There may be some question as to whether the rescuing force could have come sooner, but there can be none as to the resistance of the bodyguard.

They held out to the last cartridge.
Colonel Laing and three officers with sixteen men were killed, four officers and twenty-two men were wounded.

The high proportion of fatal casualties can only be explained by the deadly character of the Boer bullets.

Hardly a single horse of the bodyguard was left unwounded, and the profit to the victors, since they were unable to carry away their prisoners, lay entirely in the captured rifles.

It is worthy of record that the British wounded were despatched to Heilbron without guard through the Boer forces.