When the end ridge was gained and the guns captured, the enemy's laager was close in sight. A white flag was shown from the centre of the camps. At this Colonel Hamilton gave an order. The "Cease fire" was sounded. There was a lull in the action, some of our men commencing to walk slowly down-hill towards the camp. Suddenly, without warning, the crackle of musketry was heard, and a deadly fire poured from a small sugar-loaf shaped kopje to east of the camp. For one short moment our men, staggered by the dastardly action and the fierce suddenness of the attack, fell back, and during this moment a party of some forty Boers had stoutly charged uphill and effected a lodgment near the crest. [Illustration: PLAN OF BATTLE OF ELANDSLAAGTE] But this ruse was a failure and their triumph short-lived. The 1st Battalion Devonshire Regiment, who, as we know, had been holding the enemy in front during the commencement of the infantry attack, and had since then pushed steadily forward, had now reached to 350 yards from the enemy. Here they lay down to recover breath before charging with fixed bayonets. Five companies assaulted the hill to the left and five to the right; and a detachment of these, arriving at the critical moment when the Boers were making their last stand, helped to bring about the triumphant finale. Like the lightning that shot through the sky above, the Boers, at the sound of the united cheers, had fled! Some scampered away to their laager on the Nek, and from thence to other kopjes. Others filed in troops anywhere, regardless of consequences. While they were in full retreat, and the mists of darkness, like a gathering pall, hung over the scene, the 5th Lancers and the 5th Dragoon Guards charged the flying enemy--charged not once nor twice only, but thrice, dashing through the scattered ranks with deadly purpose, though at terrible risk of life and limb. Never were Boers so amazed. The despised worms--the miserable Rooineks--had at last turned, and, as one of them afterwards described it, they had "come on horses galloping, and with long sticks with spikes at the end of them, picked us up like bundles of hay!" The cost of victory, however, was heavy. Roughly estimated, we lost 4 officers and 37 men killed; 31 officers and 175 men wounded. Ten men were missing. The Boers lost over 300 Burghers killed and wounded, besides several hundred horses. Their hospital with wounded prisoners was placed under the care of the British hospital, they having only one doctor, who, with his primitive staff, was quite unable to cope with the arduous work of attending the multitude of sufferers.