Unfortunately the effect of the squeezing operations which were taking place caused the enemy to be driven to the Thabanchu line, and here, as though history was bound to repeat itself, the unfortunate U battery met with a mishap. On the 19th a small force of 160 mounted men under Captain Tufnell, and two guns of U Battery, R.H.A., under Lieut. Otter-Barry, which had been detached by the officer commanding at the Bloemfontein Waterworks, were surrounded and captured at Vlakfontein (eighteen miles south-west of Sanna's Post) by a superior force under Commandants Coetzee and Ackermann. Lieutenant Barry, R.H.A., lost his life in the gallant defence of his guns. All efforts were now made to hem the enemy against the Thabanchu line, and General Plumer and Colonel Rochfort (commanding General Bruce-Hamilton's force during his absence in Natal) worked hard to this end. It was a question of fight, fight, fight, and hustle, hustle, hustle on all sides. At the end of the month (the 29th) Colonel Lowry Cole had the satisfaction of hauling in Commandant Drezer and Field-Cornet Van Vunren, with their followers, whose laager he had surprised. At the same time some sharp fighting took place between two hundred New Zealanders[6] under Major A. W. Andrews, a smart officer of the Indian Staff Corps, who were holding Mokari Drift on the Caledon, and some 300 or 400 Boers who were in the act of crossing. The Boers, after a severe mauling, fled westward, leaving six dead and seven wounded on the field. Colonel Thorneycroft also had had stiff work with a marauding gang near Corunna on the 20th. After this date the columns on the east of the main line of rail had each assigned to them an area with a centre from which to work. They acted independently, yet as required could combine against any formidable gathering of the enemy. In the south-western portion of the Orange Colony the situation was improving so remarkably that first the columns of Colonels Byng and Dawkins were able to withdraw towards the Vredefort district; then those of Major Damant were removed to Heilbron; while the rest, under Colonel Rochfort, were transferred to the more disturbed area of the east of the railway. Colonel Henry maintained his operations in the district, but the verb "to blockhouse" having been so liberally conjugated throughout the region, his duties were comparatively light. EVENTS IN CAPE COLONY