The fight was for a time a brisk one, and the Pioneers, upon whom the brunt of it fell, behaved with great steadiness.
The skirmish is principally remarkable for the death of Major Seymour of the Pioneers, a noble American, who gave his services and at last his life for what, in the face of all slander and misrepresentation, he knew to be the cause of justice and of liberty.
It was hoped now, after all these precautions, that the last had been seen of the gentleman with the tinted glasses, but on June 21st he was back in his old haunts once more.

Honing Spruit Station, about midway between Kroonstad and Roodeval, was the scene of his new raid.

On that date his men appeared suddenly as a train waited in the station, and ripped up the rails on either side of it.

There were no guns at this point, and the only available troops were three hundred of the prisoners from Pretoria, armed with Martini-Henry rifles and obsolete ammunition.
A good man was in command, however--the same Colonel Bullock of the Devons who had distinguished himself at Colenso--and every tattered, half-starved wastrel was nerved by a recollection of the humiliations which he had already endured.

For seven hours they lay helpless under the shell-fire, but their constancy was rewarded by the arrival of Colonel Brookfield with 300 Yeomanry and four guns of the 17th R.F.A., followed in the evening by a larger force from the south.