After you leave Hussar Hill on the way back to Chieveley camp it is necessary to cross a wide dip of ground.  We had withdrawn several miles in careful rearguard fashion, the guns and the battalion had gone back, and the last two squadrons were walking across this dip towards the ridge on the homeward side.  Perhaps we had not curled in our tail quite quick enough, or perhaps the enemy has grown more enterprising of late, in any case just as we were reaching the ridge a single shot was fired from Hussar Hill, and then without more ado a loud crackle of musketry burst forth.  The distance was nearly two thousand yards, but the squadrons in close formation were a good target.  Everybody walked for about twenty yards, and then without the necessity of an order broke into a brisk canter, opening the ranks to a dispersed formation at the same time.  It was very dry weather, and the bullets striking between the horsemen raised large spurts of dust, so that it seemed that many men must surely be hit.  Moreover, the fire had swelled to a menacing roar.  I chanced to be riding with Colonel Byng in rear, and looking round saw that we had good luck.  For though bullets fell among the troopers quite thickly enough, the ground two hundred yards further back was all alive with jumping dust.  The Boers were shooting short.

We reached the ridge and cover in a minute, and it was very pretty to see these irregular soldiers stop their horses and dismount with their carbines at once without any hesitation.  Along the ridge Captain Hill’s Colt Battery was drawn up in line, and as soon as the front was clear the four little pink guns began spluttering furiously.  The whole of the South African Light Horse dismounted and, lining the ridge, opened fire with their rifles.  Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry came into line on our left flank, and brought two tripod Maxims into action with them.  Lord Dundonald sent back word to the battery to halt and fire over our heads, and Major Gough’s Regiment and the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, who had almost reached cover, turned round of their own accord and hurried eagerly in the direction of the firing, which had become very loud on both sides.

There now ensued a strange little skirmish, which would have been a bloody rifle duel but for the great distance which separated the combatants and for the cleverness with which friends and foes concealed and sheltered themselves.  Not less than four hundred men on either side were firing as fast as modern rifles will allow.  Between us stretched the smooth green dip of ground.  Beyond there rose the sharper outlines of Hussar Hill, two or three sheds, and a few trees.  That was where the Boers were.  But they were quite invisible to the naked eye, and no smoke betrayed their positions.  With a telescope they could be seen—­a long row of heads above the grass.  We were equally hidden.  Still their bullets—­a proportion of their bullets—­found us, and I earnestly trust that some of ours found them.