But whatever the sentiments of the people, there was decent food and a brief chance of comfortably partaking of it, and there was a sigh when the enjoyable time came to an end, and Vryburg, with its apology for civilisation, its costly meals and inferior cigars, so highly appreciated in those days of sparse comfort, had to be left behind. Farewell drinks--beer, gin and lime-juice, green chartreuse, tea--were disposed of, and then from five till midnight the steady march onwards was pursued. The conditions of the march, if nothing worse, were uncomfortable. No man dared betray his presence with the whiff of a cigar; and after the sun-scorchings of the baking African day, the searching, chill air of the moonlit veldt nipped the bones and filled the frame with aguish apprehensions. So cold were the nights that some declared they had to sleep walking up and down to save themselves from being frozen. Still, through it all, every member of the gallant band remembered the glorious object of his mission, and, when inclined to growl, packed away personal irritations and meditated on the number of hours which would elapse before London would be ringing with the news of the great relief. Every soul of this goodly company was swelling with pride and satisfaction at having the good luck to be among those chosen for the spirited exploit, and it was this pride, this almost heroic afflatus, which served to cast into insignificance the thousand and one inconveniences, trying to constitution and to temper, which were involved in this momentous if fatiguing march. It is true, bullet and shell were as yet only in the near future, but the aggravations of these, as all men agreed, were not to be compared with the sustained fret of marching under unrelenting sunshine, sleeping in violent chills, eating irresponsive biscuit, tackling "bully" without the assistance of a hatchet as a mincer; and enduring through all a parching thirst, a perpetual craving for water, which, when found, bred a loathly suspicion of the imps of enteric and dysentery that might lurk therein. As Mr. Stuart of the _Morning Post_ declared: "To go through ten or a dozen of our days uncomplainingly was a higher test of manhood than to fight, howsoever gallantly. To stand to arms an hour before sunrise, possibly to march for hours without a cup of coffee in the empty stomach, possibly to do patrol or picket as soon as the outspan place was selected, to return barely in time for a wad of stringy beef and some chunks of biscuit, to march again across the sand or over lumpy grass, so tired that at every halt they lay at their horses' feet dozing till the unwelcome 'Stand to your horses' was called, to go to bed without fire, without the last sleepy pipe: that was often what Mahon's men called a day."