apet, at once shouted out, "It's all right, men; keep
under cover, and they can't touch us." A moment later there was a
second boom, the shell whistled over our heads, and the hillside some
way behind the trench was spattered with bullets.

By this time we were crouching as close as possible to the parapet,
which, though it had seemed only quite a short time before so
complete, now suddenly felt most woefully inadequate, with those
beastly shells dropping their bullets down from the sky. Another boom.
This time the shell burst well, and the whole ground in front of the
trench was covered with bullets, one man being hit. At this moment
rifle fire began on Waschout Hill, but no bullets came our way. Almost
immediately another shot followed which showered bullets all over us;
a few more men were hit, whose groans were unpleasant to listen to.
Tools were seized, and men began frantically to try and dig themselves
deeper into the hard earth, as our trench seemed to give no more
protection from the dropping bullets than a saucer would from a storm
of rain--but it was too late. We could not sink into the earth fast
enough. The Boers had got the range of the trench to a nicety, and the
shells burst over us now with a horrible methodic precision. Several
men were hit, and there was no reason why the enemy should cease to
rain shrapnel over us until we were all killed. As we were absolutely
powerless to do anything, I put up the white flag. All I could do was
to thank Providence that the enemy had no quick-firing field guns, or,
though "we had not been long," we should have been blotted out before
we could have hoisted it.

As soon as the gun-fire ceased, I was greatly surprised to find that
no party of Boers came down from their artillery position on
Incidentamba to take our surrender, but within three minutes some
fifty Boers galloped up from the river bank on the east and the west,
and a few more came up from the south round Waschout Hill. The guard
on Waschout Hill, which had done a certain amount of damage to the
enemy, had two men wounded by rifle fire. Not a single shell had come
near them, though they were close to the Kaffir huts, which were plain
enough.

* * * * *

What an anti-climax the reality had been from the pleasurable
anticipations of the early morn, when I had first sighted the Boers.

Of course, the women on the farm had betrayed us, but it was difficult
to make out why th