Haggard officers cracked their sword-blades and cursed the day that they had been born.
Privates sobbed with their stained faces buried in their hands.

Of all tests of discipline that ever they had stood, the hardest to many was to conform to all that the cursed flapping handkerchief meant to them.
'Father, father, we had rather have died,' cried the Fusiliers to their priest.

Gallant hearts, ill paid, ill thanked, how poorly do the successful of the world compare with their unselfish loyalty and devotion! But the sting of contumely or insult was not added to their misfortunes.
There is a fellowship of brave men which rises above the feuds of nations, and may at last go far, we hope, to heal them.

From every rock there rose a Boer--strange, grotesque figures many of them--walnut-brown and shaggy-bearded, and swarmed on to the hill.

No term of triumph or reproach came from their lips.