For my part I found myself on the engine when the obstruction was at last passed and remained there jammed in the cab next to the man with the shattered arm.  In this way I travelled some 500 yards, and passed through the fugitives, noticing particularly a young officer, Lieutenant Frankland, who with a happy, confident smile on his face was endeavouring to rally his men.  When I approached the houses where we had resolved to make a stand, I jumped on to the line, in order to collect the men as they arrived, and hence the address from which this letter is written, for scarcely had the locomotive left me than I found myself alone in a shallow cutting and none of our soldiers, who had all surrendered on the way, to be seen.  Then suddenly there appeared on the line at the end of the cutting two men not in uniform.  ‘Platelayers,’ I said to myself, and then, with a surge of realisation, ‘Boers.’  My mind retains a momentary impression of these tall figures, full of animated movement, clad in dark flapping clothes, with slouch, storm-driven hats poising on their rifles hardly a hundred yards away.  I turned and ran between the rails of the track, and the only thought I achieved was this, ‘Boer marksmanship.’  Two bullets passed, both within a foot, one on either side.  I flung myself against the banks of the cutting.  But they gave no cover.  Another glance at the figures; one was now kneeling to aim.  Again I darted forward.  Movement seemed the only chance.  Again two soft kisses sucked in the air, but nothing struck me.  This could not endure.  I must get out of the cutting—­that damnable corridor.  I scrambled up the bank.  The earth sprang up beside me, and something touched my hand, but outside the cutting was a tiny depression.  I crouched in this, struggling to get my wind.  On the other side of the railway a horseman galloped up, shouting to me and waving his hand.  He was scarcely forty yards off.  With a rifle I could have killed him easily.  I knew nothing of white flags, and the bullets had made me savage.  I reached down for my Mauser pistol.  ‘This one at least,’ I said, and indeed it was a certainty; but alas!  I had left the weapon in the cab of the engine in order to be free to work at the wreckage.  What then?  There was a wire fence between me and the horseman.  Should I continue to fly?  The idea of another shot at such a short range decided me.  Death stood before me, grim sullen Death without his light-hearted companion, Chance.  So I held up my hand, and like Mr. Jorrocks’s foxes, cried ‘Capivy.’  Then I was herded with the other prisoners in a miserable group, and about the same time I noticed that my hand was bleeding, and it began to pour with rain.

Two days before I had written to an officer in high command at home, whose friendship I have the honour to enjoy:  ’There has been a great deal too much surrendering in this war, and I hope people who do so will not be encouraged.’  Fate had intervened, yet though her tone was full of irony she seemed to say, as I think Ruskin once said, ’It matters very little whether your judgments of people are true or untrue, and very much whether they are kind or unkind,’ and repeating that I will make an end.