The feat was performed under a tremendous fire. Though man after man fell, those behind crept forward until four hundred men had crossed and established themselves on the northern bank. Two hundred of the Lancashires followed them. It was a great success, and decided the fortune of the day, although for a time this still hung in the balance. General Pole-Carew, who was in command of the brigade, led them along the bank, pressing on towards the Boer centre. Cronje, however, drew supports from his left, and after winning their way for three-quarters of a mile, the pressure brought to bear against the British was too great to be withstood. Opposed by a greatly superior force in front, and suffering from a flanking fire from the entrenched slopes above them, the troops fell slowly back again, but maintained themselves near the dam against all the efforts of the Boers to drive them across it. So the fight went on until darkness fell and the fire ceased. The troops could do no more. They had been at work since four in the morning, without breakfast; they had suffered tortures from heat and thirst during their long hours of inactivity, they had throughout the day been exposed to a terrible fire, which they had been unable to return effectually; and General Colville, who had succeeded to the command at half-past five, when Lord Methuen had been wounded, felt that he could ask no more of them, and contented himself with making preparations for passing the whole force early next morning across the dam Pole-Carew had won. But in the morning the Boers had gone. With his right turned, and the Free Staters utterly demoralized, Cronje felt that he could not hope to prevent the main body of the British from crossing, in which case they would be placed between him and Kimberley, and it would be impossible for him to regain the position he had so carefully prepared. The Boers, therefore, silently left the entrenchments they had occupied and marched away to Spytfontein. Had the men from the Free State possessed the hardihood of those from the Transvaal, it is morally certain that no passage of the river could have been effected; but the military system which, north of the Vaal was vigorous though irregular, and made every man a soldier, was but a shadow in the Orange Free State. At peace with their neighbours, fearing no attack, on good terms with the British Government, whose territory adjoined their own to the south and west, and for the most part to the east, save where Basutoland, wholly under British influence, touched them, it seemed there was no occasion to maintain a military organization. They had given themselves up to peaceful pursuits, and although a pastoral people, were immeasurably in advance of their neighbours north of the Vaal. The majority, too, wholly disapproved of the war into which the ambition of their president had forced them, and in such a mood might well be shaken by the terrible bombardment they had to face.