Commandant's part, and history will not begrudge him
the full measure of praise due to him. Had General Prinsloo and his
burghers been guided by him, these pages had never been written, for where
De Wet took his 1,800 burghers he could as easily have taken 6,000.

Scarcely had De Wet made his escape ere the truth was borne in upon the
burghers with an iron hand that their doom was sealed. General Rundle's
force, which all along had been essentially a blocking force, and not a
striking force, made a move on the 23rd of July. All day the cannons spoke
to the burghers from Willow Grange, all day long the rifles rippled their
leaden waves of death. We could see but little of the enemy; they lay
concealed behind the loose rocks, and our men had little else to do but
lift their rifles and pull the trigger, trusting to the powers that rule
the destinies of war to speed the bullets to some foeman's resting place.
But we knew they were there if we could not see them, for the snap and
snarl of the Mauser rifles came readily to our ears, and the booming of
their guns answered ours, as hound answers hound when the scent grows
hottest. We pounded them with shrapnel and pelted them with common shell
until the air around them rained iron. Our guns were six to one, yet those
brave veldtsmen held their own with a stubborn courage worthy of the
noblest traditions in all the red pages of war. They gave us a parting shot
at sundown, and at night, when the thick mists from the snow-draped
mountains behind us came down upon the land and added to the darkness of
the winter's night, they moved their gun and fell back with it to a place
where they could renew the battle on the morrow. And at the dawning they
testified their vitality by dropping a couple of shells right into the
midst of the Imperial Yeomanry camp.

Whilst we were busy at Julies Kraal, drawing the Boers' attention from
other points, feinting as if we intended to push right on into Commando
Nek, General Sir Archibald Hunter made a dash at Relief's Nek with his
force, and our cannon were busy at almost every point around the valley
where the Boers were stationed. General Prinsloo, who was in supreme
command of the enemy's forces, had no means of knowing where the British
really meant to strike. In vain he pushed men to anticipate Rundle's
threatened move, vainly he turned like a trapped tiger towards Hunter's
marching men. Turn where he would, the khaki wave met him, rolling
resi