So he told us--and among the group of officers gathered above him on the hurricane deck I saw now one, now another, turn away, and hurry out of the throng. A gentleman I had met on the voyage--Captain Weldonasked questions. 'Do you know any names of killed in the Leicesters?' The man reflected. He could not be sure: he thought there was an officer named Weldon killed--oh, yes! he remembered there were two Weldons--one killed, one wounded, but he did not know which was in the Leicesters. 'Tell us about Mafeking,' said someone else. Then we heard about Mafeking--the armoured trains, the bombardment, the sorties, the dynamite wagons--all, in fact, that is yet known of what may become an historic defence. 'And how many Boers are killed?' cried a private soldier from the back. The man hesitated, but the desire to please was strong within him. 'More than two thousand,' he said, and a fierce shout of joy answered him. The crowd of brown uniforms under the electric clusters broke up into loud-voiced groups; some hastened to search for newspapers, some to repeat what they had heard to others; only a few leaned against the bulwarks and looked long and silently towards the land, where the lights of Cape Town, its streets, its quays, and its houses gleamed from the night like diamonds on black velvet. It is along casualty list of officers--of the best officers in the world. The brave and accomplished General of Glencoe; Colonel Chisholme, who brought the 9th Lancers out of action in Afghanistan; Sherston, who managed the Indian Polo Association; Haldane, Sir William Lockhart's brilliant aide-de-camp; Barnes, adjutant of the 4th Hussars, who played back of our team and went with me to Cuba; Brooke, who had tempted fortune more often than anyone else in the last four years--Chitral, Matabeleland, Samana, Tira, Atbara, and Omdurman--and fifty others who are only names to me, but are dear and precious to many, all lying under the stony soil or filling the hospitals at Pietermaritzburg and Durban. Two thousand Boers killed! I wish I could believe there were.