Thence they had an excellent view of a large body of horsemen approaching them with scouts, flankers, and all military precautions.

One warm-hearted officer seems actually to have sallied out to meet his comrades, and it was not till his greeting of them took the extreme form of handing over his rifle that the suspicion of danger entered the heads of his companions.

But if there was some lack of wit there was none of heart in Sladen and his men.

With forty-five Boers to hold down, and 500 under Fourie, De Wet, and De la Rey around them, the little band made rapid preparation for a desperate resistance: the prisoners were laid upon their faces, the men knocked loopholes in the mud walls of the kraal, and a blunt soldierly answer was returned to the demand for surrender.
But it was a desperate business.

The attackers were five to one, and the five were soldiers of De Wet, the hard-bitten veterans of a hundred encounters.