ADOLPH KRAUSE.[ToList]
As Mr. Botha, with strange intuition, had predicted, there were dastardly traitors in that group of fifty men—Judas-Boers—who, under the pretence of seeking an opportunity of joining the burgher forces, had persuaded Delport to allow them to accompany him. That he was innocent in this black crime of hideous treachery, no one who knew him ever had a doubt.
At the appointed place the two men met. Farther on they were joined by the wounded German and his comrades; still farther, beyond the boundary of the town, under a cluster of trees, well known to them as a secret trysting-place, the large party had assembled one by one and was awaiting the arrival of its leaders.
The latter, seeing in the distance a group of moving figures which they took to be their friends, walked boldly and serenely forward—to find themselves a moment later in a most deadly trap!
The conflict must have been a desperate one!
He who played so brave a part in it, Krause, the only armed man on his side, shot down his opponents one by one, until they closed on him, and then, overpowered by the fearful odds and battered beyond recognition by heavy blows from the butt-ends of their guns, he was at last pinioned to the ground by his infuriated captors.
Three men were taken, Krause, Venter (a mere boy, the son of a widow in Pretoria), and one other—who must be nameless here.
Of the rest some fled into the open veld, while others, hopelessly ignorant of their surroundings or of the route to take, wisely returned to town under cover of the darkness of the night.