On November 16, he easily rushed the Bloemfontein-Thabanchu line of posts at Springhaan’s Nek, and three days later invested Dewetsdorp.  Meanwhile the alarm had been given.  Knox’s force, which had been sent after him into the Transvaal, was now sent after him to Bloemfontein, and mobile columns were detailed.  Dewetsdorp was doomed from the first unless assistance arrived from outside.  The position could not be held effectively by a small force, One by one the scattered posts fell into the hands of De Wet, but the defence was maintained until the 23rd, when the white flag was hoisted.  On the previous day two relieving columns had started from Edenburg, but they were checked near Dewetsdorp on the 24th by De Wet, who shook himself free of them and was soon on his way to the south with 500 prisoners of war; and Knox with a third relieving column was marching from Edenburg.

Thus almost within sight of Sannah’s Post and Mostert’s Hoek and after six months of apparently successful activity by the British Army, De Wet snatched away another garrison.  After a repulse at Fredrikstad, soon followed by a severe mauling at Bothaville, from which he broke out as a fugitive, he placidly and confidently trekked southwards unopposed for 150 miles, magnetically attracting to himself a force sufficient to blot out Dewetsdorp in the presence of a bewildered enemy, who, though in overwhelming numbers, was feebly strung out in lengths without breadth.  The British Army had still to learn, not only in the Free State, but also elsewhere, the elemental fact in geometry that neither one straight line nor two, nor under certain conditions even three, can enclose an area.

It was evident that De Wet was making for the Cape Colony, the disaffected northern districts of which were again giving cause for anxiety, and which at all hazards he must be prevented from entering.  Lord Kitchener came down from the Transvaal to direct the operations; the Brigade of Guards on its way to Capetown and home, was de-trained to hold the line of the Orange; Knox’s columns hurried forward.  De Wet, after a slight encounter with Knox, who was marching south, turned adroitly to the west and did not resume the original direction of his march until he had put a considerable distance between himself and the columns, which were “running heel” and pursuing him almost in the opposite direction.  Near Bethulie he was reinforced by Hertzog and other leaders, but by this time he had been headed by Knox at Bethulie and was compelled to draw off eastwards into the angle between the Orange and the Caledon.  He left Hertzog with instructions to make his way across the river west of Norval’s Pont, intending to cross with his own force higher up.  He was, however, prevented by the forces of nature from carrying out the raid which the British military forces would probably have been unable to prohibit.  Heavy rains had fallen in the Basuto Mountains, and the sudden rise of the Caledon and the Orange to flood level obliterated most of the drifts and entrapped him between them.  He made one dash for the Orange at Odendaal, but found the drift in the possession of the enemy.