After hastily performing my errand and with some difficulty getting a waggon and oxen to return with me, I found to my annoyance that owing to the indolence or probably intended treachery of the driver, who kept me waiting two hours for his oxen, I was too late to join a party going out to the camp with waggons, and there being no escort to be obtained from Fort Beaufort, I had no alternative, as our early march from the Blinkwater next morning rendered my return that evening imperative, but to start a little before dusk accompanied only by the servant. We had got about half way or a little more, and had entered the most bushy and dangerous part of the road when it fell nearly dark, the sheet lightning becoming most brilliant. I rode along by the side of the oxen in the narrow track, and was in the act of lighting my second cheroot, when a volley was suddenly poured into us from the bush along the edge of the river on our right, so close as to blind me for an instant with the flash; one of the oxen, which were on my left, dropt down dead, and two more rolled over wounded, while the waggon was struck in half a dozen different places; the rest of the terrified cattle faced round kicking and plunging, got their legs over the trektow, and wound themselves into an inextricable mess. The driver and leader, one a Totty, the other a Ghonah, either purposely or from fear refused to assist in extricating them, and when I threatened them with my pistol, bolted into the bush on the other side of the road and disappeared. Left to our own devices, we made an ineffectual attempt to cut out the dead and wounded oxen from the trektow with a blunt tobacco knife, the Kaffirs firing at us from the bush all the time, but found it utterly impossible; they now completely surrounded us, forming across the road in front and rear, and firing in quick succession, one shot striking the cantle of my saddle, and another wounding my horse in the head, which made him almost unmanageable; it was madness to stand to be shot at by so many guns, so we determined to make a dash for the camp, and with a shout rode right at the fellows in front, who as I fired my second pistol jumped aside and let us pass, though a parting shower of bullets, as we galloped off, made the dust fly from the road under our horses' feet. In less than five minutes after reaching the camp, a party of Fingoes had turned out, and quickly getting a span of oxen together, we returned to the rescue of the unfortunate waggon at a sharp trot, most of the Fingoes keeping up with the horses the whole two miles. Though the oxen were gone, our speedy return prevented the rascals destroying or ransacking the waggon, from which they had only taken a box of cheroots and a case of brandy; the former, as we afterwards discovered by their spoor, they had chopped up into tobacco, and on the latter they had got so drunk that they lost two of the bullocks, which, as Bruce and I had to pay for the missing ones