The fort had surrendered. Colonel Hore, Captain H. C. Singleton, Veterinary-Lieutenant Dunlop-Smith, with fifteen non-commissioned officers and men of the Protectorate Regiment, Captain Williams and three men of the British South Africa Police, and five native servants were prisoners in the hands of the enemy. Around them were numbers of the enemy talking rapidly in French, German, Italian, and Dutch, while there were also many who spoke English. They were all well armed, carrying some 250 rounds of ammunition with eight days' rations in their haversacks. Some were eating breakfast, many were drinking from bottles which they had looted from the regimental mess; occasionally the group around us was swelled by the numbers of those who, hitherto engaged in looting the quarters of the officers, were now mostly anxious to preserve their skins from the fire from the town and to enjoy an inspection of their plunder. In the short time which the enemy had been in possession of the fort many of them had ransacked the premises, breaking open boxes, cutting open bags, and generally appropriating all the effects which they found. It seemed to me at this moment that the men engaged in this work were Boers, as distinct from the foreign element in their force, and I thought that I caught a current of conversation which was passing in French between two of our captors, and which denounced the unnecessary and almost wanton destruction which was in progress. From the remarks which were passing round us it seemed that the majority were discussing the precise treatment which should be dealt out to the prisoners. At this moment Trooper Hayes, deserter, swaggered towards the circle; he sported Colonel Hore's sword, and a gold chain and watch dangled from his belt. Hearing the subject of the conversation, he at once suggested that we should either be made to stand upon the verandah, a mark to the fire of our own men, or be given the opportunity of taking up arms and joining in the defence of the fort. "You cannot do that, I'm a war correspondent," said I in English to a Boer who was speaking fluent English to a friend. "You be damned!" said he, pleasantly enough, "we'll put you upon the roof." But at that moment Commandant Eloff approached and ordered our removal to a building in the centre of the fort, which hitherto had been used as the storeroom for the regimental mess. Into this they crowded us, together with three others who, visiting the fort in ignorance of the turn of affairs, had likewise been taken prisoners. We were thus thirty-two, and were confined for the day in a space which was not only short and narrow, but ill-ventilated, dirty, littered with rubbish, and already smelling horribly. Firing from town had now begun in earnest, and the bullets whistled and cracked and spat all round the fort. They struck upon the stones and spattered the roof with splinters of rock and lead, while we could detect from these signs how