The place was so strongly fortified that many valuable lives must have been sacrificed, had I been less cautious than I was.
After a few days I received reinforcements, and was thus enabled to surround the English completely.

But their various positions were so placed that it was impossible for me to shell any of them from both sides, and thus to compel their occupants to surrender.
Day succeeded to day, and still the siege continued.
Before long we had captured some eight hundred of the trek-oxen, and many of the horses of the enemy.

Things were not going so badly for us after all; and we plucked up our courage, and began to talk of the probability of a speedy surrender on the part of the English.
To tell the truth, there was not a man amongst us who would have asked better than to make prisoners of the Cape Mounted Rifles and of Brabant's Horse.

They were Afrikanders, and as Afrikanders, although neither Free-Staters nor Transvaalers, they ought, in our opinion, to have been ashamed to fight against us.
The English, we admitted, had a perfect right to hire such sweepings, and to use them against us, but we utterly despised them for allowing themselves to be hired.

We felt that their motive was not to obtain the franchise of the Uitlanders, but--five shillings a day! And if it should by any chance happen that any one of them should find his grave there--well, the generation to come would not be very proud of that grave.