What a roll-call it would have been if the Brigadier had not in mercy spared them that melancholy ordeal! When the losses came to be counted, they numbered, in dead, wounded, and prisoners, nearly a third of the force that had marched out of Thaba ’Nchu forty hours earlier. Of U Battery, Royal Horse Artillery, only a mere handful remained, and Q Battery had suffered heavily too. Seven out of twelve guns had been left in the enemy’s hands, with some eighty baggage waggons full of stores. Household Cavalry, 10th Hussars, and Mounted Infantry had losses to mourn, and Roberts’s Horse the most of all. Unhappily, it was too late to hope that either guns or convoy could be recaptured. They had all been taken off during the afternoon towards Thaba ’Nchu, and Boers were in possession of the waterworks, with artillery on heights behind, covering the road. Next day a demonstration of the whole force under General Colvile’s command was made, as if to drive every Boer from the waterworks, where mischief had been done by the destruction of pumping engines; but it ended in nothing, and then we gradually drew in our forces. The Boers assumed the offensive again, and began to threaten our line of communications at several points. These were the conditions that made Lord Roberts anxious to secure the services of every mounted corps on which he could rely for meeting the new Boer tactics by swift counter-strokes. Most of them he had foreseen when orders were sent for Lumsden’s Horse to be supplied with all the remounts necessary for repairing losses and pushed on to the front. Sanna’s Post with all its consequences had not been counted on; but it made the need for mounted troops all the more urgent in order that pressure round about Wepener might be relieved and lines of communication cleared. That action, lamentable because of the sacrifices it entailed, but glorious in its heroic incidents, gave to Lumsden’s Horse not only an opportunity, but an example; and we may be sure that, when the news reached them at Maitland Camp and at Queen’s Town, every trooper made up his mind to be a worthy comrade of the men who had risked their lives so nobly and fought with such stubborn valour in vain attempts to save the guns at Sanna’s Post. [Illustration] CHAPTER VI _BY RAIL AND ROUTE MARCH TO BLOEMFONTEIN_