rcely beset by
several hundred Boers, and the post was eventually carried after a sharp
and bloody contest. Kane, of the South Lancashires, died with the
words 'No surrender' upon his lips, and Potgieter, a Boer leader, was
pistolled by Kane's fellow officer, Lefroy. Twenty of the small garrison
fell, and the remainder were overpowered and taken.

With this vantage-ground in their possession the Boers settled down to
the task of overwhelming the main position. They attacked upon three
sides, and until morning the force was raked from end to end by unseen
riflemen. The two British guns were put out of action and the maxim was
made unserviceable by a bullet. At dawn there was a pause in the attack,
but it recommenced and continued without intermission until sunset. The
span betwixt the rising of the sun and its last red glow in the west is
a long one for the man who spends it at his ease, but how never-ending
must have seemed the hours to this handful of men, outnumbered,
surrounded, pelted by bullets, parched with thirst, torn with anxiety,
holding desperately on with dwindling numbers to their frail defences!
To them it may have seemed a hard thing to endure so much for a tiny
fort in a savage land. The larger view of its vital importance could
have scarcely come to console the regimental officer, far less the
private. But duty carried them through, and they wrought better than
they knew, for the brave Dutchmen, exasperated by so disproportionate a
resistance, stormed up to the very trenches and suffered as they had
not suffered for many a long month. There have been battles with 10,000
British troops hotly engaged in which the Boer losses have not been
so great as in this obscure conflict against an isolated post. When at
last, baffled and disheartened, they drew off with the waning light, it
is said that no fewer than a hundred of their dead and two hundred of
their wounded attested the severity of the fight. So strange are the
conditions of South African warfare that this loss, which would have
hardly made a skirmish memorable in the slogging days of the Peninsula,
was one of the most severe blows which the burghers had sustained in
the course of a two years' warfare against a large and aggressive army.
There is a conflict of evidence as to the exact figures, but at least
they were sufficient to beat the Boer army back and to change their plan
of campaign.

Whilst this prolonged contest had raged round Fort Itala, a