it with cartridges, and quite as strange to see the energy with which he
discharged his rifle with one hand. He was in the van of the storming
party at Spion Kop, where a bullet passed completely through his chest. He
continued, however, to work his rifle between his knees and to shoot with
his left arm, and was one of the first men to reach the summit of the
hill, where he snatched the rifles from the hands of two British
soldiers. After the battle was won he was carried to a hospital by several
other burghers, but a month afterwards he was again at the front at the
Tugela, going into exposed positions and shouting, "Come on, fellows, here
is a good chance!" His companions desired to elect him as their
field-cornet, but he refused the honour.
Evert Le Roux and Herculaas Nel, of the Swaziland Police, and two of the
best scouts in the Boer army, were constantly engaged in recklessly daring
enterprises, none of which, however, was quite equal to their actions on
April 21st, when the vicinity of Ladysmith had been in British hands for
almost two months. The two men went out on patrol and by night crept up a
kopje behind which about three hundred British cavalrymen were
bivouacking. The men were twenty miles distant from their laagers at
Dundee and only a short distance from Ladysmith, but they lay down and
slept on the other side of the kopje, less than a hundred yards from the
cavalrymen. In the morning the British cavalry was divided into three
squads, and all started for Ladysmith. Le Roux and Nel swept down toward
the last squad, and called, "Hands up," to one of the men in the van. The
cavalryman promptly held up his hands and a minute afterward surrendered
his gun and himself, while the remainder of the squad fled precipitately.
The two scouts, with their prisoner, quickly made a _detour_ of another
kopje, and appeared in front of the first squad, of whom they made a
similar demand. One of the cavalrymen, who was in advance of the others,
surrendered without attempting to make any resistance, while the others
turned quickly to the right and rode headlong into a deep sluit. Le Roux
shot the horse of one of the men before he reached the sluit, loaded the
unhorsed man on one of the other prisoner's horses, and then pursued the
fleeing cavalrymen almost to the city-limits of Ladysmith.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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