The Boers were unable to get rid of the stores, and they were eventually distributed among the local farmers and recovered again as the British forces flowed over the country.

Another small disaster occurred to us on the preceding day in the loss of fifty men of E company of Kitchener's Horse, which had been left as a guard to a well in the desert.
But great events were coming to obscure those small checks which are incidental to a war carried out over immense distances against a mobile and enterprising enemy.

Cronje had suddenly become aware of the net which was closing round him.

To the dark fierce man who had striven so hard to make his line of kopjes impregnable it must have been a bitter thing to abandon his trenches and his rifle pits.

But he was crafty as well as tenacious, and he had the Boer horror of being cut off--an hereditary instinct from fathers who had fought on horseback against enemies on foot.