tentpole in the middle hung thick with water-bottles, helmets, and
haversacks, spurs strung up round the brailing, faces (dirty) seen
dimly in the gloom beneath. Some write, some sew, some read. One is
muttering maledictions over a tin of treacle he has spilt on his bed
(he thought it was empty and stuck a candle on the bottom); one is
telling stories (which nobody listens to) of happy sprees in far-off
London. The air is thick with tobacco-smoke. Outside there is a murmur
of stablemen trying to fit shrunk nose-bags on to restive horses,
varied by the squeal and thump of an Argentine, as he gets home in the
ribs of a neighbour who has been fed before him."

On the day after this was written our long period of waiting came to
an end with orders to go at once to Kroonstadt.




CHAPTER V.

LINDLEY.


We were off for the front at last, and I shall now, making a few
necessary alterations, transcribe my diary, as I wrote it from day to
day and often hour to hour, under all sorts of varying conditions.

_June 21._--_7 A.M._--I am writing this on the seat of a gun in an
open truck on the way by rail to Kroonstadt. I have been trying to
sleep on the floor, but it wasn't a success, owing to frozen feet. Now
the sun is up and banishing the hoar-frost from the veldt, and the