"Well, we among the waggons hadn't a doubt how it was going to turn out. The one battery with us opened fire upon the entrenchment, but you who know what their entrenchments are will guess that there was little damage done; and when the soldiers went up the hill the Boers held their fire until they were close, and then literally swept them away, and, leaping over the entrenchments, took many of them prisoners. None would have got away at all if a few mounted infantry, who had managed to get up the Nek at another point, hadn't charged down and so enabled the survivors to escape. One hundred and eighty out of the two hundred and fifty were killed or taken prisoners. Colley at once fell back four miles. The Boers on their part, making sure that they had got him safe, sent a strong force round, and this planted itself on the road between him and Newcastle, but before they did so some small reinforcements joined us. Three or four days passed, and then we Colonials quite made up our mind that there was nothing for it but surrender. Colley determined at last to try and open the road back, and with about two hundred and fifty men, with four cannon--two of them mountain guns--moved out. Some sixty soldiers were left on a commanding spot to cover the passage of the Ingogo. As soon as the force under Colley had got to the opposite crest of the ravine through which the river runs, they were attacked in great force. They took shelter among the boulders, and fought as bravely as it was possible for men to fight. The guns, however, were useless, for in half an hour every officer, man and horse, was killed or wounded. However, the Boers could not pluck up courage to make a rush, and the little force held on till it was dark, by which time more than two-thirds of them were killed or wounded. A lot of rain had fallen, the Boers thought that the Ingogo could not be forded, and so, believing they would have no trouble in finishing the little force in the morning, they were careless. Colley, however, sent down and found that the water had not risen so high as to make it impossible to pass, and in the darkness, covered by the blinding rain that was falling, he and the survivors moved quietly off, crossed the river, picked up the party left on the eminence commanding it, and returned to camp.