a tramcar.  The weather was very trying sometimes and J——­, our Welsh singer, had acquired an almost supernatural skill in leaping from the train when it stopped for a couple of minutes, securing a bottle of Bass and then boarding the guard’s van when the train was moving off.  On one of these successful forays I saw J——­ send three respectable people sprawling on their backs as he violently collided with them in his desperate efforts to overtake the receding train.  The victims slowly got up and some nasty remarks about J——­ were wafted to us over the veldt.  We had a couple of cooks.  One of them was an American who had served in the Cuban war, the other a big Irishman called Ben.  The American chef, being the only man out of uniform on the train, had access to alcoholic refreshments at the stations, which were very properly denied to the troops, and he rejoiced exceedingly to exercise his privilege.  He could sleep in almost any position, and generally lay down on the kitchen dresser without any form of pillow, or slept serenely in a sitting posture with his feet elevated far above his head.

We steamed away from the Capetown station in the afternoon.  The regular service had to a large extent been suspended, and here and there sentries with fixed bayonets kept watch over the government trains as they lay on the sidings.  If it was thought prudent to guard trains from any injury in Capetown itself, one can realise the absolute necessity of employing the colonial volunteers in patrolling the long line of some 600 miles from the sea to Modder River.

“Queen Victoria’s afternoon tea”—­as we called it—­was served about five.  The two orderlies for the day brought from the kitchen a huge tea-urn, some dozen bowls, and two large loaves.  We supplemented this rudimentary fare with a pot of “Cape gooseberry” jam, the gift of a generous donor, and improved the quality of the tea with a little condensed milk.  Fresh from the usages of a more effete civilisation I did not feel after two cups of tea and some butterless bread that “satisfaction of a felt want”—­to quote Aristotle—­which comes, say, after a dinner with the Drapers’ Company in London, and for two nights I tore open and devoured with my ward-companion a tin of salmon which I bought from a Jew along the line.  But, strange to say, after a few days of this regime, which in its chronological sequence of meals and its strange simplicity recalled the memories of early childhood, my internal economy seemed to have adapted itself to the changed environment, and after five o’clock with its tea and bread I no longer wished for more food.  Exactly the same experience befalls those inexperienced travellers in tropical countries who, at first, are continually imbibing draughts of water, but soon learn the useful lesson of drinking at meal-time only, and before long do not even take the trouble to carry water-bottles with them at all.