To them it may have seemed a hard thing to endure so much for a tiny fort in a savage land.  The larger view of its vital importance could have scarcely come to console the regimental officer, far less the private.  But duty carried them through, and they wrought better than they knew, for the brave Dutchmen, exasperated by so disproportionate a resistance, stormed up to the very trenches and suffered as they had not suffered for many a long month.  There have been battles with 10,000 British troops hotly engaged in which the Boer losses have not been so great as in this obscure conflict against an isolated post.  When at last, baffled and disheartened, they drew off with the waning light, it is said that no fewer than a hundred of their dead and two hundred of their wounded attested the severity of the fight.  So strange are the conditions of South African warfare that this loss, which would have hardly made a skirmish memorable in the slogging days of the Peninsula, was one of the most severe blows which the burghers had sustained in the course of a two years’ warfare against a large and aggressive army.  There is a conflict of evidence as to the exact figures, but at least they were sufficient to beat the Boer army back and to change their plan of campaign.

Whilst this prolonged contest had raged round Fort Itala, a similar attack upon a smaller scale was being made upon Fort Prospect, some fifteen miles to the eastward.  This small post was held by a handful of Durham Artillery Militia and of Dorsets.  The attack was delivered by Grobler with several hundred burghers, but it made no advance although it was pushed with great vigour, and repeated many times in the course of the day.  Captain Rowley, who was in command, handled his men with such judgment that one killed and eight wounded represented his casualties during a long day’s fighting.  Here again the Boer losses were in proportion to the resolution of their attack, and are said to have amounted to sixty killed and wounded.  Considering the impossibility of replacing the men, and the fruitless waste of valuable ammunition, September 26th was an evil day for the Boer cause.  The British casualties amounted to seventy-three.

The water of the garrison of Fort Itala had been cut off early in the attack, and their ammunition had run low by evening.  Chapman withdrew his men and his guns therefore to Nkandhla, where the survivors of his gallant garrison received the special thanks of Lord Kitchener.  The country around was still swarming with Boers, and on the last day of September a convoy from Melmoth fell into their hands and provided them with some badly needed supplies.