There was to have been a military guard for the gold at Norval's Pont, but somehow the guard did not connect. The bank men found themselves stalled at a broken bridge, with the choice of trusting their bullion to a thin wire rope slung across the broken spans, or putting it on a pont that formed a rope ferry across the river. They chose the pont.

The train from Capetown reached Orange River at 2 o'clock on Tuesday afternoon. The train on the north side of the river had to wait until 7 o'clock for the gold.

The transfer across the river was the most interesting part of the journey. Messrs. Michell and du Preez deny that their interest had anything of anxiety in it. They trusted the twelve sweating volunteers who wandered wide from the train to the pont with its 960 pounds avoirdupois and 25,000 pounds sterling. Du Preez walked at the head of the volunteers and Michell at the tail. The volunteers seemed to be walking all over the country.

So the twelve boxes were finally slammed into the guard's van on the north side of the river, and the bank manager and his teller clambered in on top of them. If there was a military guard on the train they didn't have the comfort of knowing it. They had been told that all the Boers were giving in their arms and that the country through which they rode was thoroughly pacified, but then, as du Preez said, "when you are travelling with twelve boxes of bullion you can't be dead sure of anything."

When the train reached Bloemfontein on Wednesday, the boxes were taken at once to the vaults of the National Bank of the Orange Free State, and the two men, wearied by their six days' vigil, went at once to bed, and to sleep.

Mr. Michell, who manages the Standard Bank affairs in all parts of South Africa, is only temporarily in Bloemfontein. Mr. D. Savory, formerly of the branch bank at Oudtshoorn, will be manager of the Bloemfontein branch. Mr. A. S. D. Robertson, formerly in the branch bank at Ceres, will be accountant, and Mr. du Preez will be teller.

CHAPTER XIII
We Leave "The Friend" to See a Fight

The Thirteenth Number, produced by Mr. James Barnes of New York.

The last of the dinner was still in our mouths, the last words in answer to the toasts had not been spoken five hours when, at daybreak on the 29th, we were all, except Mr. James Barnes, on the way to the battle of the Glen (or of Karree Siding, as it is sometimes called). Mr. Barnes most kindly remained to take entire control of The Friend, which is to say that he undertook the work of four men, and had as his only assistant a bright young American journalist from Philadelphia, Mr. Joseph W. Jenkins. This young gentleman had worked hard and gratuitously for us from the first as the gatherer of the news of the little capital, and very fertile and versatile he proved.

Mr. Bennet Burleigh took Mr. Kipling to the fight in his Cape-cart, and they started out with more style and comfort than an Oriental general swaying on the cushioned howdah of his elephant charger. But the course of a day in war is as uncertain as that of love or as the nature of the white men, and, early in the day, the Poet of the Empire was under a hot Mauser fire. Far from being nervous or regretting the experience, he seemed to feel only the tingle of the excitement. If you could get him to refer to it you saw that he rejoiced to have felt the breath and heard the weird, low song of the leaden rain.