varied, now of driving in a team, now of riding spare horses, and
occasionally of acting as a mounted gunner. Williams was a regular
mounted gunner, his mount being a wicked, disreputable-looking little
Argentine (called "Pussy" (with a lisp) for her qualities), to whom he
owed three days in hospital at one time from a bad kick, but whom he
ended by transforming into as smart and peaceable a little mount as
you could find. My own chance came at last; and when about the end of
April one of our drivers was sent home sick, I took his place as
centre driver of an ammunition waggon, and kept it permanently. I said
good-bye to the roan and Argentine, and took over a fine pair of bays.

My chief impression of the weather is that of heat and dust, but there
were times when we thought the dreaded rainy season had begun; when
the camp was a running morass, and we crouched in our tents, watching
pools of water soaking under our harness sheets, and counting the
labour over rusted steel. But it used to pass off, leaving a wonderful
effect; every waste oat seed about the camp sprouted; little green
lawns sprang up in a single night round the places where the forage
was heaped, and the whole veldt put on a delicate pink dress, a powder
of tiny pink flowers.

By the middle of May we began to think we had been forgotten
altogether, but at last, on the morning of the 17th of May, as we were
marching out to drill, an orderly galloped up, and put a long blue
letter into the Captain's hand. We had seen this happen before, and
our discussions of the circumstance, as we rode along, were sceptical,
but this time we were wrong.