An Attack Had At This Period Been Made By A Commando Of Some
Hundred Boers At The Sand River To The South Of Kroonstad, Where
There Is A Most Important Bridge.
The attempt was frustrated by the
Royal Lancaster regiment and the Railway Pioneer regiment, helped
by some mounted infantry and Yeomanry.
The fight was for a time a
brisk one, and the Pioneers, upon whom the brunt of it fell,
behaved with great steadiness. The skirmish is principally
remarkable for the death of Major Seymour of the Pioneers, a noble
American, who gave his services and at last his life for what, in
the face of all slander and misrepresentation, he knew to be the
cause of justice and of liberty.
It was hoped now, after all these precautions, that the last had
been seen of the gentleman with the tinted glasses, but on June
21st he was back in his old haunts once more. Honing Spruit
Station, about midway between Kroonstad and Roodeval, was the scene
of his new raid. On that date his men appeared suddenly as a train
waited in the station, and ripped up the rails on either side of
it. There were no guns at this point, and the only available troops
were three hundred of the prisoners from Pretoria, armed with
Martini-Henry rifles and obsolete ammunition. A good man was in
command, however - the same Colonel Bullock of the Devons who had
distinguished himself at Colenso - and every tattered, half-starved
wastrel was nerved by a recollection of the humiliations which he
had already endured.
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