The weather was so atrocious that the veld resembled an inland sea, with the kopjes as islands rising out of it.  By this stage of the war the troops were hardened to all weathers, and they pushed swiftly on to the scene of action.  As they approached the spot where the Boers had been reported, the line had been extended over many miles, with the result that it had become very attenuated and dangerously weak in the centre.  At this point Colonel Damant and his small staff were alone with the two guns and the maxim, save for a handful of Imperial Yeomanry (91st), who acted as escort to the guns.  Across the face of this small force there rode a body of men in khaki uniforms, keeping British formation, and actually firing bogus volleys from time to time in the direction of some distant Boers.  Damant and his staff seem to have taken it for granted that these were Rimington’s men, and the clever ruse succeeded to perfection.  Nearer and nearer came the strangers, and suddenly throwing off all disguise, they made a dash for the guns.  Four rounds of case failed to stop them, and in a few minutes they were over the kopje on which the guns stood and had ridden among the gunners, supported in their attack by a flank fire from a number of dismounted riflemen.

The instant that the danger was realised Damant, his staff, and the forty Yeomen who formed the escort dashed for the crest in the hope of anticipating the Boers.  So rapid was the charge of the others that they had overwhelmed the gunners before the supports could reach the hill, and the latter found themselves under the deadly fire of the Boer rifles from above.  Damant was hit in four places, all of his staff were wounded, and hardly a man of the small body of Yeomanry was left standing.  Nothing could exceed their gallantry.  Gaussen their captain fell at their head.  On the ridge the men about the guns were nearly all killed or wounded.  Of the gun detachment only two men remained, both of them hit, and Jeffcoat their dying captain bequeathed them fifty pounds each in a will drawn upon the spot.  In half an hour the centre of the British line had been absolutely annihilated.  Modern warfare is on the whole much less bloody than of old, but when one party has gained the tactical mastery it is a choice between speedy surrender and total destruction.

The wide-spread British wings had begun to understand that there was something amiss, and to ride in towards the centre.  An officer on the far right peering through his glasses saw those tell-tale puffs at the very muzzles of the British guns, which showed that they were firing case at close quarters.  He turned his squadron inwards and soon gathered up Scott’s squadron of Damant’s Horse, and both rode for the kopje.  Rimington’s men were appearing on the other side, and the Boers rode off.  They were unable to remove the guns which they had taken, because all the horses had perished.  ’I actually thought,’ says one officer who saw them