I had even taken it with me when, a fortnight previously, I had broken through the blockhouse lines.
Behind the horsemen came the aged and the sick, who occupied the remaining vehicles, and lastly the cattle, divided into several herds.
In this order we rode on.
When we were approaching the spot at which I expected to find the enemy, I ordered Commandant Ross and one hundred men, with Hermanus Botha and Alberts, and portions of their commandos, to go on ahead of us.
After passing through Holspruit we inclined to the west, as the road to the east would, according to my scouts, have led us right into the English camp.

But it was not with one camp only that we had to deal: the English were everywhere: a whole army lay before us--an army so immense that many Englishmen thought that it would be a task beyond the stupid and illiterate Boer to count it, much less to understand its significance.

I will pander to the English conception of us and say, "We have seen them: they are a great big lot!" We had hardly moved three hundred paces from where we had crossed Holspruit, when the English, lined up about three hundred yards in front of us, and opened fire.

We saw that they did not intend our flight to be an easy one.
Before we had reached the "spruit,"[105] and while crossing it, the burghers had kept pushing ahead and crowds had even passed us, but the enemy's fire checked them and they wheeled round.
Only the men under Commandants Ross, Botha, and Alberts did not waver.
These officers and their veldtcornets with less than one hundred men stormed the nearest position of the enemy, who were occupying a fort on the brow of a steep bank.
I shouted to my command: "Charge." I exerted all my powers of persuasion to arrest the flight of my burghers; even bringing the sjambok into the argument.
Two hundred and fifty were all that I could bring back to the fight, whilst, as I have said, the Commandants had a hundred with them when they charged; the rest, regardless of my attempts to stop them, fled.
I was also without my staff, some of whom had remained under the fire of the enemy awaiting my orders as to what was to be done with my little waggon.

Others, amongst whom was my son Kootie, who was then acting as my secretary, had followed me, but had got lost in the confusion of the moment.
This confusion arose from the fact that the burghers imagined that they had got through at the first attempt, but had found themselves again fired at from the front.