I warned the gun detachments to stand to at three o’clock this morning. We had to keep standing by until six as there was a very heavy mist, just the morning for an attack, but all was quiet.
Battery Gun drill this morning. Bathed about midday.
At 2:30 pm the major, Elliott, Franklyn, and myself rode out on a reconnaissance. We went on practically the same ground as the day before yesterday, and a mile or two further on. The Glasgow Yeomanry provided us with an escort.
We saw a jackal jump out of a patch of scrub about fifty yards ahead of us and we galloped him for two or three hundred yards, but we couldn’t get a shot in, and he went like a flash of lightening straight towards Katia. On the way back we started a fox out of some scrub, but didn’t have a hunt. We came back along the shore, and it was alive with crabs, literally thousands; a sort of land crab that live in holes in the sand. They have very long legs and eyes that stick up like periscopes, and they run like blazes as soon as they see you coming, either into their holes or into the sea.
A very interesting intelligence report tonight, I think we shall have plenty to do shortly. The Admiralty have confirmed the report about Kitchener, it is a great blow.