“We stuck to the riverbank and kept our noses to the west. All we could do. We had a constant supply of disgusting cholera-ridden river water, but there were pure springs enough along the north bank to keep us going. We saw and tried to catch one or two masterless Boer horses, but they wouldn’t let us anywhere near them. We can’t have smelled right to their delicate nostrils. We tried the whistling trick to attract them, but they weren’t deceived! We clearly weren’t whistling the right tune. On the second day, we came across a spavined mule that had been cut loose by the Boers. After a bit of stomach-churning attention involving a penknife from Private Sexton—Herbert—who’d been a horse-handler back home, it recovered enough for us to recruit it to our cause and carry our baggage. And if the worst occurred, it would stew up and feed us for a few days.”

“You must have been thankful for the qualities of Private Sexton?”

“Some of them,” came the lugubrious answer.

“The cabin, when we came across it, was small, but from a distance, at least, seemed intact. The roof was sound, all the walls standing. These were of light stone dug out of the surrounding kopjies and blended with the surroundings. It had been difficult to spot, hidden away as it was on the shaded side of a spreading jackalberry tree. The river was a few yards to the south of it, and the railway line running north to Kimberley and south to Cape Town was right there where it was shown on the hand-drawn map we’d been given, two minutes’ stroll from the cabin. We could see from a distance that it was, strategically, a good spot to occupy. Any trains running would slow to a crawl to get over the flimsy-looking metal strutted-erection that passed for a railway bridge over the Modder. It was the obvious place from which to plan a bit of sabotage or to leap aboard a carriage going in the direction of your choice or simply to keep an eye out for troop or civilian movements out of Kimberley or up to Kimberley. We had a pair of binoculars with us, and I gave the whole scene a careful raking before we decided what to do. I noticed that the telegraph wires that ran along with the railway had been shredded every hundred yards and were hanging in ragged swags from the posts that had not been blown in two. Culverts had been dynamited, rails were missing. No chance of communicating with the rest of the world, then.