Owing to the Boers having posted their 15-centimetre gun on the Impati for the purpose of shelling the camp and town, the troops and inhabitants removed to a position some three miles south of Dundee village. The movement was fraught with many discomforts. Rain fell in torrents, making the roads a mass of slush and enveloping everything in a thick mist, while provisions, which had been hastily gathered together, were scarce. On the following day, Sunday, an attempt was made to return to camp, but the Boer firing continued so active that the project had to be abandoned. Thereupon, on Sunday night the whole column, having first loaded four days' supplies from their old camp and set there lighted candles sufficient to cause such an illumination as would suggest to the Boers an idea of occupation, quietly stole away. No one exactly knew their destination. At nine of the clock the Army Service Corps waggons moved to the camp, were loaded, and by midnight commenced rumbling along in the damp obscurity. The advance column, after passing through Dundee, where it was joined by transport and rearguard, proceeded along the Helpmakaar road on the way to Ladysmith. [Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL SIR W. PENN SYMONS, K.C.B. Photo by R. Stanley & Co., London.] On Monday afternoon the first halt was called, but the rest was of short duration, for at ten the column was again plodding along through the miry roads in hourly dread lest the whole scheme should be spoilt, and the Boers suddenly arrest the course of the two-mile-long column. And they had indeed good reason for alarm. They were forced to plod through a narrow pass in the Biggarsberg range of mountains, so narrow indeed that a hundred Boers might have effectually barred their way. Here, through this perilous black cylinder of the hills, they marched at dead of night. It took them between the hours of half-past eleven till three, stumbling and squelching in the mire, and knowing that should the enemy appear, should they but shoot one of the oxen of the leading waggon of the convoy, and thus block the cramped defile, all chance of getting safely through to Ladysmith would be at an end. This was by no means a happy reflection to fill men's minds in the dripping, almost palpable, darkness of the night, and the resolute spirit of the gallant fellows who unmurmuringly stowed away all personal wretchedness and stuck manfully to their grim duty is for ever to be marvelled at and admired. Fortunately the Dutchmen, "slim" as they were, had not counted on the possibility of this march being executed at all, still less of its being executed in pitch darkness. They were caught napping, and the party, who had left kit, provisions (except for the four days), and everything behind them, who were now drenched to the skin in the only clothes they possessed, at last reached Sunday River in safety.