Major Hornby, finding that he could not bring his guns to bear at short range without shooting down friend as well as foe, limbered up to get clear of the close _mêlée_. In wheeling round on rough ground one gun capsized, bringing all the team down with it—horses and drivers together in a confused mass. The Boers saw their chance, and brought a withering rifle fire to bear, so that every attempt to right the gun failed. Under this fire the two wheelers of another team fell. The leaders struggled on for a time, dragging their maimed comrades, then came to a standstill, and that gun also had to be left behind. Marksmen of the Durham Light Infantry did their best to keep down the enemy’s fire, while volunteers ran out to help the distressed gunners, who, managing to escape, went off for fresh horses. Captain Gore Anley, commanding the Essex Regiment’s Mounted Infantry, aided by two of his men, brought a wounded gunner from under that terrific fire to safety, and then went out with a brother-officer to help at the guns. Time after time the artillerymen brought up fresh teams, which were shot down before they could be hooked to the limbers. One driver had nine horses killed or wounded before he gave up the attempt as hopeless. Meanwhile Major Hornby, with four guns of his own command, and the only one remaining of U Battery, which had been recaptured after stampeding, moved southward to a position twelve hundred yards from Koorn Spruit Drift. There he brought them into action with a cool audacity and effect that paralysed the enemy. Though he could not save the guns that had been left behind, he could cover the retirement of Cavalry and Mounted Infantry of the rearguard, who, unable longer to hold the low ridge against heavy odds, were being forced back from the waterworks, fighting stubbornly, though threatened in flank by the force that had captured our convoy. Shelled at from right and left, smitten by storms of rifle bullets, the gunners of Q Battery never budged. Coolly, as if at target practice, they loaded and aimed. The shells burst among the Boers, checking more than one attempt at a rush, and then the remnants of a shattered brigade were enabled to retire upon their supports, who had rallied for a stand at the station buildings.