The weather continued, however, to be atrocious, rain and hail falling with such violence that the horses could hardly be induced to face it.

For a week the two sodden, sleepless, mud-splashed little armies swept onwards over the Karoo.

De Wet passed northwards through Strydenburg, past Hopetown, and so to the Orange River, which was found to be too swollen with the rains to permit of his crossing.

Here upon the 23rd, after a march of forty-five miles on end, Plumer ran into him once more, and captured with very little fighting a fifteen-pounder, a pom-pom, and close on to a hundred prisoners.

Slipping away to the east, De Wet upon February 24th crossed the railroad again between Krankuil and Orange River Station, with Thorneycroft's column hard upon his heels.