trap laid for him, the Boers suddenly realised that the British column had disappeared, one of their scouts said, ‘We did not get much rest, as somebody had to be on the look-out all night. Your laager was quite near to us, but we did not see or hear anything move. In the morning, however, the whole had vanished, and when it was too late to stop them we heard they were trekking away north-west towards a desert where nobody but Boers or natives would expect to find water. Your General must have had somebody with him who knew that country well or he would never have ventured there.’ The ‘somebody’ in this case may have been Colonel Frank Rhodes, the bearer of a name which is one to conjure with still among the native tribes of Bechuanaland. He was Mahon’s Intelligence officer, and information gleaned by him made the night march possible; but it was the young Brigadier who planned and carried it into execution at a time when his enemies thought they had him surely trapped. When a complete history of the campaign comes to be written, that march of Mahon’s for the relief of Mafeking will rank high among the most daring and successful operations. All this story was known weeks before the General himself arrived at Pretoria with the Imperial Light Horse, who had won fresh honours in that enterprise under a leader whose praises they never tired of singing. No expectation of being brigaded with such a famous corps under such a brigadier had occurred to Lumsden’s Horse when they left Irene. Indeed, they seem to have regarded themselves as an integral unit of the 8th Mounted Infantry up to the day when Colonel Ross, receiving orders for a movement southwards, went off with other corps of his command, leaving Lumsden’s Horse behind. Meanwhile, however, they had been placed for a time at the disposal of Colonel Hickman, under whom they took part in the brief operations already described towards Crocodile River, which were merely a reconnaissance for the more important enterprise to follow.