round the flanks of small-bodied, huge-horned oxen.  This tail of the army alone covered three miles of road.  At length emerging in front of them you found two clanking field-batteries, and sections of mountain guns jingling on mules.  Ahead of these again long khaki lines of infantry sat beside the road or pounded it under their even tramp.  Then the General himself and his Staff; then best part of a regiment of infantry; then a company, the reserve of the advanced-guard; then a half-company, the support; then a broken group of men, the advanced party; then, in the very front, the point, a sergeant and half-a-dozen privates trudging sturdily along the road, the scenting nose of the column.  Away out of sight were the horsemen.

Altogether, two regiments of cavalry—­5th Lancers and 19th Hussars—­the 42nd and 53rd Field Batteries and 10th Mountain Battery, four infantry battalions—­Devons, Liverpools, Gloucesters, and 2nd King’s Royal Rifles—­the Imperial Light Horse, and the Natal Volunteers.  Once more, it was fighting.  The head of the column had come within three miles or so of Modderspruit station.  The valley there is broad and open.  On the left runs the wire-fenced railway; beyond it the land rises to a high green mountain called Tinta Inyoni.  On the left front is a yet higher green mountain, double-peaked, called Matawana’s Hoek.  Some call the place Jonono’s, others Rietfontein; the last is perhaps the least outlandish.

The force moved steadily on towards Modderspruit, one battalion in front of the guns.  “Tell Hamilton to watch his left flank,” said one in authority.  “The enemy are on both those hills.”  Sure enough, there on the crest, there dotted on the sides, were the moving black mannikins that we have already come to know afar as Boers.  Presently the dotted head and open files of a battalion emerged from behind the guns, changing direction half-left to cover their flank.  The batteries pushed on with the one battalion ahead of them.  It was half-past eight, and brilliant sunshine; the air was dead still; through the clefts of the nearer hills the blue peaks of the Drakensberg looked as if you could shout across to them.

Boom!  The sound we knew well enough; the place it came from was the left shoulder of Matawana’s Hoek; the place it would arrive at we waited, half anxious, half idly curious, to see.  Whirr—­whizz—­e-e-e-e—­phutt!  Heavens, on to the very top of a gun!  For a second the gun was a whirl of blue-white smoke, with grey-black figures struggling and plunging inside it.  Then the figures grew blacker and the smoke cleared—­and in the name of wonder the gun was still there.  Only a subaltern had his horse’s blood on his boot, and his haversack ripped to rags.