spread out in skirmishing order as they proceeded, and, ignorant of the proximity of the Boers, drew their horses into a walk.  The burghers in the kopje fired a few shots, and the troops turned quickly to the left and again broke into a gallop.  The firing from the kopje increased in volume, the cannon from the hills again broke forth, the little dust-clouds rose out of the earth on all sides of the troopers, and shrapnel bursting in the air sent its bolts and balls of iron and steel; into the midst of the brown men and earth.  Horses and riders fell, officers leaped to the ground and shouted encouragement to their soldiers, men sprang behind rocks and discharged their rifles.  Minutes of agony passed.  Officers gathered their men and attempted to lead them forward, but they had not progressed far when the Boers in the spruit in front of them swept the ground with the bullets of their rifles.  Burghers crept around the edge of the kopjes and emptied their carbines into the backs of the cavalrymen, cannons poured shell upon them from three different directions, and these men on the open plain could not see even a brace of Boers to fire upon.  Men and horses continued to fall, the wounded lay moaning in the grass, while shells and bullets sang their song of death more loudly every second to those who braved the storm.  A tiny white cloth was raised, the firing ceased instantly, and the brave band threw down its arms to the burghers who sprang out from the spruit and rocky kopje.

In the east the low hills were dotted with men in brown.  To the right and left of them, a thousand yards apart, were Boer horsemen circling around kopjes and seeking positions for attacking the already vanquished but stubborn enemy.  Rifle fire had ceased and cannon sounded only at intervals of a few minutes.  Women at the doors of the two farmhouses in the centre of the battlefield, and a man drawing water at a well near by, were not inharmonious with the quietness and calmness of the moment, but the epoch of peace was of short duration.  The Boer horsemen stemmed the retreat of the men in brown, and compelled them to retrace their steps.  Another body of burghers made a wide detour north-eastward from the spruit, and, jumping from their horses, crept along under the cover of an undulation in the ground for almost a half-mile to a point which overlooked the route of the British retreat.

The enemy was slow in coming, and a few of the Boers lay down to sleep.  Others filled their pipes and lighted them, and one abstracted a pebble from his shoe.  As the cavalrymen drew nearer to them the burghers crept forward several paces and sought the protection of rocks or piled stones together in the form of miniature forts.  “Shall we fire now?” inquired a beardless Free State youth.  “Wait until they come nearer,” replied an older burgher close by.  Silence was maintained for several minutes, when the youth again became uneasy.  “I can hit the first one of those Lancers,” he begged, as he pointed with his carbine to a cavalryman known to the Boers as a “Lancer,” whether he carried a lance or not.  The cannon in the south urged the cavalrymen forward with a few shells delivered a short distance behind them, and then the old burgher called to the youth, “See if you can hit him now.”