A queer situation, unparalleled in war, as far as I know.
In the evening I heard the Liverpools and Devons were likely to be engaged in some feat of arms before midnight.

So I stumbled out in the dark along the Helpmakaar road, where those two fine regiments hold the most exposed positions in camp, and I spent the greater part of the night enjoying the hospitality of two Devon officers in their shell-proof hut.

Hour after hour we waited, recalling tales of Indian life and Afridi warfare, or watching the lights in the Boer laagers reflected on a cloudy sky.

But except for a hot wind the night was peculiarly quiet, and not a single shell was thrown: only from time to time the sharp double knock of a rifle showed that the outposts on both sides were alert.
_November 24, 1899._ Though there was no night attack a peculiar manoeuvre was tried, but without success.

On the sixty miles of line between here and Harrismith the Boers have only one engine, and it struck some one how fine it would be to send an empty engine into it at full speed from our side.
Accordingly, when the Free State train was seen to arrive at the Boer rail-head some eight miles off, out snorted one of our spare locomotives.