When the burghers and I forced our way through the storm of bullets, we had with us President Steyn, the Members of the Government, and the Rev. D. Kestell, minister of the Dutch Reformed Church at Harrismith.
The greater part of the English, indeed all of them, so far as we could observe, remained, during the 24th, on the spot where we had left them. We found out, later on, that we had broken through their lines at the point where Colonel Rimington's force was stationed.
The following day the columns departed. We then went to bury our dead, but found that the enemy had already done so. But as the graves which they had made were very shallow, we dug them deeper.
During that night (the 25th) another force of burghers, to the number of about three hundred and fifty, broke through the English cordon. Our men only lost two killed, and eleven wounded.
Besides those already mentioned, the burghers under General Wessel Wessels and Commandant Mentz were also among those who escaped of the two thousand troops surrounded by the enemy.
With the others it fared but ill.
The English closed in, and the circle became narrower and narrower.
On the 27th of February, 1902—"Majuba Day"—Commandant Van Merwe and four hundred men fell into the hands of the enemy.[106]
On that very day, in the year 1881, the famous battle of Majuba had been fought. Nineteen years afterwards, on the same day of the same month, we suffered a terrible defeat at Paardeberg, where we lost General Piet Cronje and a great force of burghers.
And now the 27th of February had come round again, and this time it was the twenty-first anniversary of Majuba that we were celebrating. The day of our coming of age had thus arrived, if I may be allowed to say so. But instead of the Republics now attaining their majority—as they should have done, according to all precedent—minority would have been a more fitting word to describe the condition in which we now found ourselves—for, through the losses which we had just sustained, we were minus not only a large number of burghers, but also an enormous quantity of cattle, which ought to have served as food to our commandos and families, but which the enemy had captured.