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 frame-work, 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 force in the field was simply a patrol of seven 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 and button and buckle shone like fine jewellery. His face was refined, intellectual, masterful, and his every movement, graceful to a degree, showed him as much at his ease on that redoubt as in a West-end drawing room at home. Indeed, with his moustachios upturned at the ends, and his face and hands browned but daintily cared for, he might have been carried to London on a magic carpet, manifesting there as he

did in war, "the glass of fashion and the mould of form."

Now he leaned on the parapet, now he sat upon it, now he slid over it and leaned his back against it, but all the time he scanned the field or received or sent despatches through an urchin-faced orderly of seventeen, who was himself a keen soldier to the core.

The officers with the major were but a trifle less spick and span than their chief. The soldiers were what one would expect who knows the dust they had marched through, the rocks they had lain among-the exigencies of their routine of living sixteen in one tent.

Sweeping the field with my glasses I discoveredonly by intense concentration-that a distant hill was crowded with our men in khaki, and first saw such of their horses as were white or extra dark. Their cannon-three of which were with them and painted light brown-were not visible, so wonderfully does the khaki colour merge into the tints of the sun-browned veldt.

While I ranged the valley or plain with my glasses something slipped and stumbled heavily over the loose stones behind me. I turned, thinking to dodge or help a stumbling man, and found myself staring into the great brown eyes of an ostrich 6 ft. tall, and with legs almost as thick as, and longer than, my

own.

"He came up here some days ago," said a soldier,

"and he always stays here now. We feed him and fool with him, and he seems very happy."

The ostrich stalked past me, and took a position between the major and the captain, where, after appearing to observe that they were very busy scanning the landscape, he too stared at the plain, and remained. erect and watchful, the highest typification of a sentry in appearance. He marred this fine effect for just a moment by seizing and swallowing a box of safety matches. After that he continued his sentry duty with a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes.

We saw but little to reward us, and nothing to put us more upon our guard, if such a thing were possible, than at the beginning. What most interested me were the phenomena and illusions which are begotten by the atmosphere here upon the veldt where this war is to be fought out.

Thus, every now and then a great cloud of whitish dust would breed upon the surface of the plain, and send a streaming tail of what looked like vapour turning in a funnel-formed cloud toward the sky, or reaching far away in the wind. These sudden apparitions attracted close scrutiny, but in every instance they proved to be clouds of dust raised by moving flocks of sheep.

Again the form of a swift riding horseman would appear afar, and seem to dart along the veldt. It was sure to be in truth an ostrich stalking with stately