This surprise of our cavalry post had more serious consequences than can be measured by the loss of men, for by it the Boers obtained possession of a strong kopje called Kitchener’s Hill, lying about two miles distant on the south-east of our position.  The movement was an admirable one strategically upon their part, for it gave their beleaguered comrades a first station on the line of their retreat.  Could they only win their way to that kopje, a rearguard action might be fought from there which would cover the escape of at least a portion of the force.  De Wet, if he was indeed responsible for the manoeuvres of these Southern Boers, certainly handled his small force with a discreet audacity which marks him as the born leader which he afterwards proved himself to be.

If the position of the Boers was desperate on Sunday, it was hopeless on Monday, for in the course of the morning Lord Roberts came up, closely followed by the whole of Tucker’s Division (7th) from Jacobsdal.  Our artillery also was strongly reinforced.  The 18th, 62nd, and 75th field batteries came up with three naval 4.7 guns and two naval 12-pounders.  Thirty-five thousand men with sixty guns were gathered round the little Boer army.  It is a poor spirit which will not applaud the supreme resolution with which the gallant farmers held out, and award to Cronje the title of one of the most grimly resolute leaders of whom we have any record in modern history.

For a moment it seemed as if his courage was giving way.  On Monday morning a message was transmitted by him to Lord Kitchener asking for a twenty-four hours’ armistice.  The answer was of course a curt refusal.  To this he replied that if we were so inhuman as to prevent him from burying his dead there was nothing for him save surrender.  An answer was given that a messenger with power to treat should be sent out, but in the interval Cronje had changed his mind, and disappeared with a snarl of contempt into his burrows.  It had become known that women and children were in the laager, and a message was sent offering them a place of safety, but even to this a refusal was given.  The reasons for this last decision are inconceivable.

Lord Roberts’s dispositions were simple, efficacious, and above all bloodless.  Smith-Dorrien’s brigade, who were winning in the Western army something of the reputation which Hart’s Irishmen had won in Natal, were placed astride of the river to the west, with orders to push gradually up, as occasion served, using trenches for their approach.  Chermside’s brigade occupied the same position on the east.  Two other divisions and the cavalry stood round, alert and eager, like terriers round a rat-hole, while all day the pitiless guns crashed their common shell, their shrapnel, and their lyddite into the river-bed.  Already down there, amid slaughtered oxen and dead horses under a burning sun, a horrible pest-hole had been formed which sent its mephitic vapours over the countryside.  Occasionally the sentries down the river saw amid the brown eddies of the rushing water the floating body of a Boer which had been washed away from the Golgotha above.  Dark Cronje, betrayer of Potchefstroom, iron-handed ruler of natives, reviler of the British, stern victor of Magersfontein, at last there has come a day of reckoning for you!