Do not forget, either, the doctors of the enemy.  We found their wounded with our own, and it was pardonable to be glad that whereas our men set their teeth in silence, some of theirs wept and groaned.  Not all, though:  we found Mr Kok, father of the Boer general and member of the Transvaal Executive, lying high up on the hill—­a massive, white-bearded patriarch, in a black frock-coat and trousers.  With simple dignity, with the right of a dying man to command, he said in his strong voice, “Take me down the hill and lay me in a tent; I am wounded by three bullets.”  It was a bad day for the Kok family:  four were on the field, and all were hit.  They found Commandant Schiel, too, the German free-lance, lying with a bullet through his thigh, near the two guns which he had served so well, and which no German or Dutchman would ever serve again.  Then there were three field-cornets out of four, members of Volksraad, two public prosecutors—­Heaven only knows whom!  But their own doctors were among them almost as soon as were ours.

Under the Red Cross—­under the black sky, too, and the drizzle, and the creeping cold—­we stood and kicked numbed feet in the mud, and talked together of the fight.  A prisoner or two, allowed out to look for wounded, came and joined in.  We were all most friendly, and naturally congratulated each other on having done so well.  These Boers were neither sullen nor complaisant.  They had fought their best, and lost; they were neither ashamed nor angry.  They were manly and courteous, and through their untrimmed beards and rough corduroys a voice said very plainly, “Ruling race.”  These Boers might be brutal, might be treacherous; but they held their heads like gentlemen.  Tommy and the veldt peasant—­a comedy of good manners in wet and cold and mud and blood!

And so the long, long night wore on.  At midnight came outlandish Indians staggering under the green-curtained palanquins they call doolies:  these were filled up and taken away to the Elandslaagte Station.  At one o’clock we had the rare sight of a general under a waggon trying to sleep, and two privates on top of it rummaging for loot.  One found himself a stock of gent’s underwear, and contrived comforters and gloves therewith; one got his fingers into a case and ate cooking raisins.  Once, when a few were as near sleep as any were that night, there was a rattle and there was a clash that brought a hundred men springing up and reaching for their rifles.  On the ground lay a bucket, a cooking-pot, a couple of tin plates, and knives and forks—­all emptied out of a sack.  On top of them descended from the waggon on high a flame-coloured shock of hair surmounting a freckled face, a covert coat, a kummerbund, and cloth gaiters.  Were we mad?  Was it an apparition, or was that under the kummerbund a bit of kilt and an end of sporran?  Then said a voice, “Ould Oireland in throuble again!  Oi’m an Oirish Highlander; I beg your pardon, sorr—­and in throuble again.  They tould me there was a box of cigars here; do ye know, sorr, if the bhoys have shmoked them all?”