However, the grub came, and our sorrows were forgotten in the pleasure of exercising our fast stiffening jaws. It was great sandwiches of bully beef, no butter, no trimmings, but mighty good, and bowls of steaming coffee. There was a fair whack for each man, and none of us thought of giving half to the poor or saving up any for a rainy day. Every man ate up all he got and never emitted a sound, other than that of mastication, until the grunt of interrogation which denoted finished, and was there any more? There wasn’t, and we got no more that day, barring what we bought and paid for at extortionate rates. At any game in the world the Briton can beat the Boer if the conditions are such that the Briton has any chance at all. This may seem a reckless statement in view of the fact that 16,000 Boers are still holding the field against ten times their number. But I make it with a knowledge of the circumstances, and am willing to demonstrate the truth of my statement to any unbeliever who has the pluck to call on me expressing his doubt. At any rate, by night time, when we crossed the Vaal River and had reached Vereeniging, the first station in the Transvaal, we had so ‘kidded’ our guards into a belief in our desire to reach Pretoria that they trusted us on to the platform, from which we gravitated into the refreshment-bar with a celerity that would have astonished Sir Isaac Newton. We found it crowded with people who didn’t seem to think we were particularly remarkable—at any rate, they did not offer us drinks: these we had to pay for at the rate of 2_s._ a peg—cheap enough, considering everything. Hard-boiled eggs 6_d._ each, sandwiches 1_s._, cigars none under 1_s._ The last-named we could not run to, so set about looking for pipes and ’bacca. Boer tobacco is sold in glazed paper bags, about the size of 14 lb. of sugar, for 1_s._ a time. You can use it either for smoking or as bedding for horses and cattle—they won’t eat it. Pipes like those you get at home for 4½_d._ were half a crown, so there is no need to dissert on the fiscal methods of the Boer: there’s no free trade about him. He represents McKinley at about two stone in the matter of Protection. I coveted a pipe for 3_s._ 6_d._ and told the barman I was very sorry I only had 2_s._ 6_d._, and wouldn’t he give it to a poor broken-hearted prisoner at a reduction? It was true about the 2_s._ 6_d._, for I was afraid to produce a sovereign lest some of them should take a fancy to it, as they had done to so many of our little valuables. The beast said he’d see me damned first, and I called him something in Hindustani which attracted more attention than I liked, when I felt a hand twitching my tunic and saw a little Jew man winking portentously. I put my hand down, and he slipped a coin into it—a shilling it was, to enable me buy the pipe. This is one of