The lieutenant of the Scouts was John Shea, a grey-haired man who might
have had grand-children old enough to fight. Shea fought with the Boers
because he thought they had a righteous cause, and not because he loved
the smell of gunpowder, although he had learned to know what that was in
the Spanish-American war. Shea endeavoured to introduce the American army
system into the Boer army, but failed signally, and then fought side by
side with old takhaars all during the Natal campaign. He was the guardian
of the mascot of the scouts, William Young, a thirteen-year-old American,
who was acquainted with every detail of the preliminaries of the war.
William witnessed all but two of the Natal battles, and several of those
in the Free State, and could relate all the stirring incidents in
connection with each, but he could tell nothing more concerning his
birthplace than that it was "near the shore in America," both his parents
having died when he was quite young. Then there was Able-Bodied Seaman
William Thompson, who was in the _Wabash_ of the United States Navy, and
served under MacCuen in the Chinese-Japanese war. Thompson and two others
tried to steal a piece of British heavy artillery while it was in action
at Ladysmith, but were themselves captured by some Boers who did not
believe in modern miracles. Of newspaper men, there were half a dozen who
laid aside the pen for the sword. George Parsons, a _Collier's Weekly_
man, who was once left on a desert island on the east end of Cuba to
deliver a message to Gomez, several hundred miles away; J.
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