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The officer in command, who was subsequently discharged from the British Army, had done his best, but he was wounded in the head at the beginning of the fight, and so far as I could ascertain there had been nobody to take his place. Three lieutenants were surprised in their beds and made prisoners-of-war.
These natives treated our men shamefully at times, and went even so far as to commit the most brutal murders. Not only did the burghers treat their prisoners-of-war well, but the Boer officers under whose immediate control they were placed dealt, as a rule, very kindly and leniently with them.
Among other things he had been Commandant of a prisoners-of-war camp where British officers were really kindly treated and a most pleasant relationship existed between the command on the one hand and the prisoners on the other.
Just as Winder bent his head to enter the tent he fell, and expired shortly after. The boys said it was a clear case of Death by Visitation of the Devil, and it was always insisted that his last words were: "My faith is in Christ; I expect to be saved. Be sure and cut down the prisoners' rations." Thus passed away the chief evil genius of the Prisoners-of-War.
The guard-boat lay across the mouth of the bathing-pool, her crew idly spanking the water with the flat of their oars. A red-coated militia-man, rifle in hand, sat at the bows, and a petty officer at the stern. Between the snow-white cutter and the flat-topped, honey-coloured rocks on the beach the green water was troubled with shrimp-pink prisoners-of-war bathing.
There was a lot of champagne going begging too, and hundreds of bottles were smashed to make sure the men had no chance of getting blind. And there was an old sapper colonel who made it his business to get hold of the stragglers. He kept at it about six hours, and bunged scores of wanderers into a prisoners-of-war cage; then he had 'em marched off to a collecting station.
In these conditions we observed that the surrendered burghers would each be provided with a horse to ride to their destination, which would be Winburg, till further orders. We saw also that they would be kept as prisoners-of-war until the war was over, which meant, though they did not suspect it then, two years longer. Their private property was to be respected.
Before us stretched a large space enclosed by four encirclements of barbed wire containing the tents and houses which formed the temporary homes of the prisoners-of-war. Sentries were posted at every hundred paces. There were 2,000 prisoners stationed here, and as they wandered aimlessly round they forcibly reminded me of the Israelites in exile.
While the boats were on shore watering, Hemming had with a few hands walked along the coast and ascertained that a number of blacks, prisoners-of-war they were called, were collected in the neighbourhood, and there could be no doubt that a vessel would soon be coming to take them off.
Their examination was very similar to that which they had before gone through. Rayner and Oliver, however, hoped that their account of themselves would be believed, and that they would, even at the worst, only be detained as prisoners-of-war. Still, they did not quite like the looks of the commandant, who was evidently of a more savage disposition than his subordinate.
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