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The remaining English schanzes had been so well constructed that their occupants could still offer a very stubborn resistance, and they did so. It was not until about three o'clock on the afternoon of the 23rd of November that we saw the white flag go up, and knew that the victory was ours. We took four hundred and eight prisoners, amongst whom were Major Massey and seven other officers.
The Manchesters are cosy behind the best built schanzes in the environs of Ladysmith. Above the wall they have a double course of sandbags the lower placed endwise across the stone, the upper lengthwise, which forms a series of loopholes at the height of a man's shoulder.
Soon the Arabs began to open fire on us from behind the huts, and a very accurate fire it was, as our casualties quickly showed, notwithstanding the stone schanzes we had constructed.
Then while our men kept in cover behind the fort which they had just taken, the English left the schanzes upon which the storming party had been firing so fiercely; this, however, Veldtcornet Wessels and his burghers did not know, because, after having rested a little, and desiring to renew the attack, they only saw that everything was quiet there, and that they were now only under the fire of guns from the western forts, which lay right above the town.
Following my directions, they crept with extreme caution towards the English lines, until only a hundred paces separated them from the station. They returned before it was light, and brought back word that unless the enemy had thrown up unusually high schanzes, there must be an untold quantity of provisions piled up there. Everything had been very quiet, and they had seen no one stirring.
They divided and came into action, half in front, half from the kopjes in rear, shooting at 1000 yards into the open rear of the schanzes. Men began to fall. The two advanced companies were ordered to fall back; up to now they had lost hardly a man, but once in the open they suffered. The Boers in rear picked up the range with great accuracy. And then and then again, that cursed white flag!
The enemy meanwhile kept up a heavy fire on our storming party, from some schanzes which lay still further away; our men, therefore, had nothing left them but to take these also.
Major Albrecht, the head of the Free State-Artillery, was one of the bravest men in General Cronje's commando, and his display of courage at the battle of Magersfontein was not less extraordinary than that which he made later in the river bed at Paardeberg. At Magersfontein Albrecht and two of his artillerymen operated the cannon which were located behind schanzes twenty feet apart.
I went out to the strongest firing, and toiled up a ladder of boulders. I came up on to the sky-line, and bent and stole forward. To the right was Cave Redoubt with the 4·7; to the left two field-guns, unlimbered and left alone, and some of the Rifle Brigade snug behind their stone and earth schanzes.
They said that they could very well defend the schanzes which surrounded the source of the river, and that from it sufficient water could be carried to keep the beasts alive, even if the siege were long. "As you will," answered Sihamba shortly, "but see that you do defend them when the Zulu warriors leap upon the walls, for if you fail then you will lose cattle and life together."
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