But the Dutchman was more than their match. He blew up three waggons rather than be impeded by them--(he always attributed Cronje's downfall to the tenacity with which he clung to his waggons)--and let loose from his camp sixty British prisoners and an officer, left behind thirty wrecks of horses at Schoolplats, and even flung away ammunition. Having thus thrown out ballast, as it were, he soared into the unknown. The disappointment on all sides was extreme, for sometimes the troops had been so close on the track that they had even boiled their kettles on the camp fires left by their quarry. "Collisions, but no cornering," was the terse telegram home of a youthful officer who had been keen in the hunt. Colonel Ricardo (10th Battalion Imperial Yeomanry) whose gallant men had displayed first-rate cavalry qualifications, had gone so far as to offer £50 for the prize, dead or alive! Yet the _ignis fatuus_ danced gaily ahead, but never within clutch! Still, clever as he showed himself to be, it must be remembered he had everything in his favour. His spies were in every farmhouse, and no inch of the country was strange to him; he could burrow, circle, or climb by day or by night, while his pursuers, though their waggons had double teams of picked animals, were forced to relinquish their vigilance at sundown. So both Lords Methuen and Kitchener found themselves outmarched, and De Wet (who had gone off through Olifant's Nek in the Magaliesberg range, while Methuen was blocking Magato Pass, some twelve miles further westward) doubtless plumed himself on his ingenuity. The reason for his success lay in the fact that, owing to some synchronal accident, General Baden-Powell on vacating Olifant's Nek had not been immediately relieved by General Ian Hamilton, who was due on the 13th. Lord Methuen, unaware of this hitch, thought that by veering towards Magato Pass De Wet must effectually be cornered, and discovered too late that his mighty marches and spirited efforts had been thrown away. Thus in following De Wet's evolutions we learnt not so much a lesson in strategy as a lesson in quick-wittedness. Moral maxims teach us to catch time on the wing; De Wet taught us more--to leap to the back of opportunity, and fly with it where it may lead. As at Koorn Spruit so elsewhere. He jumped to his decisions and acted on them at one and the same moment. At Koorn Spruit it was a matter of minutes that made him master of the situation. At Stabbert's Nek it was little more. He was informed that there must be some hours' delay in the clicking of the padlock round the Brandwater basin, and he used those hours, exactly as he had now used the synchronal hitch that left a gap at Olifant's Nek between the evacuation of General Baden-Powell and the arrival of General Ian Hamilton. Deliberation in all three cases would have been fatal. He did not deliberate but acted, and in getting across from the south of Orange River Colony to the north of Pretoria he showed