For A Moment It Seemed As If His Courage Was Giving Way.
On Monday
morning a message was transmitted by him to Lord Kitchener asking
for a twenty-four hours' armistice.
The answer was of course a curt
refusal. To this he replied that if we were so inhuman as to
prevent him from burying his dead there was nothing for him save
surrender. An answer was given that a messenger with power to treat
should be sent out, but in the interval Cronje had changed his
mind, and disappeared with a snarl of contempt into his burrows. It
had become known that women and children were in the laager, and a
message was sent offering them a place of safety, but even to this
a refusal was given. The reasons for this last decision are
inconceivable.
Lord Roberts's dispositions were simple, efficacious, and above all
bloodless. Smith-Dorrien's brigade, who were winning in the Western
army something of the reputation which Hart's Irishmen had won in
Natal, were placed astride of the river to the west, with orders to
push gradually up, as occasion served, using trenches for their
approach. Chermside's brigade occupied the same position on the
east. Two other divisions and the cavalry stood round, alert and
eager, like terriers round a rat-hole, while all day the pitiless
guns crashed their common shell, their shrapnel, and their lyddite
into the river-bed. Already down there, amid slaughtered oxen and
dead horses under a burning sun, a horrible pest-hole had been
formed which sent its mephitic vapours over the countryside.
Occasionally the sentries down the river saw amid the brown eddies
of the rushing water the floating body of a Boer which had been
washed away from the Golgotha above. Dark Cronje, betrayer of
Potchefstroom, iron-handed ruler of natives, reviler of the
British, stern victor of Magersfontein, at last there has come a
day of reckoning for you!
On Wednesday, the 21st, the British, being now sure of their grip
of Cronje, turned upon the Boer force which had occupied the hill
to the south-east of the drift. It was clear that this force,
unless driven away, would be the vanguard of the relieving army
which might be expected to assemble from Ladysmith, Bloemfontein,
Colesberg, or wherever else the Boers could detach men. Already it
was known that reinforcements who had left Natal whenever they
heard that the Free State was invaded were drawing near. It was
necessary to crush the force upon the hill before it became too
powerful. For this purpose the cavalry set forth, Broadwood with
the 10th Hussars, 12th Lancers, and two batteries going round on
one side, while French with the 9th and 16th Lancers, the Household
Cavalry, and two other batteries skirted the other. A force of
Boers was met and defeated, while the defenders of the hill were
driven off with considerable loss. In this well-managed affair the
enemy lost at least a hundred, of whom fifty were prisoners.
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