three months.

Let us turn now to another, and a more successful device of the enemy.

From the first weeks of the winter, 1901--the reader must remember that
our winter commences in _May_--the English began to make night attacks
upon us; at last they had found out a way of inflicting severe losses
upon us, and these night attacks grew more and more frequent during the
last period of the war. But they would never have thought of them at
all, if they had not been instructed in them by the National Scouts--our
own flesh and blood!

These tactics were not always successful. It sometimes happened that the
English got "cornered"; sometimes they had to "right about turn" and run
for their lives. The latter was the case at Witkopjes, five miles to the
south of Heilbron, and again, near Makenwaansstad. But on only too many
occasions they managed to surprise troops of burghers on their camping
places, and, having captured those who could not run away, they left the
dead and wounded on the ground.

We soon discovered that these night attacks were the most difficult of
the enemy's tactics with which we had to deal.

Sometimes the burghers, surprised by a sudden visit from the English at
such an unconventional hour, found it necessary to run away at once as
fast as their legs would carry them, so that they often arrived at the
nearest camp without their hats. Indeed a series of these attacks
produced such a panic among our men that I have known a Boer lose not
only his hat, but also his head.

I come now, in the regular course of my narrative, to an engagement
between my burghers and an English force which had marched from
Bethlehem to Reitz, a distance of thirty miles. This force was guided by
a son of one of the Free State Members of Parliament, and, marching all
night, reached Reitz just as the day began to dawn. This was a smart
piece of business; and though the guide to whom its success was due was
my enemy, I fully appreciated the skill which he then displayed.

The English captured ten or twelve burghers at Reitz, whither they had
perhaps gone in search of the President.

I was ten miles to the west, on the farm of Blijdschap, and did not
receive reports of what had happened until towards noon.

What was I to do? I could not call up men from Heilbron, Bethlehem,
Vrede, or Harrismith: it would have been at least twenty-four hours
before they could have arrived. All I could do was to summon Veldtcornet
Vlok with som