edly_) "It has been a long, sad, and terrible day.
Harvey of Damant's is mortally wounded, and I have had a man wounded!"

_B._ "The devil you have. I thought at least that you must have been
annihilated. Where are the rest of you, then?"

_C. C._ "Lost or captured, I am afraid. Seventeen were captured in
succession at the top of one rise. I only got through by the skin of
my teeth and the luck of there only being three Boers at the top of
the hill."

_B._ (_unconcernedly_) "Horrid adventure! What luck there were not
four Boers! But give me a detailed story. Have you been into
Strydenburg? have you seen any of the staff of the other column?"

The following is a paraphrase of the story which was eventually
elicited from the cyclist captain:--The cyclists, who broke down on
the heavy roads at the rate of about four an hour, kept up a steady
pace until they were some five miles from Strydenburg. Here going up a
steep rise they tailed out somewhat, and seventeen were captured in
rotation by three burghers ensconced in the nek over which the up
gradient passed. The captain and five others all came up together, and
in the scuffle he and three of his men succeeded in getting through.
Later on they were fired at by Boers just outside Strydenburg, into
which town they rode simultaneously with an advance-guard of Damant's
Guides. The Boers, who, with the exception of the rear-guard under
Vermaas, had left and gone north on the preceding day, just as the
Brigadier had surmised, had destroyed the telegraph office, but the
local operator, who had hidden away an instrument, by attaching the
broken wire to a piece of garden fencing was able to get through to De
Aar, and in half an hour the brigadier's "Clear the line" message was
ticking off in Pretoria. This all happened three hours before the
co-operating general entered the town. In the meantime the
advance-guard of Damant's Guides, as soon as they heard that the New
Cavalry Brigade was not on the road, pushed out to occupy the
Tafelkop Hills outside the town. Harvey took the cyclists with him.
And a very gallant little fight they had, in which three of the
Guides, though sorely wounded, held up and captured the five men who
had wounded them. Owing to his lust for blood it was late in the day
before the cyclist captain was able to find the general. This officer
had a despatch ready for him to take back to his own brigadier. The
return journey had been effected without other mis