He excused himself by assuring us that he had been under the impression that one of his Veldtcornets and a number of burghers were occupying the hill.
What could we do now?
Commandant Steenekamp and I decided that we must storm the hill with the three hundred men whom we had at our disposal.

And this we did, and were sufficiently fortunate to capture the northern point of the kop.
On reaching the summit we discovered that the British troops occupied positions extending from the southern point to the middle of the mountain.
The enemy, the moment we appeared on the ridge, opened a heavy rifle fire upon us.

We answered with as severe a fusillade as theirs.

Whilst we were shooting, twenty of Commandant Nel's men joined us and helped us to hold our ground.

When we had been engaged in this way for some time we saw that the only possible course was to fight our way from position to position towards the English lines.
I now observed that the mountain top was of an oblong shape, extending from north to south for about a thousand paces.