terriers round a
rat-hole, while all day the pitiless guns crashed their common shell,
their shrapnel, and their lyddite into the river-bed. Already down
there, amid slaughtered oxen and dead horses under a burning sun, a
horrible pest-hole had been formed which sent its mephitic vapours over
the countryside. Occasionally the sentries down the river saw amid the
brown eddies of the rushing water the floating body of a Boer which
had been washed away from the Golgotha above. Dark Cronje, betrayer of
Potchefstroom, iron-handed ruler of natives, reviler of the British,
stern victor of Magersfontein, at last there has come a day of reckoning
for you!

On Wednesday, the 21st, the British, being now sure of their grip of
Cronje, turned upon the Boer force which had occupied the hill to the
south-east of the drift. It was clear that this force, unless driven
away, would be the vanguard of the relieving army which might be
expected to assemble from Ladysmith, Bloemfontein, Colesberg, or
wherever else the Boers could detach men. Already it was known that
reinforcements who had left Natal whenever they heard that the Free
State was invaded were drawing near. It was necessary to crush the
force upon the hill before it became too powerful. For this purpose the
cavalry set forth, Broadwood with the 10th Hussars, 12th Lancers, and
two batteries going round on one side, while French with the 9th and
16th Lancers, the Household Cavalry, and two other batteries skirted the
other. A force of Boers was met and defeated, while the defenders of the
hill were driven off with considerable loss. In this well-managed affair
the enemy lost at least a hundred, of whom fifty were prisoners. On
Friday, February 23rd, another attempt at rescue was made from the
south, but again it ended disastrously for the Boers. A party attacked
a kopje held by the Yorkshire regiment and were blown back by a volley,
upon which they made for a second kopje, where the Buffs gave them
an even rougher reception. Eighty prisoners were marched in. Meantime
hardly a night passed that some of the Boers did not escape from their
laager and give themselves up to our pickets. At the end of the week we
had taken six hundred in all.

In the meantime the cordon was being drawn ever tighter, and the fire
became heavier and more deadly, while the conditions of life in that
fearful place were such that the stench alone might have compelled
surrender. Amid the crash of tropical t