During the fight, a little Kaffir boy, who had been curled up in a _kaross_, had received a bullet in the sole of his foot, which, passing up the leg, had smashed several inches of the bone. As he was being rolled over and over whilst the men were dragging the _kaross_ from under him, he explained to me, by signs, his impossibility to rise. He stretched out his little bronzed fingers towards me; and his childish, olive face, lit up by the glare of the fire from the burning hut, looked to me like the illuminated countenance of the infant St John which one often sees in medieval pictures, and I could not help taking up the little fellow in my arms and giving him a hearty kiss. I could not leave him in his helpless condition; yet how were we to get him back to the camp? His leg was quite smashed. The man whom I tipped with a sovereign to carry him, found it dangling about in the most sickening manner, and at last gave up the job. The only chance left was to have an amputation performed. To this the child submitted without a murmur; and Dix, my cook, took the limb off at the knee in a manner that would have astonished a London surgeon. This was not the first “case” on which Dix had tried his “’prentice hand;” for some time past his vocation had been that of head surgeon and barber in general to the corps. The little patient arrived eventually at the camp all right; and it may perhaps interest my readers to hear that a wooden leg was made for him, on which he used to stump off extraordinary Kaffir reels that might have given a new idea to some of those bonnie Scotchmen who indulge in the Highland fling. But the most profitable feat for the little performer was the following:--In a small stream that flowed some two hundred yards in front of Blakeway’s Farm, the men had made a large pond for bathing, by sinking the bed of the river. Over it a small platform was erected from which one might take a plunge. To this spot the little Kaffir was led whenever visitors arrived at the camp (and this often occurred, now that the war was drawing to a close). There, one end of a string being tied to his wooden leg, and the other fastened to a fishing-rod, he popped into the water like a large frog, and went down to the bottom, while up rose his leg like a float. Then began the exciting struggle of landing this queer fish; and when this was achieved, amid roars of laughter, a shower of coppers was sure to make up for his ducking. The country around Fort Beaufort had now become so free from Kaffirs, that the men would often, after roll-call, of an evening go in twos and threes, without their firelocks, into the town, and return again before next morning’s _réveillé_, laden with calibashes filled with Cape-smoke. I may mention that this is the name of an intoxicating liquor made from the prickly pear or Cape cactus.