We are once more upon the Modder. I should think the amount of blood,
Dutch and English, this river has drunk in the last few months will give
it a bad name for ever. There is something deadly about that word
Modder. Say it over to yourself. Pah! It leaves a taste of blood in the
mouth.
We have been fighting in a desultory kind of way for the last week here.
Coming from Kimberley, where we had gone to holloa back French (you
could follow him by scent all the way from the dead horses), we made a
forced march and rejoined him here by the river, where he is busily
engaged, with Kitchener at the other end, in bombarding old Cronje in
the middle. They have fairly got the old man. Kitchener had stuck to him
pretty tight, it seems, after we left them that evening at Klip Drift.
French has nicked in ahead. Macdonald has arrived, I believe, or is
arriving, and there are various other brigades and divisions casting up
from different quarters, all concentrating on unhappy Cronje. Lord
Roberts, I suppose, will get the credit, but part of it, one would
think, belongs to Kitchener, who planned the movement and put it in
train before Lord Roberts arrived.
Cronje, by all accounts, has about 4000 men with him. He has dug
himself into the river banks, which are steep and afford good cover. You
would never guess, sweeping the scene with your glasses, that an army
could be hiding there.
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