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The
men were dazed by what they had undergone, and Nature shrank back
from that deadly zone where the bullets fell so thickly. But the
pipes blew, and the bugles sang, and the poor tired fellows, the
backs of their legs so flayed and blistered by lying in the sun
that they could hardly bend them, hobbled back to their duty. They
worked up to the guns once more, and the moment of danger passed.
But as the evening wore on it became evident that no attack could
succeed, and that therefore there was no use in holding the men in
front of the enemy's position. The dark Cronje, lurking among his
ditches and his barbed wire, was not to be approached, far less
defeated. There are some who think that, had we held on there as we
did at the Modder River, the enemy would again have been
accommodating enough to make way for us during the night, and the
morning would have found the road clear to Kimberley. I know no
grounds for such an opinion--but several against it. At Modder
Cronje abandoned his lines, knowing that he had other and stronger
ones behind him.


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