If he steers the middle way, and is sufficiently plausible in the tale he tells, he may carry on to the end of the war, or the leave season; perhaps even, if he is sufficiently cautious, he may worm his way into an honours list. For it is the good, not the bad, that the modern system breaks. It is one thing for the mounted men of a column to come into camp, another for the transport. Houwater presented an ideal place for the bivouac, with its running water, its solitary building--half farm, half store--at the drift, and its complement of oat-straw. But the _vlei_[25] from which the place takes its name was the very deuce for wheeled transport. All is fair in "love and war." This being a creed very staunchly adhered to by the private soldier when campaigning, the mess-servants of the staff of the Cavalry Brigade saw fit in the early morning to steal a span[26] of mules which had strayed from the protection of their rightful owners. Now the Brigade state _fourgon_ with a span of four mules was a big enterprise, and if treated gently might have ministered to the comfort of the staff for many months. But no; the brigadier's servant and the mess-waiter, who was a high-spirited and intelligent dragoon, sought to vary the _ennui_ of the march, and to assert their superiority over the Kaffirs in the matter of stage-driving, by taking the _fourgon_ and its half broken team full gallop down the incline terminating in Houwater _vlei_. A playful and exhilarating expedient, which ruined the brigadier's spring vehicle for ever and a day, and denied the staff many home comforts for that and some consecutive nights....