They put up an afternoon fight on the hills near the town, but
this was only the work of a handful of men, probably intended to stave
us off for a while while they finished their packing in Pretoria and got
away. Lord Roberts got a battery up to the crest of a great big ridge,
and we got a pompon up a still steeper one, and a vigorous cannonade was
kept up and a good deal of rifle-fire indulged in till nearly dark. But
this is often very deceptive. No doubt if it was the first battle you
had been at, you would have put down the casualties, judging from the
noise made, at several hundred. As a matter of fact, the peculiar thing
about all this shooting is that, like the cursing in the _Jackdaw of
Rheims_, "nobody seems one penny the worse." Loading is now so easy that
it is not the slightest trouble to fire. The consequence is that a
glimpse of a Boer's head on the sky-line a couple of miles off will
find work for a battery of guns and a few score of rifles for the rest
of the afternoon. About sunset time, when it begins to get cold, they
will limber up and come away, and the report will go in that our
shelling was very accurate, but that the enemy's loss could not be
positively ascertained.
The day after the fight we made a triumphal procession through Pretoria,
and marched past Lord Roberts and his staff, and all his generals and
their staffs, assembled in the big square facing the Parliament House.
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