96 
SPORT AND WAR. 
CHAV. XII. 
when I saved his life only by taking my oath that 
I would blow his (the captain’s) brains out if he 
fired. 
In extenuation I must, however, say that this man 
had much provocation; his stock had been all carried 
off, his homestead burned down, and his wife and 
children all murdered in cold blood by the Kafirs. 
On my return to where the troops were mustering 
on Somerset Mount, the General was pleased to see one 
of the chiefs a prisoner, and when I reported having 
made two other prisoners they were called for ; but, like 
4 spirits from the vast deep,’ they would or rather 
could not come. I did not know the 7th Dragoon 
soldier, and no man would; confess to having received 
over a prisoner. Sergeant Crawford (Cape Mounted 
Kifles), whom I knew, however, came to the front and 
stated that as he was returning with the second 
prisoner two other Kafirs jumped out of a bush where 
they were hiding and tried to secure the prisoner, on 
which he shot him and one other Kafir. 
The Greneral sent me at once on express duty to 
carry a despatch with the account of the battle to his 
Excellency the Grovernor and Commander-in-Chief (Sir 
P. Maitland), then at Graham’s Town, sixty miles off, 
which place I reached at midnight, and was back in 
camp at nine o’clock next morning. 
During that night it transpired how the other 
