At that hour a curiously impressive incident astonished many of us in camp not less than it did the Boers.  Guns, big and small, of our Naval Battery having shotted charges were carefully laid with the enemy’s artillery for their mark, and at a given signal they began to fire slowly, with regular intervals between.  When twenty-one rounds had been counted everybody knew that it was a Royal salute, in celebration of the Prince of Wales’s birthday.  Then loud cheers, begun as of right by the bluejackets, representing the senior service, ran round our chains of outposts and fighting men, shaken into light echoes by the jagged rocks, to roll in mightier chorus through the camps, thence onward by river-banks, where groups emerged from their burrows, strengthening the shouts with even more fervour, and into the town, where loyalty to the Crown of England has a meaning at this moment deeper than any of us could ever have attached to it before.  “What do you make of it all?” was the signal flashed from hill to hill along the Boer lines, and interpreted by our own experts who hold the key.  And well they might wonder, for in all probability a Prince of Wales’s birthday has never been celebrated before with a Royal salute of shotted guns against the batteries of a besieging force, and all who are here wish most heartily that the experience may remain unique.

Our enemy’s astonishment, however, had the effect of producing a temporary cessation of hostilities.  The bombardment was not carried on with its previous vigour, possibly because some detachments, taken unaware by the prolonged artillery fire from our side, had been partially disabled.  But the rifle attack against Maiden’s Castle and Caesar’s Camp was kept up until near sunset.

In the midst of this cross-fire a flag, with the Geneva emblem of mercy on it, was hoisted at the topmost twig of a low mimosa bush in front of Bester’s Farm, which must not be confounded with the other Bester’s away to westward, near the Harrismith Railway, and giving its name to a station on that line.  There are many branches of the Bester family holding farms in Natal, and nearly all are under a cloud of suspicion at this moment because of their known sympathy with the Boers.  That red-cross flag was taken as a sign that the farmstead had been occupied as a hospital, and we respected it accordingly, but, as on other occasions in this curiously conducted campaign, the Boers, who stretch the Geneva Convention for all it is worth in their own favour, made it cover something else.  While our soldiers scrupulously avoided firing anywhere near the farmstead that bore that emblem of neutrality, they saw herds of cattle and horses being driven off, and these were followed presently by a trek waggon on which also the red-cross flag waved conspicuously.