By twelve o'clock the low hills in our front were burning from our shells, and the smoke of the grass helped still more to conceal this baffling enemy of ours. It was all very well for the gunners, with their excellent glasses, but the ordinary private could hardly see anything to aim at, and yet he was more or less under fire all the time. As to smoke, of course the smokeless powder gives the Boers an immense advantage in their method of fighting. It is hardly ever possible to tell exactly where the shots come from. But I noticed one man near the top of Tinta, who evidently had an old Martini which he valued much more than new-fangled things. Whenever he fired a little puff of grey smoke followed, and I always thought I heard the growl of his bullet particularly close, as though he steadily aimed at some officer near by. He sat under a bush, and had built himself a little wall of rocks in front. Shell after shell was showered upon that rocky hillside, for it concealed many other sharpshooters besides. But at each flash he must have thrown himself behind the stones, and when the shower of lead was over up he got, and again I saw the little puff of grey smoke and heard the growl of a bullet close by. The firing ceased about three. There was no apparent reason why it should. The Boers had killed a few of us. Probably we had killed more of them. But mere loss of life does not make victory or defeat, and to all appearance we were both on much the same ground as at first, except that the Boers had lost a gun, and were not at all comfortable on the positions they had held. Our withdrawal, however, was due to deeper reasons. A messenger had brought news of the column which had unhappily been driven from Dundee--whether by the Boers' 40-pounder, "Long Tom," or by failing ammunition I will not try to decide. Anyhow, the messenger brought the news that the column was safe and returning unmolested on Ladysmith by the roundabout road eastward, near Helpmakaar. We had held back the enemy from intercepting them on their march. Our long and harassing fight, then, had been worth the sacrifice. It was a victory in strategy. Sir George White gave the order for the infantry to withdraw from the ridge by battalions and return to Ladysmith. By evening we were all in the town again. Next day I determined to meet the Dundee force on its way. They were reported to have halted about twenty-five miles off the night before, near Sunday's river, which, like all the rivers and spruits just here, runs southward through mountains into the Tugela and Buffalo. About six miles out we had a small force ready to give them assistance if they were pursued. Passing through that column halted by a stream, I went on into more open country, where there was an occasional farm with the invariable tin roof and weeping willows of South Africa. For many miles I saw small parties of our Lancers and Carbineers scouring the country on both sides of the track.