Throwing
themselves into the farmhouse of Helpmakaar, and occupying every
post of vantage around it, they held off more than a thousand
assailants, in spite of the three guns which the latter brought to
bear upon them.
A hundred and thirty-two rounds were fired at the
house, but the garrison still refused to surrender. Troopers who
had been present at Wepener declared that the smaller action was
the warmer of the two. Finally on the morning of the third day a
relief force arrived upon the scene, and the enemy dispersed. The
British losses were thirty-two killed and wounded. Nothing daunted
by his failure, Olivier turned upon the town of Winburg and
attempted to regain it, but was defeated again and scattered, he
and his three sons being taken. The result was due to the gallantry
and craft of a handful of the Queenstown Volunteers, who laid an
ambuscade in a donga, and disarmed the Boers as they passed, after
the pattern of Sanna's Post. By this action one of the most daring
and resourceful of the Dutch leaders fell into the hands of the
British. It is a pity that his record is stained by his
dishonourable conduct in breaking the compact made on the occasion
of the capture of Prinsloo. But for British magnanimity a drumhead
court-martial should have taken the place of the hospitality of the
Ceylon planters.
On September 2nd another commando of Free State Boers under Fourie
emerged from the mountain country on the Basuto border, and fell
upon Ladybrand, which was held by a feeble garrison consisting of
one company of the Worcester regiment and forty-three men of the
Wiltshire Yeomanry.
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