ty feet deep, with steep, sudden banks, and
through this the road dips down and passes. Broadwood halted on the east
side of it, thus leaving it between himself and home. In doing this he
gave a chance to an enemy who never throws a chance away. The Boer
leader was Christian De Wet.

The first thing in the morning the enemy began shelling our camp. The
convoy was sent on, not a scout with it. Meantime, during the night
several hundred Boer marksmen had been sent round into the sluit, and
were now lying right across poor Broadwood's retreat. The Boers, acting
with their devilish coolness as usual, took possession of the waggons
without giving the alarm. Our two batteries and Roberts' Horse came
along, and were allowed to get to point-blank distance, and then the
volley came; magazine rifles at pistol-shot range. For the moment the
result, as at Magersfontein, was chaos.

Hornby dealt the first counter-blow. With the five manageable guns he
galloped back a bit and brought them into action at 1000 yards. He
showed first that it was going to be a fight and not a stampede. "Steady
and hit back," said Q Battery. You should hear the men talk of that
battery. It lost almost every man, killed or wounded, but it was the
chief means in restoring some sort of order to the retreat. But the
disaster was past retrieving. In killed, wounded, and prisoners we lost
a third of our force, the whole convoy, and seven guns out of twelve. I
can see the question you are dying to ask. Why on earth did Broadwood
camp the wrong side of that ditch? That is exactly the sort of question
that a "blooming civilian" would ask. And then came Reddersberg and the
loss of another five hundred. Christian De Wet again! And all this
within hearing, as you may say, of the main British army.

These disasters come most inopportunely for us. Many of the Orange Free
State Burghers, when their capital was taken, seem to have thought it
was all up and some of them took the oath. But this right and left of De
Wet's has changed that impression. It comes just in time to fan into a
fresh blaze embers that seemed dying out. We hear that all the farmers
who had taken the oath are under arms again. They had not much choice,
for the fighting Boers simply came along and took them.

My visit to old Modder River was very interesting. It was quite
deserted; only a few odds and ends of militia, where, when I remember it
last, there were stately great squares of ordered tents