Let Sergeant Oates again give us his experience:—­

’It was a terrible battle.  I had two very narrow escapes there.  A tiny splinter took a small piece of skin off the end of my chin, and another larger one just caught my boot and glided off.  It almost went through.  Again I got away unharmed.  That day was a long prayer-meeting to me.  Wherever I went and whatever I did, these words were on my lips:—­

    ’"What a wonderful Saviour is Jesus, my Jesus. 
    What a wonderful Saviour is Jesus, my Lord.”

’Once and only once I grew weak, and almost wished myself wounded and out of it all, when this text came in my mind:  “The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.”  Oh! how ashamed I felt that I should be so weak and faithless!

’The third day was the fiercest, and to me it was a day of prayer.  Ten long hours did the conflict last; the din was awful!  The spiteful bizz of the Remington bullet, the swish of the Martini, and the shriek of the Mauser, coupled with the unearthly booming of the Hotchkiss quick-firer, and the boom, roar, and bursting of the shrapnel on both sides, all this intermingled with voices calling out orders, and shouting for stretchers, went on until the shades of evening fell over a day which, Lord Methuen says, has never had an equal.  Yet above all this din, I was able to hear that voice which calms our fears saying:  “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and through the rivers they shall not overflow thee; when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.”  With such promises as these, what would one not go through.

’That night, after the enemy had retired, I had to lead my company across a ford in the Modder River.  It was very dark, and I was not sure of the way; I had crossed the river by the same ford early in the afternoon, but it was in the thick of the battle, so I was too busy with something else to take any notice of the road.  I was cut off from my company, and got rather anxious about it.  Looking with the aid of a match, at my text-book I found these words:  “Commit thy way unto the Lord, trust also in Him, and He will bring it to pass.”  I was not slow to follow this blessed advice, and within half an hour I was with my company again, wet through and tired out.  Yet, with these uncomfortable things about me, I was able to thank God for His loving care, and now I can write “tried and proved” against that text.’

And yet, though the fight was so terrible, the number of casualties was singularly few, considering the character of the encounter.  Lord Methuen, however, was slightly wounded, and Colonel Stopford, of the Coldstream Guards, was shot dead.

One of the Boer batteries was planted close to the native Wesleyan Church, which was riddled with shot and shell from British guns intent upon dominating the Boer position.