ne thought of coming to close
quarters and driving the enemy from their commanding position. Already
more than half the horses and a very large number of officers and men
had gone down before the pelting bullets. Scottish Horse, Yeomanry, and
Derbys pushed on, the young soldiers of the two former corps keeping
pace with the veteran regiment. 'All the men behaved simply splendidly,'
said a spectator, 'taking what little cover there was and advancing yard
by yard. An order was given to try and saddle up a squadron, with the
idea of getting round their flank. I had the saddle almost on one of my
ponies when he was hit in two places. Two men trying to saddle alongside
of me were both shot dead, and Lieutenant Wortley was shot through the
knee. I ran back to where I had been firing from and found the Colonel
slightly hit, the Adjutant wounded and dying, and men dead and wounded
all round.' But the counter-attack soon began to make way. At first the
advance was slow, but soon it quickened into a magnificent rush, the
wounded Kekewich whooping on his men, and the guns coming into action
as the enemy began to fall back before the fierce charge of the British
riflemen. At six o'clock De la Rey's burghers had seen that their
attempt was hopeless, and were in full retreat--a retreat which could
not be harassed by the victors, whose cavalry had been converted by
that hail of bullets into footmen. The repulse had been absolute and
complete, for not a man or a cartridge had been taken from the British,
but the price paid in killed and wounded was a heavy one. No fewer
than 161 had been hit, including the gallant leader, whose hurt did not
prevent him from resuming his duties within a few days. The heaviest
losses fell upon the Scottish Horse, and upon the Derbys; but the
Yeomanry also proved on this, as on some other occasions, how ungenerous
were the criticisms to which they had been exposed. There are few
actions in the war which appear to have been more creditable to the
troops engaged.

Though repulsed at Moedwill, De la Rey, the grim, long-bearded fighting
man, was by no means discouraged. From the earliest days of the
campaign, when he first faced Methuen upon the road to Kimberley, he had
shown that he was a most dangerous antagonist, tenacious, ingenious, and
indomitable. With him were a body of irreconcilable burghers, who
were the veterans of many engagements, and in Kemp he had an excellent
fighting subordinate. His comman