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Updated: May 31, 2025
During the second battle at Colenso a large number of Boers swam across the river and captured thirty or forty British soldiers who had lost the way and had taken refuge in a sluit. An old takhaar among the Boers had discarded almost all his clothing before entering the river, and was an amusing spectacle in shirt, bandolier, and rifle.
A falcon, hovering over the heads of our burghers in the sluit, was hit by a bullet from one of the shrapnel shells and fell dead to the ground in the midst of the men. It was already half-past four, and we began to ask ourselves how the affair would end.
Broadwood, not strong enough to hold Thaba Nchu, moved in on Bloemfontein, the Boers after him. It is no fun describing things one has not seen. The ground I know. It is a flat plain the whole way, but down the middle of it is a deep sluit or watercourse, some thirty feet deep, with steep, sudden banks, and through this the road dips down and passes.
To read the number of the opposing forces one would think the Boer task the effort of madmen, bent upon national extinction; but one glance at the country would upset those calculations entirely. Every kopje was a natural fortress, every sluit a perfect line of trenches, and every donga a nursery for death.
He walked down the bed of the sluit a little way and came to an overhanging bank, under which, sitting on the red sand, were two men. One was a tiny, ragged, old bushman, four feet high; the other was an English navvy, in a dark blue blouse. They cut the kid's throat with the navvy's long knife, and covered up the blood with sand, and buried the entrails and skin.
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.
To my relief nearly a minute later he crept out of the sluit covered with mud and dripping with water and hobbled off slowly down the street, his head so near his feet that he looked as though he had been folded in two, and his hands pressed upon what I believe is medically known as the diaphragm. Then I also went upon my way roaring with laughter.
Our Krupps made good practice on the four English guns which had been stationed on the river bank to the south. Up till now these had kept up a terrific fire on our guns, but we soon drove them across the river, to seek protection behind the mountain. I despatched General Froneman to hold the river bank, and the sluit which descended to the river from the north.
When I heard that item of news I just sat down and attended strictly to business, and I am free to wager that never since the day he was foaled had that horse covered so much ground in so short a space of time as he did by the time he reached the kopjes. My servant had adroitly dodged into a sluit which hid him from view, and I knew that he could work his way out far better than I could.
One day, in the course of a walk, John and Jess crossed the little bridge that spanned the sluit and went in to inspect the place. Passing down a path lined on either side with young blue gums, they reached the little tin-roofed cottage. It consisted of two rooms a bedroom and a good-sized sitting-room, in which still stood a table and a few chairs, with a stable and a kitchen at the back.
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