"When I reached the bank I gave a shout of satisfaction. The river was in flood; there must have been rain up in the hills, and you know how quickly the streams rise. Unless the Boers knew of some very shallow place, there would be no crossing it; for it was running like a mill-stream, and except at some waggon drift the banks were almost perpendicular. At any rate I could not hope to swim half across before the Boers came up, and so I must fight it out where I was. I had scarcely found a point where I could get a comfortable foothold on the bank, with my head just above the level, when the Boers appeared on the top of the hill. They stopped for a minute and then broke up, and scattering rode forward. They felt sure that I must have made for the river, as there was no other place where I could be concealed. When they came within a couple of hundred yards of it they dismounted, and three or four came forward on foot. When the nearest was within a hundred yards of me I fired. "At so short a distance, and with so good a rest, I could not miss, and before the smoke cleared away I winged another, and the rest ran back hastily. I sent a shot or two among them as they were consulting, with the result that they rode off three or four hundred yards farther back. They did not attempt to return my fire, for, except when I raised my head for a moment, they could see nothing of me. They doubtless learned from the women that I had a Colt's rifle and a brace of revolvers, and that if they were to make a rush across the open not many of them were likely to reach me. After a talk two or three of them mounted their horses and rode so as to strike the river both above and below me, intending no doubt to cross if they found a place where there was a chance of doing so. I felt pretty sure that they would do nothing till it was dark, then they would crawl up and make a rush; I was certain, anyhow, that they would not give it up, as there were two of their number lying on the veldt besides the two at the farmhouse. There was, however, more pluck in them than I had given them credit for, for about mid-day they began to advance, crawling along the ground as if stalking a quarry. The men who had gone out on horseback had all returned, but just as the others started crawling up three of them galloped away down stream. I determined at once to shift my position a bit, so as to put off the evil hour. I pulled a stone as big as my head out of the clay of the bank and put it on the edge where my head had been, and then got down into the water. It was waist-deep at a couple of feet from the bank, which above was too steep to walk along. I had gone a hundred yards when I saw, seven or eight inches above the water-level, a hole, and pushing my arm in I found it was a place where a good bit of the bank had caved in. Laying my gun and pistols down on a ledge I felt about farther. At the top it went in nearly three feet, and was higher at the back than it was at the water's edge.