[Illustration:  CALLING FOR VOLUNTEERS TO MAN CAPTURED CANNON AFTER SANNASPOST]

The sound of firing had ceased, and the battle was concluded.  Waggons with Red Cross flags fluttering from the tall staffs above them, issued from the mountains and rumbled through the valleys.  Burghers dashed over the field in search of the wounded and dying.  Men who a few moments before were straining every nerve to kill their fellow-beings became equally energetic to preserve lives.  Wounded soldiers and burghers were lifted out of the grass and carried tenderly to the ambulance waggons.  The dead were placed side by side, and the same cloth covered the bodies of Boer and Briton.  Men with spades upturned the earth, and stood grimly by while a man in black prayed over the bodies of those who died for their country.

Boer officers, with pencils and paper in their hands, sped over the battlefield from a group of prisoners to a line of passing waggons, and made calculations concerning the result of the day’s battle.  Three Boers killed and nine wounded was one side of the account.  On the credit sheet were marked four hundred and eight British soldiers, seven cannon, one hundred and fifty waggons, five hundred and fifty rifles, two thousand horses and cattle, and vast stores of ammunition and provisions captured during the day.

In among the north-eastern hills, where a farmer’s daub-and-wattle cottage stood, were the prisoners of war, chatting and joking with their captors.  The officers walked slowly back and forth, never raising their eyes from the ground.  Dejection was written on their faces.  Near them were the captured waggons, with groups of noisy soldiers climbing over them in search of their luggage.  On the ground others were playing cards and matching coins.  Young Boers walked amongst them and engaged them in conversation.  Near the farmhouse stood a tall Cape Colony Boer talking with his former neighbour, who was a prisoner.  Several Americans among the captured disputed the merits of the war with a Yankee burgher, who had readily distinguished his countrymen among the throng.  Some one began to whistle a popular tune, others joined, and soon almost every one was participating.  An officer gave the order for the prisoners to fall in line, and shortly afterward the men in brown tramped forward, while the burghers stepped aside and lined the path.  A soldier commenced to sing another popular song, British and Boer caught the refrain, and the noise of tramping feet was drowned by the melody of the united voices of friend and foe singing—­

        “It’s the soldiers of the Queen, my lads,
        Who’ve been, my lads—­who’ve seen, my lads,
               * * * * *
        We’ll proudly point to every one
        Of England’s soldiers of the Queen.”

CHAPTER VII

THE GENERALS OF THE WAR