On the 12th Methuen’s van again overtook De Wet’s rear, and the old game of rearguard riflemen on one side, and a pushing artillery on the other, was once more resumed.  All day the Boers streamed over the veld with the guns and the horsemen at their heels.  A shot from the 78th battery struck one of De Wet’s guns, which was abandoned and captured.  Many stores were taken and much more, with the wagons which contained them, burned by the Boers.  Fighting incessantly, both armies traversed thirty-five miles of ground that day.

It was fully understood that Olifant’s Nek was held by the British, so Methuen felt that if he could block the Magato Pass all would be well.  He therefore left De Wet’s direct track, knowing that other British forces were behind him, and he continued his swift advance until he had reached the desired position.  It really appeared that at last the elusive raider was in a corner.  But, alas for fallen hopes, and alas for the wasted efforts of gallant men!  Olifant’s Nek had been abandoned and De Wet had passed safely through it into the plains beyond, where De la Rey’s force was still in possession.  In vain Methuen’s weary column forced the Magato Pass and descended into Rustenburg.  The enemy was in a safe country once more.  Whose the fault, or whether there was a fault at all, it is for the future to determine.  At least unalloyed praise can be given to the Boer leader for the admirable way in which he had extricated himself from so many dangers.  On the 17th., moving along the northern side of the mountains, he appeared at Commando Nek on the Little Crocodile River, where he summoned Baden-Powell to surrender, and received some chaff in reply from that light-hearted commander.  Then, swinging to the eastward, he endeavoured to cross to the north of Pretoria.  On the 19th he was heard of at Hebron.  Baden-Powell and Paget had, however, already barred this path, and De Wet, having sent Steyn on with a small escort, turned back to the Free State.  On the 22nd it was reported that, with only a handful of his followers, he had crossed the Magaliesberg range by a bridlepath and was riding southwards.  Lord Roberts was at last free to turn his undivided attention upon Botha.

Two Boer plots had been discovered during the first half of August, the one in Pretoria and the other in Johannesburg, each having for its object a rising against the British in the town.  Of these the former, which was the more serious, involving as it did the kidnapping of Lord Roberts, was broken up by the arrest of the deviser, Hans Cordua, a German lieutenant in the Transvaal Artillery.  On its merits it is unlikely that the crime would have been met by the extreme penalty, especially as it was a question whether the agent provocateur had not played a part.  But the repeated breaches of parole, by which our prisoners of one day were in the field against us on the next, called imperatively for an example, and it was probably rather for his broken