At that moment, as luck would have it, two West Australians of the 4th Regiment M.I. turned up, and, leaving them to collect the arms of which such careful note had been made, and to eat the remnants of my unfinished meal I mounted to ride off in quest of their main body, taking care, however, to command proper protection for the house in which I had been so hospitably entertained. ‘Well played,’ said one, with much outward show of respect, as he produced a bottle of brandy from the ample pocket of his ‘coat British warm,’ and offered me a nip. I saw that he, at any rate, understood the game. At Eikenhof Drift I found the main body which turned out to be no more than a patrol. Its appearance drew fire from the Boers, who were apparently holding that road into Johannesburg strongly. They began to show in groups of twenty and thirty on kopjes where no sign of them had been seen before, and were evidently meditating a movement by which the drift might have been outflanked. To prevent this Major Pilkington, who was in command, detached some men from his scanty force to hold two smaller fords, and in a short time there were several casualties from rifle fire at short range. Just then we could hear the roar of guns where General Ian Hamilton was attacking miles away on the left. Hard pressed, yet determined to hold on where he was, Major Pilkington had not a galloper whom he could send with a message to his divisional General, Pole-Carew. I volunteered to carry it, and started for a ride of twenty miles across unknown country, making sure that I should hit off some column within that distance. But all the troops under the immediate command of Lord Roberts had been following the line of railway—where their front was cleared by the 8th Mounted Infantry, with which were Lumsden’s Horse and other regiments of Colonel Henry’s brigade—in a turning movement, the extent of which will be appreciated after perusal of the preceding narrative. I had ridden a distance that would have measured nearly thirty miles from point to point without seeing more than a small patrol of British troops. That night, or early the next morning, when Major Pilkington had withdrawn his small force, a thousand Free State Boers crossed Eikenhof Drift and got in rear of the British columns to rejoin De Wet. Meanwhile, with French or Hamilton on the west, and in advance of the main body on the east, deeds were being done that sealed the fate of Johannesburg and Pretoria. Lumsden’s Horse took a full share of honours that day, though their Colonel does not descant upon these at great length in his official report, but contents himself with the following record: On the 29th we marched at 5.30, expecting to arrive after ten miles at Natal Spruit, where fighting was certain. Our maps and information were, however, wrong, for we found ourselves most unexpectedly in sight of the place with the smoke of the train leaving the station.