"They must think it is a crowd of Boers," suggested another, when a dozen shells had fallen without injuring the saddle. Fifteen, twenty tongues of dust arose, but the leather remained unmarred by scratch or rent, and the attaches became the target of the heavy guns. "I am hit," groaned Lieutenant Nix, of the Netherlands-Indian army, and his companions caught him in their arms. Blood gushed from a wound in the shoulder, but the soldier spirit did not desert him. "Here, Demange!" he called to the French attache, "Hold my head. And you, Thompson and Allen, see if you cannot bind this shoulder." The Norwegian and Hollander bound the wound as well as they were able. "Reichman!" the injured man whispered, "I am going to die in a few minutes, and I wish you would write a letter to my wife." The American attache hastily procured paper and pencil, and while shells and shrapnel were bursting over and around them the wounded man dictated a letter to his wife in Holland. Blood flowed copiously from the wound and stained the grass upon which he lay. He was pale as the clouds above him, and the pain was agonising, but the dying man's letter was filled with nothing but expressions of love and tenderness. In the south-eastern part of the field a large party of cavalrymen was speeding in the direction of Thaba N'Chu. On two sides of them, a thousand yards behind, small groups of horsemen were giving chase. At a distance, the riders appeared like ants slowly climbing the hillside. Now and then a Boer rider suddenly stopped his horse, leaped to the ground, and fired at the fleeing cavalrymen. A second afterwards he was on his horse again, bending to the chase. Shot followed shot, but the distance between the forces grew greater, and one by one the burghers turned their animals' heads and slowly retraced their steps. A startled buck bounded over the veld, two rifles were turned upon it, and its flight was ended. [Illustration: CALLING FOR VOLUNTEERS TO MAN CAPTURED CANNON AFTER SANNASPOST] The sound of firing had ceased, and the battle was concluded. Waggons with Red Cross flags fluttering from the tall staffs above them, issued from the mountains and rumbled through the valleys. Burghers dashed over the field in search of the wounded and dying. Men who a few moments before were straining every nerve to kill their fellow-beings became equally energetic to preserve lives. Wounded soldiers and burghers were lifted out of the grass and carried tenderly to the ambulance waggons. The dead were placed side by side, and the same cloth covered the bodies of Boer and Briton. Men with spades upturned the earth, and stood grimly by while a man in black prayed over the bodies of those who died for their country.