g first loaded four days' supplies from their old camp and
set there lighted candles sufficient to cause such an illumination as
would suggest to the Boers an idea of occupation, quietly stole away. No
one exactly knew their destination. At nine of the clock the Army
Service Corps waggons moved to the camp, were loaded, and by midnight
commenced rumbling along in the damp obscurity. The advance column,
after passing through Dundee, where it was joined by transport and
rearguard, proceeded along the Helpmakaar road on the way to
Ladysmith.

[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL SIR W. PENN SYMONS, K.C.B.

Photo by R. Stanley & Co., London.]

On Monday afternoon the first halt was called, but the rest was of short
duration, for at ten the column was again plodding along through the
miry roads in hourly dread lest the whole scheme should be spoilt, and
the Boers suddenly arrest the course of the two-mile-long column.

And they had indeed good reason for alarm. They were forced to plod
through a narrow pass in the Biggarsberg range of mountains, so narrow
indeed that a hundred Boers might have effectually barred their way.
Here, through this perilous black cylinder of the hills, they marched at
dead of night. It took them between the hours of half-past eleven till
three, stumbling and squelching in the mire, and knowing that should the
enemy appear, should they but shoot one of the oxen of the leading
waggon of the convoy, and thus block the cramped defile, all chance of
getting safely through to Ladysmith would be at an end. This was by no
means a happy reflection to fill men's minds in the dripping, almost
palpable, darkness of the night, and the resolute spirit of the gallant
fellows who unmurmuringly stowed away all personal wretchedness and
stuck manfully to their grim duty is for ever to be marvelled at and
admired. Fortunately the Dutchmen, "slim" as they were, had not counted
on the possibility of this march being executed at all, still less of
its being executed in pitch darkness. They were caught napping, and the
party, who had left kit, provisions (except for the four days), and
everything behind them, who were now drenched to the skin in the only
clothes they possessed, at last reached Sunday River in safety.

Here they eagerly awaited an escort of the 5th Lancers, which had been
detached by Sir George White from Ladysmith to meet them. These, to the
great joy of the worn-out travellers, appeared on Wednesday afterno