Cross, some Boers made Dr. Davis and his companions prisoners, and they were taken before Commandant Schalk-Burger, who received them with scant courtesy at first.  In the end, however, he paid a great compliment to the Light Horse on their plucky deed.  One Boer officer who stood by said he thought they all deserved the Victoria Cross, and another showed familiarity with English habits of thought by describing the night attack as “a devilish sporting thing.”  They wanted to know who led it, and the answer has given Sir Archibald Hunter a place in Boer estimation among the British soldiers whom they would rather meet as friends than as enemies.

The Imperial Light Horse are celebrating their achievement by a brilliant gathering to-night, and have feasted their guests on so many good things that one begins to doubt whether there can be much scarcity in camp, though ordinary articles of food, and especially drink, are running up rapidly to famine prices.

Plenty in the Imperial Light Horse larder may however be accounted for by success in another night attack about which one did not hear so much, though it was carried out with characteristic dash as a preliminary to the greater enterprise that followed twenty-four hours later.  One company of the Imperial Light Horse, being on outpost duty south of Waggon Hill, had conceived the idea of a midnight raid on Bester’s Farm, whence the Boers, after an effective occupation of several weeks, had retired, leaving a Red Cross flag still attached to a thorn bush in the garden, by way of suggesting that poultry and pigs should be regarded as under the protection of the Geneva Convention.  They did not go far, however, and parties of them came down to the farm nearly every night for supplies.  The Light Horse, having impartial minds, thought they might as well “chip in” for some of the good things.  So they made their raid, and came back laden with provender.  Much of this they distributed with a liberality that has won for them and for all Natal Volunteers concurrently the title of “friendlies,” which will certainly stick as long as British troops and Colonial Irregulars campaign together.  Some fat turkeys were part of the loot, and they helped to make a right royal feast to-night, when the gallant “friendlies” had their cup of happiness filled by warm congratulations from the Gordons, the Devons, and every cavalry regiment with which they are brigaded.

Such brilliant achievements as the above might, it was soon felt, be more difficult in future, the enemy having been put upon his guard; but all the good-comradeship in the world could not prevent some jealousy being felt, and nobody can pretend to regret that a spirit of noble emulation has thus been roused.  There had never been any lack of men ready for work of that kind from the first day of investment.  Devons and Gordons had volunteered weeks before to take the Boer guns from which the defenders suffered most annoyance, any night the General might give them