the fire devilish from all sides, we had to give in.

"I got a grazing shot on my left hand and a bullet in my right
forearm early (about 8.30 A.M., and two more grazers--right
thigh and left elbow)--later, finally, a bullet from behind
through the right shoulder about a quarter of an hour before
the end. I don't know who gave the order to 'Cease fire.' The
firing could not have gone on five minutes more on our side for
want of ammunition, and the Boer fire was tremendous from all
round. It was like 'magazine independent' at the end of
field-firing. The astonishing thing is so few were hit. If we
had had our guns and ammunition, I think we could have held on
until night and then got off, but there were 1200 of them, they
said, to our 800, not counting gunners, and you could not till
the very end see a dozen of them. The way they take cover is
simply wonderful. All the prisoners were marched off at once
and sent by rail to Pretoria. It was a terribly hot day, and no
shade or water except what the Boers gave us. They were very
good about water, giving us all they had, and fetching more
from the bottom of the hill, one and a half mile away."

An officer of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, writing from Staatsmodel
Schule, Pretoria, said:--

"We were all taken prisoners, together with the Gloucester
Regiment and a Battery of Mounted Artillery, which accounts for
us being in Pretoria so soon. As we were going up the hill in
the dark, a small party of Boers dashed through our ammunition
mules, causing them to stampede. By this move we lost all our
mules, 200 in all, and with them all our ammunition and
artillery.... You don't know what it means shooting a Boer; he
is behind a rock, and all you can ever see is his rifle
sticking out. For the last hour of the fight I had a rifle and
ammunition which I took from a dead man, and blazed away for
all I was worth. Then we fixed bayonets and prepared for a
rush, when the 'Cease fire' sounded. Our senior Captain has
told me that my name has been mentioned to our Colonel, who was
commanding the force, as having caused a lot of men to rally.
We were all then taken prisoners, except two officers killed
and eight wounded, and marched to the Boer laager, and sent off
that night to a station twenty miles distant in waggon