n. What might have been expected happened. Towards
afternoon an armoured train came from Pretoria, and reinforcements
arrived from Johannesburg and scattered our left wing over the valley. I
happened to be with a few others on the outmost point of the right wing
of attack--or, rather, since the scene was changed, of the left wing of
flight. And as we were retreating at our ease an old man galloped
towards us and pointed out that we were retreating in the wrong
direction, as the enemy had captured our whole lager. He had never in
his life seen so many khakies. They seemed to be on all sides of us. The
only outlet for us was in the direction of Heidelberg. I asked him,
'Uncle, are you sure that our lager is in the hands of the khakies?' to
which he answered, 'Nephew, I saw with my own eyes how they rode up to
the waggons and made all our people "hands up!"' and he continued to
give us a minute description of the occurrence.

If we had been greenhorns, we would have blindly followed the startled
old man right through the stream of retreating burghers and exploding
15-pounders. But, fortunately, the war had taught us, and we moved on
_with_ the stream, but a little more to the left, and, I cannot deny it,
with a feeling of great anxiety as to what was to become of us if the
old man had indeed told the truth.

Fortunately, it appeared that fright had made the old man believe his
own imagination, and the lager was quite safe. My brother told me that
the slight attack made upon them by the enemy was easily beaten off.

The opinion of the majority was that we should have left Kaalfontein
Station alone. We were thoroughly exhausted by our rapid journeys,
particularly by the journey of the preceding night, and besides that the
burghers were unwilling to make an attack of which they did not see the
advantage. We had several killed and wounded.

The consequence was that we had to trek that night in a way that none of
us will ever forget, to get beyond the reach of the enemy. One cannot
imagine how terrible it is to sit for hours on horseback, dead tired and
overcome by sleep. We did not even guide our horses; they simply jogged
along mechanically, too tired even to object to ill-treatment. Our hands
rested on the bows of the saddles, and as we sat leaning forwards,
apparently lost in thought, but in reality suffering tortures from the
effort to keep awake, we forced ourselves to look up and about us, but
our eyes half closed in