"No, don’t call them that; it—it—riles me after the years I have worked with them...." "Well, Negroes, the bonny Bantu, the blameless Ethiopians, if you will.... And you ought to be a master-hand at bush-fighting. We’re going to get up a sort of mounted infantry, don’t you know. You’re just the man to be given a small command. You need not tell me you can’t ride, can’t get every ounce out of your mount, ’cos I know better; or that you can’t manage horses so that those entrusted to your men don’t die in three weeks. Didn’t you once tell me you bred Basuto ponies in G.E.A.? Well, I’m here, there, and elsewhere, buying Basuto ponies. Just stay here and get your uniform and equipment—here, give this card to our Supply department—and then report to General Buller. I’m writing him fully about you.... Oh yes.... And as to your nigs. I mean your two high-bred Fuzzie-wuzzies. Of course, we don’t employ Negro soldiers ... ’gainst the rules. But we engage thousands as batmen, transport-riders, grooms, and everything else. I’ll fix it up somehow that you take your two darkies with you. They seem to know what I’m sayin’. What jolly teeth. They look hefty men and a dam’ sight handsomer than some of the Johnnies you’ll see on the Rand, when we’ve got Oom Paul on the run..." So in course of time, Roger, first brevet-Major for gallantry in action, then a full Major—if there is such a simple rank no longer qualified with adjectives (but I know after his campaigns in the Transvaal he was always styled "Major" Brentham, till he was made a Colonel)—found his way (always attended by Yusuf Ali and Anshuro, his Somali batmen) into the eastern Transvaal at the period when President Kruger and the other members of his Government were leaving Pretoria for the Portuguese frontier. In the month of August he took part in a concentration of British forces against two Boer commandos in the north-east Transvaal. This resulted in a technical victory for the British, but whilst the tide of battle rolled away northwards to seize Pietersburg, the Boers were left in possession of the site of the first skirmish. And in a sudden hush after great clamour Roger realized that he was lying in the shade of some bushes near a little _spruit_ of water, shot through the thigh and quite incapable of sitting up. The bullet or bullets had gone clean through the fleshy part of the right thigh and grazed the knee of the left leg. Happily they had not broken the thigh bone or cut the great artery. The Somalis, who had a magical faculty of turning up when most wanted, had come in handy as renderers of first aid, had stopped the hæmorrhage. They now squatted on the ground beside their fainting master, fanned his sweating face, gave him water to drink and occasionally sprinkled his chest and forehead with water to ward off the deadly faintness....