Capetown , Oct. 10. This morning I awoke, and behold the Norman was lying alongside a wharf at Capetown. I had expected it, and yet it was a shock. In this breathless age ten days out of sight of land is enough to make you a merman: I looked with pleased curiosity at the grass and the horses. After the surprise of being ashore again, the first thing to notice was the air. It was as clear—but there is nothing else in existence clear enough with which to compare it. You felt that all your life hit

Stormberg Junction . The wind screams down from the naked hills on to the little junction station. A platform with dining-room and telegraph office, a few corrugated iron sheds, the station-master's corrugated iron bungalow—and there is nothing else of Stormberg but veldt and, kopje, wind and sky. Only these last day's there has sprung up a little patch of white tents a quarter of a mile from the station, and about them move men in putties and khaki. Signal flags blink from the rises, pickets wi

Burghersdorp , Oct. 14. The village lies compact and clean-cut, a dot in the wilderness. No fields or orchards break the transition from man to nature; step out of the street and you are at once on rock-ribbed kopje or raw veldt. As you stand on one of the bare lines of hill that squeeze it into a narrow valley, Burghersdorp is a chequer-board of white house, green tree, and grey iron roof; beyond its edges everything is the changeless yellow brown of South African landscape. Go down into the st

Oct. 14 (9.55 p.m.) The most conspicuous feature of the war on this frontier has hitherto been its absence. The Free State forces about Bethulie, which is just over the Free State border, and Aliwal North, which is on our side of the frontier, make no sign of an advance. The reason for this is, doubtless, that hostilities here would amount to civil war. There is the same mixed English and Dutch population on each side of the Orange river, united by ties of kinship and friendship. Many law-abidin

Aliwal North , Oct. 15. "Halt! Who goes there?" The trim figure, black in the moonlight, in breeches and putties, with a broad-brimmed hat looped up at the side, brought up his carbine and barred the entrance to the bridge. Twenty yards beyond a second trim black figure with a carbine stamped to and fro over the planking. They were of the Cape Police, and there were four more of them somewhere in reserve; across the bridge was the Orange Free State; behind us was the little frontier town of Aliw

Ladysmith , Oct. 22. From a billow of the rolling veldt we looked back, and black columns were coming up behind us. Along the road from Ladysmith moved cavalry and guns. Along the railway line to right of it crept trains—one, two, three of them—packed with khaki, bristling with the rifles of infantry. We knew then that we should fight before nightfall. Major-General French, who commanded, had been out from before daybreak with the Imperial Light Horse and the battery of the Natal Volunteer Artil

Ladysmith , Oct. 23. Pursuing cavalry and pursued enemy faded out of our sight; abruptly we realised that it was night. A mob of unassorted soldiers stood on the rock-sown, man-sown hillside, victorious and helpless. Out of every quarter of the blackness leaped rough voices. "G Company!" "Devons here!" "Imperial Light Horse?" "Over here!" "Over where?" Then a trip and a heavy stumble and an oath. "Doctor wanted 'ere! 'Elp for a wounded orficer! Damn you there! who are you fallin' up against? Thi

Ladysmith , Oct. 27. "Come to meet us!" cried the staff officer with amazement in his voice; "what on earth for?" It was on October 25, about five miles out on the Helpmakaar road, which runs east from Ladysmith. By the stream below the hill he had just trotted down, and choking the pass beyond, wriggled the familiar tail of waggons and water-carts, ambulances, and doolies, and spare teams of old mules in new harness. A couple of squadrons of Lancers had off-saddled by the roadside, a phalanx of

Ladysmith , Nov. 1. The sodden tents hung dankly, black-grey in the gusty, rainy morning. At the entrance to the camp stood a sentry; half-a-dozen privates moved to and fro. Perhaps half-a-dozen were to be seen in all—the same hard, thick-set bodies that Ladysmith had cheered six days before as they marched in, square-shouldered through the mud, from Dundee. The same bodies—but the elastic was out of them and the brightness was not in their eyes. But for these few, though it was an hour after re

Ladysmith , Oct. 26. The business of the last few days has been to secure the retreat of the column from Dundee. On Monday, the 23rd, the whisper began to fly round Ladysmith that Colonel Yule's force had left town and camp, and was endeavouring to join us. On Tuesday it became certainty. At four in the dim morning guns began to roll and rattle through the mud-greased streets of Ladysmith. By six the whole northern road was jammed tight with bearer company, field hospital, ammunition column, sup

Ladysmith , Nov. 10. "Good morning," banged four-point-seven; "have you used Long Tom?" "Crack-k—whiz-z-z," came the riving answer, "we have." "Whish-h—patter, patter," chimed in a cloud-high shrapnel from Bulwan. It was half-past seven in the morning of November 7; the real bombardment, the terrific symphony, had begun. During the first movement the leading performer was Long Tom. He is a friendly old gun, and for my part I have none but the kindest feelings towards him. It was his duty to shel

When all is said, there is nothing to stir the blood like rifle-fire. Rifle-fire wins or loses decisive actions; rifle-fire sends the heart galloping. At five in the morning of the 9th I turned on my mattress and heard guns; I got up. Then I heard the bubble of distant musketry, and I hurried out. It came from the north, and it was languidly echoed from Cæsar's Camp. Tack-tap, tack-tap—each shot echoed a little muffled from the hills. Tack-tap, tack-tap, tack, tack, tack, tack, tap—as if the dev

Nov. 11. —Ugh! What a day! Dull, cold, dank, and misty—the spit of an 11th of November at home. Not even a shell from Long Tom to liven it. The High Street looks doubly dead; only a sodden orderly plashes up its spreading emptiness on a sodden horse. The roads are like rice-pudding already, and the paths like treacle. Ugh! Outside the hotel drip the usual loafers with the usual fables. Yesterday, I hear, the Leicesters enticed the enemy to parade across their front at 410 yards; each man emptied

November 26, 1899. I was going to give you another dose of the dull diary. But I haven't the heart. It would weary you, and I cannot say how horribly it would weary me. I am sick of it. Everybody is sick of it. They said the force which would open the line and set us going against the enemy would begin to land at Durban on the 11th, and get into touch with us by the 16th. Now it is the 26th; the force, they tell us, has landed, and is somewhere on the line between Maritzburg and Estcourt; but of

Ladysmith , Dec. 6. "There goes that stinker on Gun Hill," said the captain. "No, don't get up; have some draught beer." I did have some draught beer. "Wait and see if he fires again. If he does we'll go up into the conning-tower, and have both guns in action toge—" Boom! The captain picked up his stick. "Come on," he said. We got up out of the rocking-chairs, and went out past the swinging meat-safe, under the big canvas of the ward-room, with its table piled with stuff to read. Trust the sailo

I will give no number to the last chapter of George Steevens's story of the war. There is no reckoning between the work from his and the work from this pen. It is the chapter which covers a grave; it does not make a completion. A while back, you have read that surrendering wail from the beleaguered city—a wail in what contrast to the humour, the vitality, the quickness, the impulse, the eagerness of expectation with which his toil in South Africa began!—wherein he wrote: "Beyond is the world—war