midnight
I dread their stiff attitudes , their terrible intent inattention . To this day such memories haunt me . That night they nearly overwhelmed me ... . I thought of the grim silence of the surgeon 's tent , the miseries and disordered ravings of the fever hospital , of the midnight burial of a journalist at Ladysmith with the distant searchlight on Bulwana flicking suddenly upon our faces and making the coffin shine silver white . What a vast trail of destruction South Africa had become ! I thought of the black scorched stones of burnt and abandoned farms , of wretched natives we had found shot like dogs and flung aside , rottenly amazed , decaying in infinite indignity ; of stories of treachery and fierce revenges sweeping along in the trail of the greater fighting . I knew too well of certain atrocities , -- one had to believe them incredibly stupid to escape the conviction that they were incredibly evil .