Again the order:
"Opzaal," and the mule train came into motion and the burghers mounted
their horses. A chill night air arose, and shivering burghers wrapped
blankets around their shoulders. The humming of hymns and the whistling
ceased, and there was nothing but the clatter of horses' hoofs, the shouts
of the Basutos, and the noises of the guns and waggons rumbling over the
stones and gullies to mark the nocturnal passage of the army. Lights
appeared at farmhouse windows, and at their gates were women and children
with bread and bowls of milk and prayers for the burghers. Small walls
enclosing family burial plots where newly-dug ground told its own story of
the war seemed grim in the moonlight; native huts with their inhabitants
standing like spectres before the doors appeared like monstrous
ant-heaps--all these were passed, but the drooping eyes of the burghers
saw nothing. At midnight another halt was made, horses were off-saddled
and men lay down on the veld to sleep. The generals and officers met in
Krijgsraad, and other scouts arriving told of the enemy's evident
intention of spending the remainder of the night at an old-time
off-saddling station known as Sannaspost. The news was highly important,
and the heads of the generals came closer together. Maps were produced,
pencil marks were made, plans were formed, and then the sleeping burghers
were aroused. The trek was resumed, and shortly afterward the column was
divided into two parts; the one consisting of nine hundred men under
General Peter De Wet, proceeding by a circuitous route to the hills south
of Sannaspost, and the other of five hundred men commanded by General
Christian De Wet moving through a maze of kopjes to a position west of the
trekking station.
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