for Valour will [Blank Page] not be able to tell you what sensations possessed them, simply because feeling in the ordinary sense was for a moment, or for an hour it may be, dead. The mental faculties were clear enough—so clear, indeed, that they took impressions, photographic in sharpness and detail, of every immediate surrounding, yet with no power of communicating those impressions in any sentient form. They knew, but did not feel. There are people who will tell you gravely that the Victoria Cross is an evil because it inspires men to do reckless things out of sheer desire for the glory of that decoration. It is all nonsense. I have known a great many Victoria Cross heroes, but not one who gained that high distinction because he tried to or was conscious at the moment of deserving it. There are soldiers of some countries in the world to whom glory and the lust of fame are incentives to valorous deeds. They love to think that the eyes of the world, and especially of its fairer half, are on them as they march to battle, and for the sake of these things they will volunteer to lead forlorn hopes; but once in the fight they behave as Nature or Fate decrees. The mere outward trappings of gallantry avail nothing then. [Illustration: MAP OF HOUTNEK shewing positions of British and Boer troops on 30th. April. Drawn by Major Neville C. Taylor, 14th. Bengal Lancers. _Contours shewn at intervals of 10 feet._ ] Of the curious duality that can only be described as detachment of mind from body, memory recalls two conspicuous examples which occurred within my knowledge, if not both within my actual range of vision, on the battlefield of Elandslaagte. One was when the Imperial Light Horse were rushing up the last slope to that wonderful rallying cry of theirs in an onslaught that rolled like a resistless wave across the shot-torn crest and crowned the day with victory. One trooper dropped out of the ranks as if a bullet had struck him, yet he knew that only his legs had given way, suddenly refusing to carry him any further. Speaking frankly of this incident afterwards, he said that at the moment no thought in his mind was so strong as the desire to be with those who were charging up the stony heights, waved on by their intrepid Colonel, Chisholm. He had no sensation that could be akin to fear, and yet he was powerless to move a limb. Then suddenly a strange thing happened. A Mauser bullet ploughed along his cheek and stung him. In another moment mind and body were leaping together up that hill, each striving to be first in the race, and behaving with a gallantry at which even brave men wondered. But for that accidental shot the trooper might have stopped where he fell and been branded as a coward. The other illustration occurred almost simultaneously, but in a different way. Some wounded men of the same dauntless corps were lying on an opposite slope exposed to a heavy