hurricane deck I saw now one, now another, turn away, and hurry out of
the throng. A gentleman I had met on the voyage--Captain Weldonasked
questions. 'Do you know any names of killed in the Leicesters?' The man
reflected. He could not be sure: he thought there was an officer named
Weldon killed--oh, yes! he remembered there were two Weldons--one
killed, one wounded, but he did not know which was in the Leicesters.
'Tell us about Mafeking,' said someone else. Then we heard about
Mafeking--the armoured trains, the bombardment, the sorties, the
dynamite wagons--all, in fact, that is yet known of what may become an
historic defence. 'And how many Boers are killed?' cried a private
soldier from the back. The man hesitated, but the desire to please was
strong within him. 'More than two thousand,' he said, and a fierce shout
of joy answered him. The crowd of brown uniforms under the electric
clusters broke up into loud-voiced groups; some hastened to search for
newspapers, some to repeat what they had heard to others; only a few
leaned against the bulwarks and looked long and silently towards the
land, where the lights of Cape Town, its streets, its quays, and its
houses gleamed from the night like diamonds on black velvet.

It is along casualty list of officers--of the best officers in the
world. The brave and accomplished General of Glencoe; Colonel Chisholme,
who brought the 9th Lancers out of action in Afghanistan; Sherston, who
managed the Indian Polo Association; Haldane, Sir William Lockhart's
brilliant aide-de-camp; Barnes, adjutant of the 4th Hussars, who played
back of our team and went with me to Cuba; Brooke, who had tempted
fortune more often than anyone else in the last four years--Chitral,
Matabeleland, Samana, Tira, Atbara, and Omdurman--and fifty others who
are only names to me, but are dear and precious to many, all lying under
the stony soil or filling the hospitals at Pietermaritzburg and Durban.
Two thousand Boers killed! I wish I could believe there were.