When the war between Japan and Russia broke out, Mr. Sheldon-Williams was early in the field as the special artist for the Sphere, and was in China and Manchuria during the earlier stages of the campaign. He has also visited India and attended the Durbar.
MR. INGLIS SHELDON-WILLIAMS, SOME OF WHOSE VARIED EXPERIENCES ABROAD ARE HERE RELATED.
From a Photograph.
On numerous occasions he has congratulated himself that he was at last placed in a critical situation, only to finish up with an anti-climax.
When he was in Canada, for instance, he lost himself on the prairie while in charge of a team of oxen. A terrific blizzard came on, and, as the snow was absolutely blinding and the temperature many degrees below freezing-point, all sorts of unpleasant things might easily have happened. Mr. Sheldon-Williams had visions of wandering about for days in the snow, starving and frostbitten, with a mere possibility of rescue when he was in the last stages of exhaustion. But although he was lost, his oxen were not, and they took him safely home.
On another occasion he attempted to rescue a duck from the depths of a well, but fell in himself—into sixteen feet of water. Any other man placed in this situation would have been drowned without any bother at all. But Mr. Sheldon-Williams had not been in the water more than a few minutes before he was discovered and hauled out by the united efforts of his mother and sister.
It was just the same in South Africa—no luck at all, simply a lot of dramatic situations which fizzled out miserably. On one occasion Mr. Sheldon-Williams’s company occupied a farm-house near Johannesburg, and the very night on which he was absent, having ridden into town to deposit some money in the bank, was the one selected by the Boers to attack the place. His bed was close up against a window through which the Boers fired volley after volley. Had Mr. Sheldon-Williams occupied it as usual, he would undoubtedly have been shot!
On another occasion he got leave of absence from a patrol, as the neighbourhood was supposed to be clear of the enemy, in order to do some sketching. The patrol was, of course, ambushed, and the man who took his place shot dead.
Another piece of particularly bad luck occurred when Mr. Sheldon-Williams’s troop was attacking Klip River Kopje. The Boers had actually been seen on the ridge, and in the morning he was one of the men selected for scouting purposes. As he rode up the hill it certainly looked as though he had a fine chance of figuring in the next list of killed and wounded. But, as Mr. Sheldon-Williams says, “It was not my fault that the Boers had left overnight!”