Out of every quarter of the blackness leaped rough voices.  “G Company!” “Devons here!” “Imperial Light Horse?” “Over here!” “Over where?” Then a trip and a heavy stumble and an oath.  “Doctor wanted ’ere!  ’Elp for a wounded orficer!  Damn you there! who are you fallin’ up against?  This is the Gordon ’Ighlanders—­what’s left of ’em.”

Here and there an inkier blackness moving showed a unit that had begun to find itself again.

But for half an hour the hillside was still a maze—­a maze of bodies of men wandering they knew not whither, crossing and recrossing, circling, stopping and returning on their stumbles, slipping on smooth rock-faces, breaking shins on rough boulders, treading with hobnailed boots on wounded fingers.

At length underfoot twinkled lights, and a strong, clear voice sailed into the confusion, “All wounded men are to be brought down to the Boer camp between the two hills.”  Towards the lights and the Boer camp we turned down the face of jumbled stumbling-block.  A wary kick forward, a feel below—­firm rock.  Stop—­and the firm rock spun and the leg shot into an ankle-wrenching hole.  Scramble out and feel again; here is a flat face—­forward!  And then a tug that jerks you on to your back again:  you forgot you had a horse to lead, and he does not like the look of this bit.  Climb back again and take him by the head; still he will not budge.  Try again to the right.  Bang! goes your knee into a boulder.  Circle cannily round the horse to the left; here at last is something like a slope.  Forward horse—­so, gently!  Hurrah!  Two minutes gone—­a yard descended.

By the time we stumbled down that precipice there had already passed a week of nights—­and it was not yet eight o’clock.  At the bottom were half-a-dozen tents, a couple of lanterns, and a dozen waggons—­huge, heavy veldt-ships lumbered up with cargo.  It was at least possible to tie a horse up and turn round in the sliding mud to see what next.

What next?  Little enough question of that!  Off the break-neck hillside still dropped hoarse importunate cries.  “Wounded man here!  Doctor wanted!  Three of ’em here!  A stretcher, for God’s sake!” “A stretcher there!  Is there no stretcher?” There was not one stretcher within voice-shot.

Already the men were bringing down the first of their wounded.  Slung in a blanket came a captain, his wet hair matted over his forehead, brow and teeth set, lips twitching as they put him down, gripping his whole soul to keep it from crying out.  He turned with the beginning of a smile that would not finish:  “Would you mind straightening out my arm?” The arm was bandaged above the elbow, and the forearm was hooked under him.  A man bent over—­and suddenly it was dark.  “Here, bring back that lantern!” But the lantern was staggering up-hill again to fetch the next.  “Oh, do straighten out my arm,” wailed the voice from the ground.  “And cover me up.  I’m perishing with cold.”  “Here’s