None doubted--though many tried to doubt--that at last it was--war! They paused an instant before they said the word, and spoke it softly. It had come at last--the moment they had worked and waited for--and they knew not whether to exult or to despair. II. THE ARMY CORPS--HAS NOT LEFT ENGLAND! A LITTLE PATCH OF WHITE TENTS--A DREAM OF DISTANCE--THE DESERT OF THE KARROO--WAR AT LAST--A CAMPAIGN WITHOUT HEADQUARTERS--WAITING FOR THE ARMY CORPS. STORMBERG JUNCTION. The wind screams down from the naked hills on to the little junction station. A platform with dining-room and telegraph office, a few corrugated iron sheds, the station-master's corrugated iron bungalow--and there is nothing else of Stormberg but veldt and, kopje, wind and sky. Only these last day's there has sprung up a little patch of white tents a quarter of a mile from the station, and about them move men in putties and khaki. Signal flags blink from the rises, pickets with fixed bayonets dot the ridges, mounted men in couples patrol the plain and the dip and the slope. Four companies of the Berkshire Regiment and the mounted infantry section--in all they may count 400 men. Fifty miles north is the Orange river, and beyond it, maybe by now this side of it, thousands of armed and mounted burghers--and war. I wonder if it is all real? By the clock I have been travelling something over forty hours in South Africa, but it might just as well be a minute or a lifetime. It is a minute of experience prolonged to a lifetime. South Africa is a dream--one of those dreams in which you live years in the instant of waking--a dream of distance.