The moment approached:  but no one was much concerned, for the cars were proof against rifle fire, and this ridge could at the worst be occupied only by some daring patrol of perhaps a score of men.  ‘Besides,’ we said to ourselves, ’they little think we have a gun on board.  That will be a nice surprise.’

The Boers held their fire until the train reached that part of the track nearest to their position.  Standing on a box in the rear armoured truck I had an excellent view-through my glasses.  The long brown rattling serpent with the rifles bristling from its spotted sides crawled closer to the rocky hillock on which the scattered black figures of the enemy showed clearly.  Suddenly three wheeled things appeared on the crest, and within a second a bright flash of light—­like a heliograph, but much yellower—­opened and shut ten or twelve times.  Then two much larger flashes; no smoke nor yet any sound, and a bustle and stir among the little figures.  So much for the hill.  Immediately over the rear truck of the train a huge white ball of smoke sprang into being and tore out into a cone like a comet.  Then came, the explosions of the near guns and the nearer shell.  The iron sides of the truck tanged with a patter of bullets.  There was a crash from the front of the train and half a dozen sharp reports.  The Boers had opened fire on us at 600 yards with two large field guns, a Maxim firing small shells in a stream, and from riflemen lying on the ridge.  I got down from my box into the cover of the armoured sides of the car without forming any clear thought.  Equally involuntarily, it seems that the driver put on full steam, as the enemy had intended.  The train leapt forward, ran the gauntlet of the guns, which now filled the air with explosions, swung round the curve of the hill, ran down a steep gradient, and dashed into a huge stone which awaited it on the line at a convenient spot.

To those who were in the rear truck there was only a tremendous shock, a tremendous crash, and a sudden full stop.  What happened to the trucks in front of the engine is more interesting.  The first, which contained the materials and tools of the breakdown gang and the guard who was watching the line, was flung into the air and fell bottom upwards on the embankment. (I do not know what befell the guard, but it seems probable that he was killed.) The next, an armoured car crowded with the Durban Light Infantry, was carried on twenty yards and thrown over on its side, scattering its occupants in a shower on the ground.  The third wedged itself across the track, half on and half off the rails.  The rest of the train kept to the metals.

We were not long left in the comparative peace and safety of a railway accident.  The Boer guns, swiftly changing their position, re-opened from a distance of 1,300 yards before anyone had got out of the stage of exclamations.  The tapping rifle fire spread along the hillside, until it encircled the wreckage on three sides, and a third field gun came into action from some high ground on the opposite side of the line.