But sometimes there were incidents which had nothing but the darker colours of life in them. In the fight of August 5th, two of the little band of officers under Colonel Plumer were killed, and Baden-Powell thus comments upon their loss in his journal, under date August 6th:--
"It is a sad shock to sit in one's little mess of half a dozen comrades once more, and to find two of them are missing from the meal. Poor Kershaw and Hervey! Now and then one is on the point of calling to the usual sleeping-place of one or other of them to bid him come and eat, when suddenly the grim, cold recollection strikes you--'He is yonder--dead.'
"Poor Hervey took his mortal wound as though it were but a cut finger, yet knowing that he was fast passing away. Now and then he sent for those he knew to come and see him and to say good-bye. He was perfectly possessed and cheery to the last, and happily without much pain.
"Poor chap, this was his first fight. He had been the paymaster to the forces, and had asked me to get him some appointment in the field. When he joined us in camp, I could not for the moment find a billet for him, till it occurred to me that there was a small company of men who had come up from Kimberley without an officer. They were so deficient in belts and bayonet scabbards that they always went with bayonets 'fixed,' and had thus gained for themselves the nickname of 'The Forlorn Hope.'
"On suggesting 'The Forlorn Hope' to Hervey, he was delighted, and it was at their head he so gallantly met his death.
The sketch above will explain the nature of the operation which led to Colonel Plumer's victory on August 5th.]
"His death is to me like the snatching away of a pleasing book half read.
"And Kershaw was the very type of a cool, brave, energetic officer. His loss to our little force is irreparable."
On the night of August 10th, Baden-Powell rode thirty miles into Buluwayo to report to General Carrington that the enemy in the Matopos were completely broken up and probably willing to surrender. From thence onward to September 6th he was on the sick-list--fever and dysentery--but he was pulled up on the 7th by "a better tonic than any which the combined medical faculty of Buluwayo could devise," in the shape of orders from the General to take charge of a column then under Ridley in the Somabula Forest. Next day he took three of Plumer's men as escort, and set off, in his shirt-sleeves as usual, for a hundred miles ride through a wild country. They had various small adventures on the way--amongst them being a meeting with a nigger who told Baden-Powell a beautifully conceived and executed lie about a great battle which had _not_ taken place. There are some interesting and significant entries in his journal about this time. Here is one as to the making of bread under difficulties:--