Colonel White was going out in the direction of the enemy the next day with all the troops in the town, so we had to take over the pickets and hold the town until his return. Disappointed at losing our chance of a fight, we consoled ourselves next day by moving into various empty houses, as it was possible we might have to remain in Ventersburg. The town was a small one, but was used as a halting place and rendezvous by the Boers, who found many sympathisers among the residents. It was well situated and easily protected, and would have made pleasant quarters for a half battalion as a permanent garrison; it would have afforded the Boers one town less in which to assemble and hatch plots and make descents on the railway line at Holfontein, only 12 miles away. We were fated, however, to move again, and at eight o'clock next day, the 27th of August, my small column returned to Ventersburg Road: in the distance to the north, we espied a huge cloud of mounted men, wagons and Cape carts, with whom we opened communication by helio, finding them to be Colonel Le Gallais' force, bound for the town we had just left. On reaching the railway station about mid-day we found that General Bruce Hamilton and the remainder of our Brigade had gone, and that most of the other troops had also moved. Next day, Colonel Le Gallais' force, and also Colonel White's, arrived and camped near the railway station, so that Ventersburg Road was pretty well crowded, and with all the horses, mules and bullocks was rapidly becoming anything but sanitary. We had a very unpleasant time on the 29th of August; all the afternoon it rained steadily, and by night the place was a swamp and our camp a wretched sight; as many men as could be stowed away in sheds and under verandahs at the station were sent there, and the rest of us lay in our dripping bivouacs and put up with the drenching rain and soaking water under us as best we could. Fortunately, the rain stopped in the early morning, but our camp was a sight: in the middle of a lake about two feet deep was the bivouac of two men, my servant and my groom, who had rigged up overnight an excellent shelter of fencing wire and blankets, under which they were secure from rain, but not from the flowing stream which soon surrounded them; numbers of mules and bullocks died during the night, and their swollen carcases poisoned the air for some days, until they were dragged off to their cemetery, where they were laid out in rows, and reminded us, every time the wind blew, of the unfortunate ending to their existence. During these days and the next four or five, a constant succession of trains laden with remounts for the cavalry and Mounted Infantry, and occasionally with enormous loads of supplies, passed up north, day and night.