had occupied
the square he turned his men out and bivouacked them on the plain round
the village. They were exhausted after an eight-mile march, with this
action at the end of it; hot and thirsty too, suffering from such heat
and thirst as is only known in dusty deserts like the Karoo in time of
drought. There was a certain amount of looting--chiefly of cloth and
stuffs from the shops; but it was suddenly brought to an end by Lord
Roberts's startling order that any man found in the act of looting, or
any man against whom acts of looting could be proved, would be hanged,
and his battalion sent down to the base. There was no more looting.
"There _were_ three ducks found with their necks wrung," the General
admitted, "but we paid for them!"

The occupation of Jacobsdaal was, of course, only an incident in the
great whirl of operations which began on the 3rd of February, when
General Macdonald with the Highland Brigade moved westward from Modder
River and seized Koodoesberg. Hitherto we had been waging a very
straightforward kind of war, and Lord Roberts's masterly tactics between
Modder River and Paardeberg were the first hint we had given our enemy
that we also could be cunning. When I arrived at Modder River the wheels
of this great operation were spinning, but Modder itself was in an eddy,
where there was no movement and little news of any. French was racing to
head Cronje off on the north of the Modder River, and the main body of
the army was advancing in his rear, but we at Modder River knew next to
nothing of these movements.

It is worth while to recall the principal events in Lord Roberts's
operations near Modder River. The seizing of Koodoesberg was, of course,
intended to divert the attention of the Boers from the points at which
the real movement was taking place. On the 8th of the month General
Macdonald was recalled to Modder River; on the 9th Lord Roberts arrived
there and assumed command; on the 12th General French marched from
Ramdam, where he had been collecting a big cavalry force, seized
Dekiel's Drift and Klip Drift on the Modder, and the next day occupied a
commanding position on the north of the river, capturing three of the
enemy's laagers. On the 15th, having traversed Cronje's communications,
French reached Kimberley and dislodged the enemy from the southern side
of the town; they evacuated Magersfontein and Spytfontein, and retreated
to Koodoesrand, contriving in their turn to slip through our c