At mid-day on the 9th, a large body of the enemy, who had concealed themselves by night in the dry bed of a mountain torrent, suddenly rushed from their ambush, and having wounded a young man at work near the house, before he could seize his gun, instantly swept off the whole of Mynheer Rautenbach's horses, cattle, and sheep. The sound of shots, and especially the well-known "roer" of the old Dutchman, a huge weapon carrying a 4 oz. ball, gave us the alarm at the Post in a moment, though four miles off, for no idle firing was permitted. The alarm was taken up by the Fingoes on the look-out hills; the wall pieces at the Fort were fired as a signal to the Burghers, and in less than ten minutes a mounted party was rattling out of the barrack square, and galloping down the road amid clouds of dust. As we passed the two Laagers, some were loading their roers, others buckling on their powder-horns and pouches; while the "jungvrouws" were saddling the fresh-caught horses, for their fathers, husbands, and brothers; they soon overtook us by short cuts, and as we swept past old Rautenbach's barricaded house, our party was augmented to seventy or eighty men. At a turn in the lovely valley, which opened before us about a mile beyond the farm, we could see the enemy; the green sloping summit of the Zuurberg on our right, and half a mile further up the poort the cattle driven along by a party of mounted Kaffirs. With a shout of exultation we again dashed forward, rattling along the road in an exciting chase; the long manes and tails of the Dutchmen's horses streaming in the wind, the bullets whistling over our heads from the Kaffir-crowned heights, and the enemy before us straining every nerve to reach a narrow gorge, called Tiger's Kloof, the entrance to which was guarded by parties of their comrades posted among the fort-like rocks on either side. The ground presently became so full of hidden holes that in three or four minutes, as many of our party were down. In the midst of our career, we came to a sudden check at a deep drift, immediately under fire from a "koppie"[17] held by the rebels, who took deliberate aim as we leaped from rock to rock, leading our horses through the bed of the stream; but no one was hit, though three of the horses were wounded. Without waiting to form a party, each one as he mounted pushed on up the Kloof after the cattle, the enemy still keeping up a smart fire. As soon as all had fairly entered the gorge, the Kaffirs on the heights hurried down to take possession of its entrance, but a well directed fire from the party dropped behind to hold the opposing rocks, frustrated the attempt. The sheep had fallen into our hands at the foot of the mountain, and now the fugitives, closely pressed, abandoned their spoil altogether, and many leaping from their horses, in the hope of escaping on foot among the rocks, were killed at close quarters, fighting bravely to the last.