Time being precious, we started off as well as we could with our reduced convoy. Suddenly one of our boys, big John, stood tiptoe on his long feet, gave a sweeping glance around, and went quietly on his way. Half an hour later, he began again to increase in height and to study the horizon.... We could see absolutely nothing. As my acquaintance with John was slight, I imagined that he probably suffered from some nervous affection. But this time he sniffed the air loudly, and, without a word, darted off obliquely from our track. An hour passed, and he did not return. Grave doubts of his fidelity began to afflict us. At last, two hours later, we noticed a speck on the horizon, then two. It was John with the missing mule. John is an angel--a black angel! All the farms we passed on the road had hoisted the white flag. At noon we reached the point where the road to Bloemfontein bifurcates. A few Burghers were gathered there. We pitched our tents. During the evening the French military attaché, Captain D----, passed, and told us that Colonel de Villebois was only about an hour distant from us. On March 9 we set out to join him. We found him with about fifty men, coming from Pretoria. These men were divided into two companies, the first under Breda, the second under me. Directly we arrived it was agreed to start at ten o’clock. We stopped long enough to add our cart to the Colonel’s convoy, which we were to pick up near the farm of Abraham’s Kraal. The ’French Corps’ was formed! About four o’clock we arrived on the height of Abraham’s Kraal. The farm so-called lies along the Modder River, which flows from east to west. Its steep, bush-entangled banks are bathed with yellow, turbid water, whence its name--Modder (Mud) River. A line of kopjes, starting from the edge of the river, stretches several miles south of it. In front of them, to the west, lies a barren yellow plain. Far off on the horizon lie the kopjes of Poplar Grove, where we were forty-eight hours before. The Colonel, who has gone off on a scouting expedition with his troop, is not to be found. We wait for him vainly all the evening with General Delarey’s staff, in company with Baron von Wrangel, an ex-lieutenant of the German Guards. In this expedition a young volunteer named Franck, a quartermaster of the Chasseurs d’Afrique, whose term had just expired, distinguished himself by his coolness and his boldness under fire. He was a brave fellow, as he was to prove later on. Night came on fast, our chief was still absent, and we went off to sleep at a little deserted farm, with the officers of the Johannesburg Politie. We lay down beside them and slept like men who have been in the saddle for twelve hours. On March 10, at 5 a.m., we started for General Delarey’s bivouac. It might have been 6.30, when Vecht-General Sellier passed us at a gallop, crying: ’_Obsal!_ The English!’