Royal Irish Fusiliers. Groups of horsemen, breaking away
from the main laager visible at Pepworth, came riding up the valleys
and behind the crests towards the northern end of Kainguba. On the
right, amongst the Irish Fusiliers, the Maxim of the Gloucester
regiment stood ready for action, and the officer in charge commenced a
slow fire upon the stream of Boers. Opening at 1,200 yards, he
gradually increased the range to 2,000 yards, and the trotting
horsemen had just broken into a gallop as the bullets began to lash
amongst them, when an order was received not to fire unless the enemy
showed in masses at closer distances, ammunition being scarce.

[Sidenote: Boer movements.]

At 2 a.m. Commandant Van Dam, lying in bivouac with his Johannesburg
Police[134] beneath Pepworth, received orders from Joubert in person
to proceed at once to the northern summit of Kainguba and hold the
ridge above Nicholson's Nek. The Boer officer thereupon galloped for
that spot with 400 men, being warned of the proximity of British
troops by a Field Cornet of the Pretoria commando, who lay with thirty
men on the northern slope of the high ground east of Bell Spruit.
Gaining the Nek, the Police found it occupied by 150 Free Staters, who
moved away further west on their approach. Van Dam's plan was quickly
made. Sending a message to the Free Staters that if they would ride
round to the flank and rear of the British, he would attack straight
over the top of the mountain, he left fifty burghers in the Nek in
charge of the horses, and led the remainder on foot in straggling
order up the hill. The crest was gained and half the summit traversed
before shots rang out from the shelters of the advanced companies of
the Gloucester. But the Boers fired no round until, at 800 yards, the
foremost British sangar was visible through the long grass. Meanwhile
the Free Staters, under Christian De Wet and Steenkamp, crept around
the foot of the steep ground under Van Dam's right, swinging
northward. Then they, too, began to climb, and by 10 a.m. Carleton's
column was entrapped.

[Footnote 134: Or South African Republic Police (the
"Zarps").]

[Sidenote: Development of attack.]

The weak company and a half in front of the Gloucester, badly
sheltered from the converging fire, could do little more than check
the foremost burghers. This, however, they did so effectually for a
time that Van Dam, fearing for the issue of a merely frontal attack