took
the extreme form of handing over his rifle that the suspicion of danger
entered the heads of his companions. But if there was some lack of wit
there was none of heart in Sladen and his men. With forty-five Boers to
hold down, and 500 under Fourie, De Wet, and De la Rey around them,
the little band made rapid preparation for a desperate resistance: the
prisoners were laid upon their faces, the men knocked loopholes in the
mud walls of the kraal, and a blunt soldierly answer was returned to the
demand for surrender.

But it was a desperate business. The attackers were five to one, and
the five were soldiers of De Wet, the hard-bitten veterans of a hundred
encounters. The captured wagons in a long double row stretched out over
the plain, and under this cover the Dutchmen swarmed up to the kraal.
But the men who faced them were veterans also, and the defence made up
for the disparity of numbers. With fine courage the Boers made their way
up to the village, and established themselves in the outlying huts, but
the Mounted Infantry clung desperately to their position. Out of the
few officers present Findlay was shot through the head, Moir and Cameron
through the heart, and Strong through the stomach. It was a Waggon Hill
upon a small scale, two dour lines of skirmishers emptying their rifles
into each other at point-blank range. Once more, as at Bothaville, the
British Mounted Infantry proved that when it came to a dogged pelting
match they could stand punishment longer than their enemy. They suffered
terribly. Fifty-one out of the little force were on the ground, and the
survivors were not much more numerous than their prisoners. To the 1st
Gordons, the 2nd Bedfords, the South Australians, and the New South
Welsh men belongs the honour of this magnificent defence. For four hours
the fierce battle raged, until at last the parched and powder-stained
survivors breathed a prayer of thanks as they saw on the southern
horizon the vanguard of De Lisle riding furiously to the rescue. For the
last hour, since they had despaired of carrying the kraal, the Boers had
busied themselves in removing their convoy; but now, for the second time
in one day, the drivers found British rifles pointed at their heads, and
the oxen were turned once more and brought back to those who had fought
so hard to hold them. Twenty-eight killed and twenty-six wounded were
the losses in this desperate affair. Of the Boers seventeen were left
dead in front