[Illustration:  Mission Camp Fort, Lydenburg (Interior)]

For some ten minutes the silence continued, with not so much as the crack of a twig to interrupt it.  What’s that?  It’s a cock crowing!  There it is again!  There’s another!  The laager’s there right enough, and we’ve got them!

In the far distance, Lydenburg way, the faint noise of musketry fire could be heard; it was the mounted troops advancing and driving in the Boer picquets on the road above the Spekboom Bridge, eight miles back.

In about five minutes’ time the laager was roused by a Boer, who commenced swearing roundly at some one in a very loud voice.  One man came out and posted himself on a little rise of ground, and gazed, listening, Kruger’s Post way.  He was joined by another, then another, until there was a group of nine of them, two dressed in long white robes.  It was thought that these were women.  Suddenly they all returned into the laager out of sight, only to appear again in a few minutes on horseback.  Three of them came straight up to the high road just under the knoll where the Devons were in readiness.  They were allowed to go on, and they continued their career down the road towards Kruger’s Post.

Now the utility of posting the groups in the ditch by the side of the road became manifest.  Suddenly from their direction crack! went a single rifle, then a burst of rifle fire, which was immediately taken up all round the circle.

No, not quite round; there was silence from the hill which should have been occupied by the Royal Irish.  A party of some twenty Boers were seen ascending this hill, the top of which was covered with big rocks.  The Devons’ rifles as well as their Maxim gun were turned on to them.  The Boers, however, succeeded in reaching the safety of the rocks a few moments before the ascending Irish.

Meanwhile the firing had become general, and in the dim light also a trifle mixed.  The Rifle Brigade fired into the two Devon companies down in the valley and across the laager.  The latter in their turn fired at some Boers trying to escape through the gap left open by the Royal Irish.  These were striving with the Boers for the possession of the rock-capped hill, and both were being fired into by the Devons across the valley.

After some twenty minutes of sharp musketry fire the “cease fire” sounded, and everything was again quiet; it was then found that the whole laager had fallen into British hands.  Two Boers were killed, three wounded, and thirty-six captured, whilst the British casualties were two killed and four wounded, all of them Royal Irish.

The distance from Lydenburg to Piet Schwartz’s laager by road is about eighteen miles; the distance marched by the column could not have been under twenty miles, and this over very difficult ground.  The column had left Lydenburg at 7 p.m., and reached its destination at 4.45 a.m.

Unfortunately, Piet Schwartz himself escaped capture, as he was not in the laager; he had left it the previous day.