One or two men were hit and several
horses. My friend Vice had five bullets through his horse and was not
touched himself, which was rather lucky for him (or unlucky for the
horse). A few days before that we were camped on the river and had a
picket on the other side. Two or three Boers crept up the river right
between our picket and the main body, and then walked straight to the
picket as if coming from us and fired into it at point-blank range. They
mortally wounded one of our men and in the dusk escaped. They are as
cunning as Indians. Sometimes, as in these cases, they show great
coolness and daring, while at others they are easily dispersed; but they
are generally pretty keen, and you have to be very much on the alert in
dealing with them.
You at home will probably be annoyed to find the war dragging on so.
About election time the papers were announcing that it was over. It had
been a hard job, they said, but it was finished at last. A good deal was
occurring out here which did not quite tally with that theory, but those
things were ignored or very slightly referred to, so that we on the spot
wondered to see the war drop out of sight, and were puzzled to read in
the _Times_ that only a few desperadoes remained in the field just at
the time that two commandoes were invading the Colony, another raiding
Natal, a garrison and two guns captured at Dewetsdorp, and the line
blown up in ten different places.
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