“Absolutely impossible to live in the open,” they said.  “Better wait awhile and see how things go.”

I laid myself down under the trees and listened to the bullets as they sang through the branches.

The very heavens vibrated as the roar of artillery grew ever fiercer, and the loud echoes rolled along from hill to hill and died away in an awful whisper that shook the grass-tops like an autumn wind.

What were those lines of Bret Harte’s about the humming of the battle bees?...  I could not remember.

My eyelids grew heavy and presently I was fast asleep.

“Wake up!  They’re coming round to cut us off.  We must clear!” And away went my friend.

Knowing their horses would soon out-distance my heavily laden pony, and trusting to get away unobserved, I took his bridle and led him away.  For about twenty yards all went well.  Then suddenly there broke loose over us the thickest storm of lead I ever wish to experience.  Whether it was a Maxim or not I could not say, but it seemed to me as if the whole British army was bent on my destruction.  Like raindrops on a dusty road the bullets struck around me.  The pony snorted, shivered, and sometimes stood stock still.  I jerked the bridle savagely and struggled on, without the slightest hope of escaping, and thinking what a cruel shame it was that I should be shot at like a deer.  Finally the shelter of a dry watercourse was reached.  Following this for some distance, I encountered another party of our men, to whom I handed my charge, too shaken to repeat the experiment.  The firing now slackened off, and I returned to my chief, full of mortification over my failure.

It was evident the hill would not be taken that afternoon, so we returned to our tent, intending to come back the next morning.  Late that evening, however, Colonel Villebois passed and told us our forces had been withdrawn, General Botha being ordered to Colenso, where Buller had made a feint attack to help Ladysmith.

Our struggle was therefore a failure, but it had not been made in vain, since it proved once again that we also could storm a fortified hill, and fight a losing fight—­the hardest fight of all.

SPION KOP

Something peculiar began to be observed about the British camp at Chieveley.  The naval guns still flashed by day, the searchlight still signalled to Ladysmith of nights, the tents still glistened in the sun, but the soldiers, where were they?

Marching somewhere up the river.  Buller meant to try his luck once more.  More than one of our present leaders had in former days fought by Buller’s side against the Zulus.  They knew him tenacious, able; no mere theorist.  It was here in Natal, under their eyes, that he had gained his Victoria Cross—­the same priceless bit of bronze that young Roberts had just died to win; and they felt that to ward off his second blow would ask all our energy and cost many useful lives.