"The camp was about three miles from the drift, which lay in the point of a rough angle made by an embankment under construction and the bush-grown sluit which converged towards it. Thus when the Boers were in position, lining the sluit and the embankment, the position became like the base of a horse's foot. The Boers were the metal shoe, our own troops the frog. At the point where the drift cuts the sluit the nullah is broad and extensive. The Boers stationed at this spot realised that the baggage was moving without an advanced guard. They were equal to the situation. As each waggon dropped below the sky-line into the drift the teamsters were directed to take their teams to right or left as the case might be, and the guards were disarmed under threat of violence. No shot was fired. Each waggon in turn was captured and placed along the sluit, so that those in rear had no knowledge of what was taking place to their front until it became their turn to surrender. To all intents and purposes the convoy was proceeding forward. The scrub and high ground beyond the drift was sufficient to mask the clever contrivance of the enemy. Thus all the waggons except nine passed into the hands of the enemy." The waggons, numbering some hundred, had no sooner descended to the spruit and got bogged there than, from all sides sprung up as from the earth, Boers with rifles at the present, shouting--"Hands up. Give up your bandoliers." A scene of appalling confusion followed. Some cocked their revolvers. Others were weaponless. So unsuspecting of danger had they been that their rifles, for comfort's sake, had been stowed on the waggons, the better to allow of freedom to assist in other operations of transport. Some men of the baggage guard shouldered their rifles; others, from under the medley of waggons, still strove ineffectually to show fight. The Boers were unavoidably in the ascendant. The hour and the opportunity were theirs. [Illustration: PLAN--DISASTER AT KOORN SPRUIT.]