Sunday's march was uneventful, except that trouble began among the horses. One of my four fellow-correspondents lost a fine pair—the wheelers of his team—which he had bought in Barkly on Thursday, and which probably returned to their former owner. But as we have no lines of communication, he will not see them again. My horse fell sick, and the three hours of the midday bivouac had to be spent in hastily breaking in to the saddle one of the leaders of my team. The headquarters staff lost two horses, and five mules strayed from the supply park. The fact was rather tersely announced by Corporal Jenkins of the Army Service Corps, who came up while I was talking to his officer, saluted, and said in the language of his kind—
"Please, sir, I'm deficient of five mules."
The loss of animals from so small a column is really serious, and everyone is looking blue over his deficiencies. I am deficient of a spade and two nose-bags. But then I am to the good by one lame dog, who, in return for slight services rendered on the road, refuses to allow any but my own lawful servants to approach the encampment. We did eighteen miles to-day, and encamped at Greefdal in the evening. We are now well north of Fourteen Streams, where all day long we have heard the guns booming. In the afternoon the native scouts (who work far outside the ground patrolled by our scouts and flankers) reported a party of 500 Boers approaching from the south and east, but they must have turned northward, for we have heard nothing more of them. This morning we could see a long line of dust moving about twenty miles to the north-east; but it has subsided, and the Boers are probably in laager. It is fortunate that Colonel Mahon is an absolutely careful man, since any little neglect in the matter of patrolling and choosing bivouac positions might mean complete disaster to the column, and the frustration of its end. These little things have often been neglected in this campaign; and whenever there has been a convoy captured, it has been because someone has taken for granted that someone else was holding a drift or pass. So we move warily through a placid country that may become at any moment full of menace; travelling may at any moment be exchanged for fighting, and the roadway for the battlefield; even the green slopes that front us may hide the gravest danger, and the river-bed with its grasses and lapsing waters become a pit of death. But one knows little of the future; it is on the knees of the gods.
XX
FROM TAUNGS TO VRYBURG
Dry Hartz, Tuesday, May 8th.
The march of yesterday afternoon was not without its incidents. We came in sight of the village of Taungs at about four o'clock, our road passing ten miles to the west of it at the opposite side of the Hartz valley. I was riding with the advance guard when a man rode up from the direction of the village.
"I've just come to have a look at the troops," said he; "I'm a British subject."