In the evening I heard the Liverpools and Devons were likely to be engaged in some feat of arms before midnight.  So I stumbled out in the dark along the Helpmakaar road, where those two fine regiments hold the most exposed positions in camp, and I spent the greater part of the night enjoying the hospitality of two Devon officers in their shell-proof hut.  Hour after hour we waited, recalling tales of Indian life and Afridi warfare, or watching the lights in the Boer laagers reflected on a cloudy sky.  But except for a hot wind the night was peculiarly quiet, and not a single shell was thrown:  only from time to time the sharp double knock of a rifle showed that the outposts on both sides were alert.

     November 24, 1899.

Though there was no night attack a peculiar manoeuvre was tried, but without success.  On the sixty miles of line between here and Harrismith the Boers have only one engine, and it struck some one how fine it would be to send an empty engine into it at full speed from our side.  Accordingly, when the Free State train was seen to arrive at the Boer rail-head some eight miles off, out snorted one of our spare locomotives.  Off jumped the driver and stoker, and the new kind of projectile sped away into the dark.  It ran for about two miles with success, and then dashed off the rails in going round a curve.  And there it remains, the Boers showing their curiosity by prodding it with rifles.  Unless it is hopelessly smashed up, the Free State has secured a second engine for the conveyance of its wives and daughters.

It is a military order that all cattle going out to graze on the flats close to the town should be tended by armed and mounted drivers, but no one has taken the trouble to see the order carried out.  The Empire in this country means any dodge for making money without work.  All work is left to Kaffirs, coolies, or Boers.  Two hundred cattle went out this morning beyond the old camp, accompanied only by Kaffir boys, who, like all herdsmen, love to sleep in the shade, or make the woods re-echo Amarylli’s.  Suddenly the Boers were among them, edging between them and the town, and driving the beasts further and further from defence.  The Kaffirs continued to sleep, or were driven with the cattle.  Then the Leicester Mounted Infantry came galloping out, and, under heavy rifle fire, gained the point of Star Hill, hoping to head the cattle back.  At once all the guns commanding that bit of grassy plain opened on them—­“Faith,” “Hope,” and “Charity”—­from Telegraph Hill, the guns on Surprise Hill, and Thornhill Kopje, and the two guns now on Bluebank Ridge.  Two horses were killed, and the party, not being numerous enough for their task, came galloping back singly.  Meantime the Boers, with their usual resource, had invented a new method of calling the cattle home by planting shells just behind them.  The whole enterprise was admirably planned and carried out.  We only succeeded in saving thirty or forty out of the drove.  The lowest estimate of loss is L3,000, chiefly in transport cattle.