Plumer also was exhausted and unable to continue the pursuit, but fortunately Knox was close behind him.  He doubled back towards Hopetown for supplies, leaving Knox to follow the trail.  De Wet was now driven into the western corner of the rectangle where the Brak falls into the Orange, and where he found himself in a dilemma similar to that which in his first raid had cornered him between the Orange and the Caledon.  The Brak was in spate, and he could not cross it to Prieska.  All hope of joining Hertzog and of a successful raid into the Cape Colony was at an end; there was nothing to be done but make the best of his way back to the Free State.  He reversed his course and made for the confluence of the Orange and the Vaal.  His change of direction was not known to Knox, who, assuming that De Wet must have crossed the Brak, which fell as suddenly as it had risen, threw his columns across it and trekked for twenty miles towards the S.W.  Hertzog was reported to be a day’s march higher up the Brak.

Up to this time the whole of the stress of the pursuit had fallen upon Knox and Plumer.  As soon as the news of De Wet’s entry into the Cape Colony reached Lord Kitchener, he hurried down from the Transvaal to De Aar to superintend the casting of the nets.  His first dispositions were made with the object of preventing De Wet and Hertzog breaking away into the districts lying west of the railway to Capetown, and an ingenious and elaborate scheme of columns springing out from the line in succession from the north, was arranged.  It was not, however, put into action, for Knox and Plumer had headed back De Wet, and for the time being had prevented a junction between him and Hertzog.  It was no longer a case of a stern chase, but of the fencing in of a comparatively limited area, into which more than a dozen columns were thrown, and which by February 24 was reduced to the district bounded on three sides by the railways and on the fourth by the Orange.

When on February 21 Plumer was able to resume the pursuit, Knox having discovered his mistake was recrossing the Brak, and De Wet on the left bank of the Orange was unsuccessfully searching for practicable drifts.  He succeeded, however, in transferring a few of his men to the right bank in a boat at Makow’s Drift, but was overtaken by Plumer before he could complete the movement, and forced to hurry on towards Hopetown.  In the course of one week he had marched in the direction of almost every point in the compass, and was now heading E.S.E.

When within fifteen miles of Hopetown he lost two guns, and on the same day ran up against a new obstacle, a column under Paris, which had come down from Kimberley and which had extended itself westward from Hopetown.  He succeeded in wriggling through the line without detection during the night; while Paris, unaware of what had occurred and thinking that De Wet was still in front of him, pushed on next morning and came into action, not with De Wet, but with Plumer, who was pursuing De Wet in the opposite direction.  On February 24 De Wet crossed the railway eastwards a few miles south of Orange River Station.