Accordingly, the conspirators, with amazing promptitude, got under way, the four guns with the commando being double-horsed and despatched to the point arranged on the N.N.E. of Sanna’s Post, while the other galloped as designed. Fortune favoured them, for they reached their destinations undiscovered; and the scheme, admirable in conception, was executed with signal success.
Day had scarcely dawned before the Boers near the region of the waterworks apprised the convoy of their existence. The British kettles were boiling, preparations for breakfast were briskly going forward, when, plump!—a shell dropped in their midst. Consternation prevailed. Something must be done. The artillery? No; the British guns were useless at so long a range. As well have directed a penny squirt at a garden hose! All that was to be thought of was removal—and that with all possible despatch. Scurry and turmoil followed. Mules fought and squealed and kicked, horses careered and plunged, but at last the convoy and two horse batteries were got under way, while the mounted infantry sprayed out to screen the retreat. All this time shells continued to burst and bang with alarming persistency. They came from across the river, and consequently it was imagined that every mile gained brought the convoy nearer to Bloemfontein and farther from the enemy. They had some twenty miles to go. Still, the officers who had charge of the party believed the coast to be clear. After moving on about a mile they approached a deep spruit—a branch of the Modder, more morass than stream. It was there that De Wet and his smart 400 had artfully concealed themselves.
The spruit offered every facility for the formation of an ingenious trap. The ground rose on one side toward a grassy knoll, on the slopes of which was a stony cave from which a hidden foe could command the drifts. So admirably concealed was this enclosure and all that it enclosed, that the leading scouts passed over the drift without suspecting the presence of the enemy. These latter, true to their talent of slimness, made no sign till waggons and guns had safely entered the drift, and were, so to speak, inextricably in their clutches.
Their manœuvre was entirely successful. Some one said the waggons were driven into the drift exactly as partridges are driven to the gun. Another gave a version of very much the same kind. He said, “It was just like walking into a cloak-room—the Boers politely took your rifle and asked you kindly to step on one side, and there was nothing else you could do!”
The nicety of the situation from the Boer point of view was described by a correspondent of The Times:—
“The camp was about three miles from the drift, which lay in the point of a rough angle made by an embankment under construction and the bush-grown sluit which converged towards it. Thus when the Boers were in position, lining the sluit and the embankment, the position became like the base of a horse’s foot. The Boers were the metal shoe, our own troops the frog. At the point where the drift cuts the sluit the nullah is broad and extensive. The Boers stationed at this spot realised that the baggage was moving without an advanced guard. They were equal to the situation. As each waggon dropped below the sky-line into the drift the teamsters were directed to take their teams to right or left as the case might be, and the guards were disarmed under threat of violence. No shot was fired. Each waggon in turn was captured and placed along the sluit, so that those in rear had no knowledge of what was taking place to their front until it became their turn to surrender. To all intents and purposes the convoy was proceeding forward. The scrub and high ground beyond the drift was sufficient to mask the clever contrivance of the enemy. Thus all the waggons except nine passed into the hands of the enemy.”
The waggons, numbering some hundred, had no sooner descended to the spruit and got bogged there than, from all sides sprung up as from the earth, Boers with rifles at the present, shouting—“Hands up. Give up your bandoliers.” A scene of appalling confusion followed. Some cocked their revolvers. Others were weaponless. So unsuspecting of danger had they been that their rifles, for comfort’s sake, had been stowed on the waggons, the better to allow of freedom to assist in other operations of transport. Some men of the baggage guard shouldered their rifles; others, from under the medley of waggons, still strove ineffectually to show fight. The Boers were unavoidably in the ascendant. The hour and the opportunity were theirs.
Plan—Disaster at Koorn Spruit.