"The night was dark as pitch, and very windy, just what we wanted. After
missing our way several times, whispering, consulting, and feeling about
in the dark, we came on the wattle fence and beehive huts of a Kaffir
kraal. Up to this we crept, and Vice dived into the hole of an entrance,
and after some underground rumblings emerged with an old nigger as you
draw a badger from his earth. The old man was soon persuaded by a
moderate bribe to be our guide to the spot we wished to reconnoitre. He
told us that parties of Boers were pretty often round that way, and that
one had passed the previous night at the kraal. Dunkley agreed to stay
with the horses, and Vice and I went on with the Kaffir. The country was
grassy, with plentiful belts and clumps of silvery bush. After a while
the moon shone out and the clouds dispersed, which made us feel
disagreeably conspicuous in the white patches between the bush."

Exmoor, as far as the contour of the ground is concerned, is a little
like the more up-and-down parts of the veldt, and scouting there would
be very much like scouting here. For instance, suppose your camp was at
Minehead, the Boers being in strength at Winsford, and a report comes in
that they have pushed on a strong picket to Simonsbath. This rumour it
is your business to test. With two friends on a dark, windy night you
set out. You leave the road and take to the moor. You ride slowly,
listening, watching intently, keeping off the high ground, and as much
as possible avoiding sky-lines. At some cottage or moorland farm you
leave the horses and creep forward on foot, working along the hollows
and studying every outline. If they are at Simonsbath, they will have a
lookout on the hill this side. A British picket would show its helmets
at a mile, but the Boers don't affect sky-lines. They will be on this
side, with the hill for a background, and very likely right down on the
flat; for though by day the higher you are the better for seeing, yet at