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His march, like that of Pole-Carew on the other flank, was across the enemy's front, but neither of them was seriously checked and the casualties were few. Buller had proposed to move eastward in the direction of Dalmanutha as soon as the ground permitted, but a cavalry reconnaissance discovered the enemy posted at Bergendal, close to the railway.
"One is enough," said Bergendal, and he threw him back. Now the "Great Power" had reached the goal. His hand was stretched out to seize the fuse. Suddenly he was hurled away from the fuse, as though by an invisible hand, and was swept upward and backward through the air, gently, like a human balloon, and fell on his back. Then the roar of the explosion drowned everything.
It will certainly be the extreme test of self-restraint and discipline a test successfully endured by the British troops at Elandslaagte, Bergendal, and many other places to carry a position by assault and then to give quarter to those defenders who only surrender at the last instant. It seems almost too much to ask.
These operations on August 26th and 27th were met with some resistance, and entailed a loss of forty or fifty killed and wounded; but it soon became evident that the punishment which they had received at Bergendal had taken the fight out of the Boers, and that this formidable position was to be abandoned as the others had been.
"Jeekes, eh?" "That's the party, sir, charged with wilful murder.... This is Commissary Boomjes, of the Rotterdam Criminal Investigation Department!" A tall man with a short black beard had approached the car. It was decided that the whole party should proceed to the Villa Bergendal immediately. Manderton sat next to Robin and the Dutch police officer perched himself on the footboard.
He does not seem to have recognized that Bergendal was not a mere strong post, but the key of an unsound position which should at all hazards have been safeguarded. This Buller saw at once, and he moved so as to meet with the least interference from the enemy, who, having two fronts, could not act solidly upon either of them. The capture of Bergendal dissolved the Boer position.
The battle of Bergendal on August 27 was mainly a struggle between less than fourscore Transvaal Police and two battalions and forty guns of Buller's Division.
To get the Dutch police to move against these gentry in the matter of the assault upon Miss Trevert would waste valuable time. And we have to move quickly before these two lads can get away. I therefore propose that we start this instant for the Villa Bergendal and try, if we are not too late, to force Marbran or Jeekes or both of them to a confession.
"We are always uneasy if one of our own people wants to fly over our heads!" "I don't understand why all the poor folk don't make a stand together against the others," said Bergendal. "We suffer the same wrongs. If we all acted together, and had nothing to do with them that mean us harm, for instance, then it would soon be seen that collective poverty is what makes the wealth of the others.
To prevent the enemy escaping to the north or to the south, and to impale him upon the stakes of the Portuguese frontier, Lord Roberts pushed forward three columns; one under Pole-Carew to follow the railway towards Komati Poort, another under French to march towards Barberton, and a third under Buller to occupy the Lydenburg district; to which Botha had gone after the battle of Bergendal, and which if held by him would leave in the possession of the Boers the best line of retreat from the railway to the northern Transvaal.