At last, near Hopetown, on the 23rd, he was overtaken by Colonel Owen, one of Plumer's lieutenants, who relieved him of fifty of his gang, some carts full of ammunition, a gun and a pom-pom. The wily one himself veered off in the direction of Petrusville with a following of some 400 men, the rest having dispersed before the avenging K.D.G.'s, Victorians, and Imperial Light Horse, according to custom, like the fragments of a bursting shell, leaving behind them steaming cooking-pots and horses ready saddled. The affair was another plume in the cap of the man who so unostentatiously had harried and fought and skirmished around Mafeking for the relief of Colonel Baden-Powell, but he had to pay for his hard work in persistently chasing and eventually turning the foe, by a spell of complete exhaustion. The pursuit was then carried forward by Colonels Henniker and Crabbe. General Plumer entrained and moved to Springfontein in order to await developments and be ready on the north of the river should De Wet succeed in evading the pursuit and in getting across. The fugitive at this time (24th) was in no enviable position. Chased by Henniker and Crabbe, worn, weary, and dropping shattered horses as he went, he found himself again within the same square hunting-ground he had left, bounded on the north by the Orange, on the south by the De Aar-to-Naauwpoort line, on the east by the line connecting Naauwpoort with Norval's Pont, on the west by that leading from De Aar up to Orange River Station.