In a tiny stone cottage with "Staff Office" on a painted board before it, we found Colonel Money, of the "Fighting Fifth " (Northumberland Fusiliers), who have been under canvas two years, and have seen Gibraltar, Omdurman, Crete, and Aldershot, yet have known the comforts of a bed at night for only two weeks since 1897.

We saw him in what was somebody's bedroom only a few weeks before, sitting at a table made of planks laid upon wooden trestles, and in three minutes we were trudging along the railway to the river. The fringe of bright green trees, like willows at home, showed us where it was, a mile and a half away, but the route was between hills on and around all of which were white tents, or camps, upon the veldt. On one hill a man was wig-wagging with flags, on another a "helio " was making microscopic lightning flashes, on another men in khaki lounged among rocks scarcely more plentiful than themselves.

At last the land fell away, and a great iron bridge, painted red, took the place of the railway. When the river is swollen this great bridge is doubtless needed to span it, but now two-thirds of its length arched a field of dry caked mud, from which on all sides sprang a myriad trees and

bushes. A sentinel on foot, backed by many men lounging near, demanded our passes, and permitted us to continue across the bridge, once but partially floored with open trestle work, but now covered with planks for the passage of troops.

From its middle we were able to look up and down the historic Orange River. The water in it was not above 75 feet wide, and looked very shallow. In character it was like the Missouri or Lower Mississippi, bordered by a wide, dry bed, cut up by little islands and sand-bars, and fretted by upturned trees, snags, and sun-baked débris. Far off to the west its banks came closer together, and were so clothed with green that for a moment we drank in that view, and thought of the Thames at Wargrave.

At the far end of the red series of trusses a corporal and squad of men suddenly materialised, and demanded our passes very much as if we had not passed through the other end of the bridge, but had been born in the middle of it, and had stayed there till we grew to formidable proportions.

Before us, instead of the veldt, were some considerable hills, so stony as to appear like huge heaps of black boulders, with the shining metals

of the railway dodging between and around them.

"Go up on that hill," said the corporal, "and, maybe, you will see the fighting. I wish to goodness I was in the middle of it, instead of being stuck here like a cast-off shoe!"

We passed out of the tunnel of red iron framework, and on both sides of us were men of the Fusiliers and the Munsters, alert, rifles in hand, peering between the rocks and bushes, and ready to give and take the sharp medicine of war.

CHAPTER XI

BATTLE CONDITIONS ON THE VELDT

THE

HE force in the field was simply a patrol of seven hundred hundred men, composed of Mounted Infantry of the Royal Munster Fusiliers, the Northumberland Fusiliers, and the North Lancashire Regiment, acting with the 9th Lancers. These were under the command of Colonel Gough, and had been out in the enemy's country thirty hours when news reached this post that they were attacking a Boer commando.

I crossed the Orange River and climbed the highest kopje, to find that its sides were covered with troops. At the top stood three officers and a dozen men, all silent, all staring over the veldt which lay stretched beneath and before them five hundred feet below, fifteen miles to some eastern hills, and interminably level to the westward.

They were listening as well as

looking, hoping to hear the low mutter of the guns of the Boers answered by their comrades wherever they might be.

The crest was battlemented by boulders as high as a man's breast, and all along the top of the wall were dirty canvas bags filled with sand. The officers used field glasses. The soldiers strained their eyes. In a few whispered words I was made to understand that Colonel Gough's patrol force was supposed to be on the other side of a pass plainly visible to the north-eastward, and that the armoured train, and other railway trains, had taken to his relief practically all the artillery and infantry that he had left behind at the post.

All on the redoubt were now scanning the rough veldt and its enclosing hills for signs of our own forces, or of possible Boer commandoes concentrating for an attack on the post, that is to say the Orange River bridge, behind us.

The officer in command of the redoubt was Major Hall, of the Royal Munster Fusiliers, and a finer picture of the swell, the gentleman, and the soldier I have never seen. His uniform of khaki was new, from his helmet to the creaseless leather putties which seemed moulded to his legs.

It all fitted him to perfection, and every star