It was evident that De Wet was making for the Cape Colony, the disaffected northern districts of which were again giving cause for anxiety, and which at all hazards he must be prevented from entering. Lord Kitchener came down from the Transvaal to direct the operations; the Brigade of Guards on its way to Capetown and home, was de-trained to hold the line of the Orange; Knox's columns hurried forward. De Wet, after a slight encounter with Knox, who was marching south, turned adroitly to the west and did not resume the original direction of his march until he had put a considerable distance between himself and the columns, which were "running heel" and pursuing him almost in the opposite direction. Near Bethulie he was reinforced by Hertzog and other leaders, but by this time he had been headed by Knox at Bethulie and was compelled to draw off eastwards into the angle between the Orange and the Caledon. He left Hertzog with instructions to make his way across the river west of Norval's Pont, intending to cross with his own force higher up. He was, however, prevented by the forces of nature from carrying out the raid which the British military forces would probably have been unable to prohibit. Heavy rains had fallen in the Basuto Mountains, and the sudden rise of the Caledon and the Orange to flood level obliterated most of the drifts and entrapped him between them. He made one dash for the Orange at Odendaal, but found the drift in the possession of the enemy. De Wet now saw that he was not destined to enter the Cape Colony on this occasion, and that he would have much difficulty in saving himself. On December 6 he determined to retreat by the way he came. He did not, however, wholly abandon the scheme of a Cape Colony raid, for he detached Kritzinger and Scheepers with instructions to hover and watch their opportunity of breaking into it. The opportune falling of the Caledon opened to him a postern towards the north, and on December 7 he crossed the river and made for Helvetia, where again he was entangled. The line of least resistance seemed to run westwards towards the railway, and he put himself upon it, soon to find that Kitchener's dispositions had obstructed it. He doubled back, and trailing Knox after him in a night march, shook himself free. Knox, confident that the Bloemfontein-Ladybrand line of posts would be an effectual barrier to De Wet's retreat, had waited to pull his straggling columns together. De Wet, reinforced by a commando under Michael Prinsloo, who had been with him in his first Transvaal incursion when Steyn was put over the border, rushed at the blockhouse line and again cut it at Springhaan's Nek, for although it had been attended to recently, there was an aneurism in it which yielded at the critical moment, and on December 14 De Wet passed freely through the lesion. He arrived by way of Ficksburg at Tafelberg, S.E. of Senekal, on December 25.