The Boers held on desperately and fired their rifles in the very faces of the stormers.

One young officer had his jaw blown to pieces by a rifle which almost touched him.
Another, Blundell of the Guards, was shot dead by a wounded desperado to whom he was offering his water-bottle.

At one point a white flag was waved by the defenders, on which the British left cover, only to be met by a volley.

It was there that Mr.E.F.Knight, of the 'Morning Post,' became the victim of a double abuse of the usages of war, since his wound, from which he lost his right arm, was from an explosive bullet.
The man who raised the flag was captured, and it says much for the humanity of British soldiers that he was not bayoneted upon the spot.
Yet it is not fair to blame a whole people for the misdeeds of a few, and it is probable that the men who descended to such devices, or who deliberately fired upon our ambulances, were as much execrated by their own comrades as by ourselves.
The victory was an expensive one, for fifty killed and two hundred wounded lay upon the hillside, and, like so many of our skirmishes with the Boers, it led to small material results.

Their losses appear to have been much about the same as ours, and we captured some fifty prisoners, whom the soldiers regarded with the utmost interest.