One morning a patrol set forth to spy the land, an officer and eleven men. They rode west for fifteen miles and entered the hills aforesaid, their object being to reach the junction of Six Mile Spruit with the Crocodile River. The way being purely cross-country it was a difficult matter to locate their destination, and seeing a farmhouse at the top of a valley the patrol made for it with the object of being directed. The valley traversed was some thousand yards wide from ridge to ridge. At the far end was the farmhouse, and beyond a low hill. Down the middle of the valley ran a spruit between high banks, forming a donga deep and wide enough to cover mounted men. The path running up the valley crossed the donga 600 yards from the farmhouse. Our fellows trotted up to the farmhouse, some tackling the lady of the house, and the others the Boer himself, who was spotted on the road a little way off. The good lady was a bit nervous, and rather hastily volunteered the information that the Boers had all gone away. Though never dreaming of their presence so near, this aroused the suspicions of the man to whom the remark was made, and he went up to the farmer, and roughly demanded where the Boers were. The question rather startled him, and from his manner it became evident that Boers were about, though he swore they had left the night before. Thereupon the patrol, in open order, advanced across the rising to the right, with Bearne, Graham, and Cayley in front. A wire fence obstructed the way, and it was a moot point whether to go round by a gate to the left or to use the wire-cutters. This fence was eighty yards from the top of the ridge, to which it ran parallel. The cutting of the fence saved the lives of the men mentioned. Hardly were they through the opening than a heavy fire was opened on them at a range of fifty yards. The rest of the party being a hundred yards behind, not yet up to the fence, Cayley, Bearne, and Graham whipped round, and made for the cutting, which was luckily immediately behind them. If they had gone round by the gate to the left they would have had to stand fire getting to the gate, and then run the gauntlet all the way back. As it was they got safely through the cutting and legged it after the rest, the party making straight down the valley for the donga already described. As the distance between the Boers and the donga was only 800 yards, it can be imagined how hot the fire was. Extraordinary to relate, not a man was touched during the brief but dangerous interval which elapsed between leaving the wire fence and reaching the donga. Arrived there a new foe sprang upon the unlucky patrol. [Illustration: L.C. BEARNE]