Of course this was merely a passing jocosity, for the same chronicler declared that "the most interesting phase of the fight was the manner in which every one in the town showed himself ready to take his share in its defence. The seven months' siege had left very few cowards. All sorts of men who have staff billets and do not generally man the forts seized rifles and hurried to the railway line, the jail, and the workshops, resolved to die in the last ditch, which was the railway line, within three hundred yards of the market-square, the enemy being only five hundred yards below the line." He further said, "It is customary in London rather to look down on town guards, Volunteers, and citizen soldiers, but it was by these that the town was held and Commandant Eloff was beaten." Strange tales were told in that eventful day of the kind treatment meted out to the Boers. They were given clean towels and soap (the latter was at first mistaken for an eatable), and tended like brothers, while all the past aggravations endured at their hands were forgotten or at least ignored. The prisoners, wounded or sound, were greeted almost affectionately by the town. Such drink as there was was shared, and for the time being, amid the general jubilation, at the close of the melodramatic episodes of the day it was difficult to decide which were the happier, friend or foe. Thus generously wrote Mr. Angus Hamilton of the enemy: "We who had been prisoners and were now free rejoiced in the liberty which was restored to us, yet it was difficult to restrain oneself from feeling compassionately upon the great misfortunes which had attended the extraordinary dash and gallantry of the men who were now our prisoners. They had done their best. They had proved to us that they were indeed capable, and that we should have kept a sharper look-out, while it was indeed deplorable to think that it was the treachery of their own general in abandoning them to their fate, that had been mainly instrumental in procuring them their present predicament."