The infantry, with the Maxim detachment, were then ordered to retire towards Molteno, while the artillery remained to cover the retreat. But the retirement was not so easy. The triumphant Boers now brought their guns to the tops of the kopjes, and sent shell after shell to catch the troops as they slowly wound along the valley. Many of the shells burst with terrific force, ploughing up the roadway around our men, and shooting clouds of blinding dust into eyes and ears and throats, but fortunately doing little damage. The Boers also brought their rifles to bear on the little force, and our worn-out troops suffered the horrible experience of being hunted like hares along roads through which they had so laboriously, so hopefully, toiled the night before, tramping the weary ten miles to Molteno with the enemy taking long shots at them from innumerable points of vantage. Their progress was necessarily slow, for sometimes they had to hide in cornfields, to crouch among boulders, and occasionally to fall prone to earth when shells came screaming and bursting along their line of route. Afterwards they would rise again, still holding their life in their hands, and plod on in the expectation that every step would be their last. For eight long miles this exciting form of torture was experienced, numbers of the poor fellows dropping all along the road from wounds, exhaustion, and from the effects of the now fiercely blazing sun. Terrible was their plight both during the attack and after it, for the Boers, as usual, paid no heed to the sacred demand of the wounded or of the white flag, and no sooner saw a party of stretcher-bearers approach to pick up a man than they made the event the signal for a volley. All, therefore, that could be done for those stricken down was to wait patiently till they could crawl a short distance out of the line of fire and swoop down on them and bear them hastily away. The unfortunates who were too severely wounded to so crawl, and those who were killed, had to be left where they fell. Nor did those who were successfully removed in the ambulance waggon fare much better, for this was fired on continually, but luckily, owing to the shells not bursting, caused more horror than harm.