When the storm was over, the big guns again opened fire. Several hours had now passed since I left the hill on which our battalion had passed the night, and I wondered why no general advance had been made on the town. I did not think that it would be either wise or right to advance any further with only twenty men, as I knew there was a machine-gun in front of us, somewhere near the wireless installation, and it was impossible to tell what forces were still holding Bukoba and waiting to open fire from the shelter of the houses on any men advancing against it. So I sent one of the men with me--a South African named Budler--and my native boy Ramazani, with a note to Colonel Driscoll that there was a good line of advance towards Bukoba, along the edge of the swamp where my men were lying. My men met Colonel Driscoll and learnt from him that a general advance was in fact then taking place. C Company soon came up and took up their position a little beyond me along the reed-bed, and I learnt that Major Webb with the rest of A Company was advancing on our right, and then B and D Companies were still further to the right. The Adjutant, Captain White, then came along and thought that some of us ought to cross to the further side of the swamp. This was at once done by the men of C Company, some of my men with myself as their leader, and Captain White himself. The stream in the middle of the swamp was quite deep and we all got wet up to our breasts. Just before we crossed the swamp Lieutenant Miles of the King's African Rifles came up with a machine-gun, with which he opened fire on one of the houses near the wireless installation, from which we thought that a German machine-gun had been firing at us. This proved to be right, but unfortunately the German gun got the range of our gun first, and when three of his men had been wounded, one very severely, Lieutenant Miles had to withdraw his gun into the shelter of the hollow formed by the reed-bed. German sharpshooters, firing from we could not tell exactly where, were now sending some bullets disagreeably close to us as we lay flat just beyond the swamp. These bullets, fortunately in no great number, seemed to ping past us only a few inches above our bodies. Presently Sergeant-Major Bottomly of C Company came across the swamp, and lay down alongside of me, or at least separated from me by just a yard, my black boy Ramazani lying between us, but a little lower down, so that his head was on a line with my hips. I just said a word to Bottomly, and then turned my head away from him again to look in the direction from which the bullets were coming. Almost immediately my black boy Ramazani touched me, and said: "Master, soldier hit, dead." I had never heard a sound, but turning my head I saw poor Bottomly