; that I learnt during the war.  Rain is lovely, and cold gives energy, but one must be warm to appreciate it.  As I lay thus, four mules, tethered together, came closer and closer up to our fire, grazing all the while.  I lay still, listening to the peculiar noise made by the biting off of each mouthful of grass.  I seemed to expect a joke, and suddenly one of the mules fell on his back.  In a moment all our heroes were up and ready to defend themselves against lions or khakies, according to their different dreams.  I laughed, and laughed again, so that the hyenas could hear me a mile off, and the startled lion-hunters began to laugh also, so that we woke up the whole camp.  This little episode made my blood circulate, so that I very soon also was in the land of dreams.

As the burghers chased all the game on ahead of the lager, the President and Commandant Boshoff agreed to go in advance, so as to have a chance of seeing the numerous kinds of wild buck and larger game.  I went with them.  Greatly to my distress I forgot to ask our guide what direction we would take that day with regard to the sun.  An experienced hunter would not have forgotten it, as he knows from experience that in the excitement of the chase we often leave the beaten track.  I had to pay dearly for my forgetfulness.  I rode some distance to the left of the President, but took care to keep him in sight.  But the Boer is wonderfully disobedient to any authority, and not long after two men made their appearance to my left, and I saw that if I did not look out they would be ahead of me in no time, and chase all the game away from me.  As the donga next to which we rode seemed to be a favourite resort for game, I took the same direction as they did, more to the left.  The dongas ran into each other with numerous bends and curves, and were sometimes overgrown with high grass, then again quite bare.  I paid no attention to the direction we took.