The Boers were in full retreat, but now, as always, they were dangerous.  One cannot take them for granted, for the very moment of defeat is that at which they are capable of some surprising effort.  Rundle, following them up from Senekal, found them in strong possession of the kopjes at Biddulphsberg, and received a check in his endeavour to drive them off.  It was an action fought amid great grass fires, where the possible fate of the wounded was horrible to contemplate.  The 2nd Grenadiers, the Scots Guards, the East Yorkshires, and the West Kents were all engaged, with the 2nd and 79th Field Batteries and a force of Yeomanry.  Our losses incurred in the open from unseen rifles were thirty killed and 130 wounded, including Colonel Lloyd of the Grenadiers.  Two days later Rundle, from Senekal, joined hands with Brabant from Ficksburg, and a defensive line was formed between those two places, which was held unbroken for two months, when the operations ended in the capture of the greater part of the force opposed to him.  Clements’s Brigade, consisting of the 1st Royal Irish, the 2nd Bedfords, the 2nd Worcesters, and the 2nd Wiltshires, had come to strengthen Rundle, and altogether he may have had as many as twelve thousand men under his orders.  It was not a large force with which to hold a mobile adversary at least eight thousand strong, who might attack him at any point of his extended line.  So well, however, did he select his positions that every attempt of the enemy, and there were many, ended in failure.  Badly supplied with food, he and his half-starved men held bravely to their task, and no soldiers in all that great host deserve better of their country.

At the end of May, then, the Colonial Division, Rundle’s Division, and Clements’s Brigade held the Boers from Ficksburg on the Basuto border to Senekal.  This prevented them from coming south.  But what was there to prevent them from coming west, and falling upon the railway line?  There was the weak point of the British position.  Lord Methuen had been brought across from Boshof, and was available with six thousand men.  Colvile was on that side also, with the Highland Brigade.  A few details were scattered up and down the line, waiting to be gathered up by an enterprising enemy.  Kroonstad was held by a single militia battalion; each separate force had to be nourished by convoys with weak escorts.  Never was there such a field for a mobile and competent guerilla leader.  And, as luck would have it, such a man was at hand, ready to take full advantage of his opportunities.

CHAPTER 27.

The lines of communication.