At ten o'clock in the evening some Transvaal officers entered the tent of Commandant de Villiers, and pointed out that there was no shelter for the storming party, and that the dongas at the foot of the hill, instead of affording shelter, would prove disadvantageous to us in case we were forced to retire. One officer after another entered the tent until there were fifteen together, and all were opposed to the project of storming the place. At one o'clock they had convinced one another that Platrand could not be taken, and took it upon themselves to disobey the orders of the Council of War, and so far from storming Platrand at two o'clock, everyone was sound asleep in his bed at that hour. The evil day was postponed.
On 7th December my son Charlie, aged 15, arrived in the laager. I had left him behind at Harrismith to go to school, but it was impossible to keep him there, and he had come to the laager at the first opportunity, after receiving my consent. When he had been with me but a short while he got a Lee-Metford from his friend Jan Cilliers, which had been taken at Dundee.
At this time it became clearer and clearer that some event or other might with certainty be expected from the south. The British Commander-in-Chief in Natal, General Buller, had been there for some weeks, and had had plenty of time to prepare himself. There was no doubt that he had been busy, for more and more troops had come from Durban, until the camps at Chieveley had grown to amazingly large proportions. Everyone then was expecting that something was going to happen soon.
But in the meanwhile something took place closer to us, which filled us with shame and indignation. In the night of the 7th-8th of December a number of English climbed Lombard's Kop, where the heavy gun of the Transvaalers was. They approached the fort in the greatest silence, but the picquet became aware of their approach and cried, "Werda?"
Someone answered in good Dutch, "Don't shoot. We are the Modderspruit burghers."
This satisfied the picquet, and the next moment the enemy was in the fort.
Our men were taken by surprise, but they fired notwithstanding, and a few English were wounded.
The few men in the fort were now forced to yield, and retreated before overwhelming odds. Then the British damaged Long Tom so seriously that it could not be used again for fifteen days. They also partially destroyed a French quick-firing gun and captured a Maxim.
That same night another party of English damaged the railway bridge at Waschbank (near Dundee) in such a manner as to stop the running of trains for some days.
These two exploits of the English roused a feeling of dissatisfaction in the minds of the burghers. They considered it a dishonour to us, and although there were rumours of treachery, the general opinion was that it was rather the carelessness and want of vigilance on our side that was to blame. Everyone, on the contrary, meted out unlimited praise to the English, and said that they had done a gallant thing.