I ordered my burghers to carry these unfortunate creatures to some thorn-bushes, which afforded shelter from the scorching rays of the sun, and where their doctors could attend to them. Other burghers I told off to fetch water from our prisoners' canteens, to supply our own wounded.
As soon as the wounded were safe under the shelter of the trees I despatched a message to Sir George White asking him to send his ambulance to fetch them, and also to make arrangements for the burial of his dead. For some unexplained reason, the English ambulance did not arrive till the following morning.
We stayed on the mountain until sunset, and then went down to the laager. I ordered my brother, Piet de Wet, with fifty men of the Bethlehem commando, to remain behind and guard the kop.
We reached camp at eight o'clock, and as the men had been without food during the whole day it can be imagined with what delight each watched his bout span frizzling on the spit. This, with a couple of stormjagers and a tin of coffee, made up the meal, and speedily restored them. They were exempted from sentry duty that night, and greatly enjoyed their well-earned rest.
To complete my narrative of the day's work, I have only to add that the Transvaal burghers were engaged at various points some eight miles from Nicholson's Nek, and succeeded in taking four hundred prisoners.
We placed our sentries that evening with the greatest care. They were stationed not only at a distance from the camp, as Brandwachten,[13] but also close round the laager itself. We were especially careful, as it was rumoured that the English had armed the Zulus of Natal. Had this been true, it would have been necessary to exercise the utmost vigilance to guard against these barbarians.
Since the very beginning of our existence as a nation—in 1836—our people had been acquainted with black races, and bitter had been their experience. All that our voortrekkers[14] had suffered was indelibly stamped on our memory. We well knew what the Zulus could do under cover of darkness—their sanguinary night attacks were not easily forgotten. Their name of "night-wolves" had been well earned. Also we Free-Staters had endured much from the Basutos, in the wars of 1865 and 1867.
History had thus taught us to place Brandwachten round our laagers at night, and to reconnoitre during the hours of darkness as well as in the day-time.
Perhaps I shall be able to give later on a fuller account in these pages—or, it may be, in another book—of the way we were accustomed to reconnoitre, and of the reasons why the scouting of the British so frequently ended in disaster. But I cannot resist saying here that the English only learnt the art of scouting during the latter part of the war, when they made use of the Boer deserters—the "Hands-uppers."
These deserters were our undoing. I shall have a good deal more to say about them before I finally lay down my pen, and I shall not hesitate to call them by their true name—the name with which they will be for ever branded before all the nations of the world.