down this than I heard a loud explosion. It did not sound quite so near,
but on gaining the opposite bank I saw floating over the spot just
quitted by me a small cloud of smoke, showing that a shell had been
fired at me with marvellous accuracy. Then a couple burst near the
general's tent, and the laager was immediately shifted behind the hill.

I reached Spion Kop, took charge of the office, and was kept so busy
that for a week there was no time to have a decent wash.

The hill next ours was daily bombarded with the utmost enthusiasm,
shells falling there at the rate of fully sixty a minute, while we
escaped with only an occasional bomb. Looking down upon the plain before
us, we could see the British regiments drilling on the bank of the
river, about two thousand yards away, probably to draw our fire, but in
vain was the net spread.

The ground of operations was somewhat extensive. For some days the
enemy's infantry had been harassing our right wing, attacking every day,
and drawing a little nearer every night. Louis Botha was almost
continually present at this point, only coming into camp now and then
for a few hours' sleep.

One evening his secretary said to me, with genuine emotion, "It has all
been in vain! Our men are worn out. They can do no more!"

He was a Hollander, and also a gentleman; that is to say, he was not one
of those Hollanders who lived on the fat of the land, and then turned
against us in our adversity; rather was he of the rarer stamp of Coster,
who glorified his mother country by nobly dying for that of his
adoption.