a rocky ravine below the kopje occupied by the enemy, and plunged into the open space.  Lee-Metfords cracked and cut open the ground around him, but the rider bent forward and seemed to become a part of his horse.  Every rod of progress seemed to multiply the fountains of dust near him; every leap of his horse seemed necessarily his last.  On, on he dashed, now using his stirrups, now beating his horse with his hands.  It seemed as if he were making no progress, yet his horse’s legs were moving so swiftly.  “They will get him,” sighed the field-cornet, looking through his glasses.  “He has a chance,” replied a burgher.  Seconds dragged wearily, the firing increased in volume, and the dust of the horse’s heels mingled with that raised by the bullets.  The sound of the hoofs beating down on the solid earth came louder and louder over the veld, the firing slackened and then ceased, and a foaming, panting horse brought his burden to where the burghers stood.  The exhausted rider sank to the ground, and men patted the neck and forehead of the quivering beast.

Down in the valley, near the spruit, the foreign military attaches in uniforms quite distinct were watching the effect of the British artillery on the saddle belonging to one of their number.  “They will never hit it,” volunteered one, as a shell exploded ten yards distant from the leathern mark.

“They must think it is a crowd of Boers,” suggested another, when a dozen shells had fallen without injuring the saddle.  Fifteen, twenty tongues of dust arose, but the leather remained unmarred by scratch or rent, and the attaches became the target of the heavy guns.  “I am hit,” groaned Lieutenant Nix, of the Netherlands-Indian army, and his companions caught him in their arms.  Blood gushed from a wound in the shoulder, but the soldier spirit did not desert him.  “Here, Demange!” he called to the French attache, “Hold my head.  And you, Thompson and Allen, see if you cannot bind this shoulder.”  The Norwegian and Hollander bound the wound as well as they were able.  “Reichman!” the injured man whispered, “I am going to die in a few minutes, and I wish you would write a letter to my wife.”  The American attache hastily procured paper and pencil, and while shells and shrapnel were bursting over and around them the wounded man dictated a letter to his wife in Holland.  Blood flowed copiously from the wound and stained the grass upon which he lay.  He was pale as the clouds above him, and the pain was agonising, but the dying man’s letter was filled with nothing but expressions of love and tenderness.

In the south-eastern part of the field a large party of cavalrymen was speeding in the direction of Thaba N’Chu.  On two sides of them, a thousand yards behind, small groups of horsemen were giving chase.  At a distance, the riders appeared like ants slowly climbing the hillside.  Now and then a Boer rider suddenly stopped his horse, leaped to the ground, and fired at the fleeing cavalrymen.  A second afterwards he was on his horse again, bending to the chase.  Shot followed shot, but the distance between the forces grew greater, and one by one the burghers turned their animals’ heads and slowly retraced their steps.  A startled buck bounded over the veld, two rifles were turned upon it, and its flight was ended.