It was not at all funny at the time, but afterwards, when Hansie thought it over, she laughed and laughed again at the recollection of those two men, diving for the hole in the floor, and of their resentful looks when they emerged, on hearing that the alarm had been caused by the unexpected appearance of "Um-Ah."
The departure that night was in dead silence. There was no hearty "send-off" under the six willows, no escort through the bush, van der Westhuizen alone going on ahead to see if the coast were clear.
The events of that night are blurred and vague in the memory of the two solitary women, and Hansie's diary contains but meagre information on the subject—in fact, her war-diary practically ends here.
Frail womanhood had reached the breaking-point.
A period of dull suffering, of deadly indifference followed, broken one day by the news, with which the whole town rang, that Skinner's Court had been stormed by the Boers and that every horse had been taken, fourteen in all, valuable remounts of the officers.
Hansie just glanced at her mother and then asked hoarsely, "Was any one hurt? Was any one taken?"
"No," the answer came, with a curious look at her strained face; "the attack was so wholly unexpected, and the Boers so evidently informed of every detail of the place, that they were gone with all the horses almost before a shot could be fired."
This meant not only that the Captain had reached his men in safety, but that the enterprising object of his visit had been successfully carried out, beyond his most sanguine expectations.
And now we take our leave of the brave Captain whose name appears so often and so honourably in this book, and in leaving him, we quote, at his request, the tribute with which he closed his little book In Doodsgevaar ("In Danger of Death")—published in August 1903—a tribute to the women who assisted him.