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Updated: May 7, 2025
Then he dropped like a falling stone for a thousand yards or so, and hovered and dropped again, getting nearer ever so much nearer with each descent. And where he had hovered at the first were now a dozen specks of black upon the hot, bright blue. A wild dog crept down from a cone-topped spitzkop, and stood, sniffing the blood-tainted air eagerly, whining a little in its throat.
We descended the mountain range at Spitzkop. The trail was easily found. After entering the Low Country we halted each night at a camping place of the party we were pursuing, and built our fire on the cold ashes of their one-time hearth.
They maintained a rigid silence, and made no attempt to interfere with our arrangements until the armoured train came into view. The ridges we occupied were afterwards shelled, and the Diamond Fields' Artillery responded. While this not too bloody duel was in progress, a body of mounted men had received instructions to take up a position away to the right of Spitzkop.
Amid cloud-girt peaks and hardly passable ravines the two long-enduring armies still wrestled for the final mastery. To the north-east of Lydenburg, between that town and Spitzkop, there is a formidable ridge called the Mauchberg, and here again the enemy were found to be standing at bay.
Lynette heard the wretched woman's piercing shriek, glimpsed the red umbrella as it reappeared over the sand-crest, comprehended the horrible consternation of mistress and maid. She must signal to them cry out.... Involuntarily she gave the call of the Kaffir herd: the shrill, prolonged ululation that carries from spitzkop to spitzkop across the miles of karroo or high-grass veld between.
Nineteen men fell, but it is worth recording that, smitten so suddenly and so terribly, the gallant Volunteers continued to advance as steadily as before this misfortune befell them. On the 9th Buller was still pushing forward to Spitzkop, his guns and the 1st Rifles overpowering a weak rearguard resistance of the Boers.
On the 10th he had reached Klipgat, which is halfway between the Mauchberg and Spitzkop. So close was the pursuit that the Boers, as they streamed through the passes, flung thirteen of their ammunition wagons over the cliffs to prevent them from falling into the hands of the British horsemen.
On the 15th Buller occupied Spitzkop in the north, capturing a quantity of stores, while on the 14th French took Barberton in the south, releasing all the remaining British prisoners and taking possession of forty locomotives, which do not appear to have been injured by the enemy.
The Town Guard were ready; the Light Horse, the Imperial troops, and the armoured train were also to the fore. This formidable combination was soon on its way to the Schmidt's Drift Road, where it found shelter behind some friendly ridges. The Boers occupied Spitzkop and were looking across at us with curiosity not unmingled with uneasiness, we felt sure.
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