orth, the little dust-clouds rose out of the
earth on all sides of the troopers, and shrapnel bursting in the air sent
its bolts and balls of iron and steel; into the midst of the brown men and
earth. Horses and riders fell, officers leaped to the ground and shouted
encouragement to their soldiers, men sprang behind rocks and discharged
their rifles. Minutes of agony passed. Officers gathered their men and
attempted to lead them forward, but they had not progressed far when the
Boers in the spruit in front of them swept the ground with the bullets of
their rifles. Burghers crept around the edge of the kopjes and emptied
their carbines into the backs of the cavalrymen, cannons poured shell upon
them from three different directions, and these men on the open plain
could not see even a brace of Boers to fire upon. Men and horses continued
to fall, the wounded lay moaning in the grass, while shells and bullets
sang their song of death more loudly every second to those who braved the
storm. A tiny white cloth was raised, the firing ceased instantly, and the
brave band threw down its arms to the burghers who sprang out from the
spruit and rocky kopje.

In the east the low hills were dotted with men in brown. To the right and
left of them, a thousand yards apart, were Boer horsemen circling around
kopjes and seeking positions for attacking the already vanquished but
stubborn enemy. Rifle fire had ceased and cannon sounded only at intervals
of a few minutes. Women at the doors of the two farmhouses in the centre
of the battlefield, and a man drawing water at a well near by, were not
inharmonious with the quietness and calmness of the moment, but the epoch
of peace was of short duration. The Boer horsemen stemmed the retreat of
the men in brown, and compelled them to retrace their steps. Another body
of burghers made a wide _detour_ north-eastward from the spruit, and,
jumping from their horses, crept along under the cover of an undulation in
the ground for almost a half-mile to a point which overlooked the route of
the British retreat.

The enemy was slow in coming, and a few of the Boers lay down to sleep.
Others filled their pipes and lighted them, and one abstracted a pebble
from his shoe. As the cavalrymen drew nearer to them the burghers crept
forward several paces and sought the protection of rocks or piled stones
together in the form of miniature forts. "Shall we fire now?" inquired a
beardless Free State youth. "Wait un