ural. Cut off the wire and rail communication of a South
African veld town and you have isolation in the most thorough sense. In
such a place at such a time mere statement may seem quite possibly the
truth.

Towards evening we got news of the rebels, and a night-march was
ordered. As we left the town the loyal people lined the streets, the
fellows in the columns whistled "Tipperary," and we got a rousing
farewell.

[Illustration: Group of Rebel Leaders]
[Illustration: Rebels rounded up after the capture of De Wet]

General Botha is celebrated amongst fighting men for many things, and
his night-marching is one of them. He appears to believe to the fullest
extent in night-marching. He had located De Wet at a place called
Mushroom Valley, and parts of the Commander-in-Chief's forces had been
sent to make a surrounding movement. During the all-night trek from
Winburg to Mushroom Valley I had a first thorough experience of the
true horrors of sleep-fighting. It was bitterly cold--cold as the Free
State night on the veld knows how to be. And we could not smoke, could
not talk above a faint murmur, and nodded in our saddles. The clear
stars danced fantastically in the sky ahead of us, and the ground
seemed to be falling away from us into vast hollows, then rising to our
horses' noses ready to smash into us like an impalpable wall. After
midnight, outspanning in a piercing wind, we formed square; main guard
was posted over the General's car, and those lucky enough to escape
turn of duty huddled together under cloaks and dozed fitfully until
two-thirty. From two-thirty till sunrise we trekked on. Suddenly, just
after good daylight, the Staff halted the column, glasses were put up,
and away we swung half right into the veld. Up came the artillery and
opened fire on a cluster of ant-sized figures four thousand yards ahead
beneath the shoulder of a kopje. Had the thing not contained the very
germ of tragedy it would have been laughable to see the way those
figures scattered over the red veld. It was De Wet's commandos caught
napping. Just before the shell fire our burghers had gone out ahead
hell-for-leather on either flank. The whole column then advanced. After
two hours' pretty hot work the action was over. We lost six killed
against the rebels' twenty-two, and with twenty wounded on our side the
rebel losses were proportionate. We took upwards of three hundred
prisoners, De Wet himself escaping by the merest fluke. He lost al