he wounded clamouring for relief was in itself a misery to
those who were compelled to hear it, but to allow such appeals to go
unanswered was heartrending. To have the dead unburied seemed cruel
enough, but to have the corpses before one's eyes day after day was
torture. To know that the enemy was in ten times greater strength was
disheartening, but to realise that there was no relief at hand was enough
to dim the brightest courage. Yet Cronje was undaunted.

Friday and Saturday brought nothing but a message from Froneman, again
encouraging them to resist until reinforcements could be brought from
Bloemfontein. On Saturday evening Jan Theron, of Krugersdorp, succeeded in
breaking through the British lines with despatches from General De Wet and
Commandants Cronje and Froneman, urging General Cronje to fight a way
through the lines whilst they would engage the enemy from their side.
Cronje and his officers decided to make an attempt to escape, and on
Sunday morning the burghers commenced the construction of a chain-bridge
across the Modder to facilitate the crossing of the swollen river.
Fortunately for the Boers the British batteries fired only one shot into
the camp that day, and the burghers were able to complete the bridge
before night by means of the ropes and chains from their ox-waggons. On
Monday morning the British guns made a target of the bridge, and shelled
it so unremittingly that no one was able to approach it, much less make an
attempt to cross the river by means of it. The bombardment seemed to grow
in intensity as the day progressed, and when two shells fell into a group
of nine burghers, and left nothing but an arm and a leg to be found, the
Krijgsraad decided to hoist a white flag on Tuesday morning. General
Cronje and Commandant Schutte were the only officers who voted against
surrendering. They begged the other officers to reconsider their decision,
and to make an attempt to fight a way out, but the confidence of two men
was too weak to change the opinions of the others.

In a position covering less than a square mile of territory, hemmed in on
all sides by an army almost as great as that which defeated Napoleon at
Waterloo, surrounded by a chain of fire from carbines, rapid-fire guns and
heavy cannon, the target of thousands of the vaporous lyddite shells, his
trenches enfiladed by a continuous shower of lead, his men half dead from
lack of food, and stiff from the effect of their narrow quarters in