and
German corps.

The Commandant of the Hollander corps, Volksraad Member Lombard, came
out of the battle unscathed; his captain, Mr. B. J. Verselewel de Witt
Hamer, had been made a prisoner; the Commandant of the German corps,
Captain A. Schiel, fell wounded into British hands, while among the
officers who were killed in action I should mention Dr. H. J. Coster,
the bravest Hollander the Transvaal ever saw, the most brilliant
member of the Pretoria Bar, who laid down his life because in a stupid
moment Kruger had taunted him and his compatriots with cowardice.

CHAPTER VI.

RISKING JOUBERT'S ANGER.

After the above unpleasant but fairly successful interview with our
Commander-in-Chief, I left the men I had gathered round me in charge
of a field-cornet, and proceeded by train to Newcastle to collect the
scattered remnants of my burghers, and to obtain mules and waggons for
my convoy. For, as I have previously stated, it was at Newcastle we
had left all our commissariat-waggons and draught cattle under a
strong escort. On arrival I summoned the burghers together, and
addressing them in a few words, pointed out that we should, so soon as
possible, resume the march, in order to reach the fighting line
without delay, and there retrieve the pride and honour of our
commando.

"Our beloved country," I said, "as well as our dead, wounded and
missing comrades, require us not to lose courage at this first
reverse, but to continue the righteous struggle even against
overwhelming odds," and so on, in this strain.

I honestly cannot understand why we should have been charged with
cowardice at the battle of Elandslaagte, although many of us seemed to
apprehend that this would be the case. We had made a good fight of it,
but overwhelmed by an organised force of disciplined men, eight or ten
times our number, we had been vanquished, and the British were the
first to admit that we had manfully and honourably defended our
positions. To put a wrong construction on our defeat was a libel on
all who had bravely fought the fight, and I resented it. There are
such things as the fortunes of war, and as only one side can win, it
cannot always be the same. However, I soon discovered that a small
number of our burghers did not seem inclined to join in the
prolongation of the struggle. To have forced them to rejoin us would
have served no purpose, so I thought the best policy would be to send
them home on furlough until they had