On the way I passed through Sir Charles Warren’s camp, and there found a gang of prisoners—­forty-eight of them—­all in a row almost the same number that the Boers had taken in the armoured train.  Looking at these very ordinary people, who grinned and chattered without dignity, and who might, from their appearance, have been a knot of loafers round a public-house, it was difficult to understand what qualities made them such a terrible foe.

‘Only forty-eight, sir,’ said a private soldier, who was guarding them, ’and there wouldn’t have been so many as that if the orfcers hadn’t stopped us from giving them the bayonet.  I never saw such cowards in my life; shoot at you till you come up to them, and then beg for mercy.  I’d teach ’em.’  With which remark he turned to the prisoners, who had just been issued rations of beef and biscuit, but who were also very thirsty, and began giving them water to drink from his own canteen, and so left me wondering at the opposite and contradictory sides of human nature as shown by Briton as well as Boer.

We got neither food nor blankets that night, and slept in our waterproofs on the ground; but we had at last that which was better than feast or couch, for which we had hungered and longed through many weary weeks, which had been thrice forbidden us, and which was all the more splendid since it had been so long delayed—­Victory.

[Illustration:  Map of the Operations of the Natal Field Army February 14th to 28th.]

CHAPTER XXVI

THE RELIEF OF LADYSMITH

Commandant’s Office, Durban:  March 9, 1900.

The successful action of the 27th had given Sir Redvers Buller possession of the whole of the left and centre of the Pieters position, and in consequence of these large sections of their entrenchments having fallen into British hands, the Boers evacuated the remainder and retreated westward on to the high hills and northward towards Bulwana Mountain.

About ninety prisoners were captured in the assault, and more than a hundred bodies were counted in the trenches.  After making allowances for the fact that these men were for the most part killed by shell fire, and that therefore the proportion of killed to wounded would necessarily be higher than if the loss were caused by bullets, it seems probable that no less than three hundred wounded were removed.  Forty were collected by British ambulance parties.  Of the Boers who were killed in the retreat no accurate estimate can be formed, but the dongas and kopjes beyond the position were strewn with occasional corpses.  Undoubtedly the enemy was hard hit in personnel, and the fact that we had taken two miles of entrenchments as well as considerable stores of ammunition proved that a very definite and substantial success had been won.