At One Period It Looked As If The Gallant Boer
Guns Had Waited Too Long In Covering The Retreat Of The Burghers.
Strathcona's Horse Pressed Closely Upon Them.
The situation was
saved by the extreme coolness and audacity of the Boer gunners.
'When the cavalry were barely
Half a mile behind the rear gun' says
an eye-witness 'and we regarded its capture as certain, the LEADING
Long Tom deliberately turned to bay and opened with case shot at
the pursuers streaming down the hill in single file over the head
of his brother gun. It was a magnificent coup, and perfectly
successful. The cavalry had to retire, leaving a few men wounded,
and by the time our heavy guns had arrived both Long Toms had got
clean away.' But the Boer riflemen would no longer stand.
Demoralised after their magnificent struggle of eleven months the
burghers were now a beaten and disorderly rabble flying wildly to
the eastward, and only held together by the knowledge that in their
desperate situation there was more comfort and safety in numbers.
The war seemed to be swiftly approaching its close. On the 15th
Buller occupied Spitzkop in the north, capturing a quantity of
stores, while on the 14th French took Barberton in the south,
releasing all the remaining British prisoners and taking possession
of forty locomotives, which do not appear to have been injured by
the enemy. Meanwhile Pole-Carew had worked along the railway line,
and had occupied Kaapmuiden, which was the junction where the
Barberton line joins that to Lourenco Marques.
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