However, within the last few days, Colonel Baden-Powell has taken advantage of the enemy's position upon this front to order the western outposts to spend some few hours in worrying the enemy. It was a very pleasant little outing for us, and eminently beneficial, since the excitement attendant upon such a manoeuvre was as wholesome as a bumper of champagne. Word had already reached me of this contemplated move upon the enemy, and Lieutenant Paton, of C Squadron, was good enough to offer the hospitality of his hut for the night in question. We dined, not with the guilty splendour of the Trocadero or amid the sombre magnificence of Prince's, but in the rough-and-ready fashion which falls to those who, carrying their lives in their hands, have at most but a moment to spare for such unimportant incidents as breakfast and dinner. As a humble offering to the board I had drawn from the Army Service Stores a tin of canned mutton, and procured somewhere--which may or may not have been a private garden--a luscious marrow, and with these I hied myself to Lieutenant Paton's quarters. Along this western front there are many delightful and very genial officers. There is Major Godley, who is in command of the whole line; Colonel Walford, who commands Cannon Kopje; there are Captain Vernon and Captain Marsh, who, with Major Godley, are Imperial special service men; Lieutenant Holden and my host. The distances between their quarters are but slight, and perhaps the most entertaining moment in the siege is that which enables us to foregather at Major Godley's, chatting with eagerness and charming frankness upon the possibilities of the war as they are suggested by our immediate environment. By the time that I had arrived Lieutenant Paton's boy had prepared a savoury stew, and such was the scarcity of fresh meat that we had no hesitation in dedicating the canned mutton to some other meal. We ate, and pleasantly indulged in lime juice and water, smoking with contented elegance some choice cigarettes. After we had dined a short conference was held at Major Godley's, and then to rest, perchance to spend the night in sleeping, or perchance, to scratch; for fleas and flies, the parasitic mosquito and the insidious ant, make both day and night a source of irritation.