"I think, at any rate, we have begun to wipe off old scores," Chris
said. "We have paid for a few of the insults the ladies had to submit to
as we came along, and I am heartily glad that we were in time to do it.
We have baulked them of the haul they expected to make, and saved
something like a thousand head of cattle for the colony, to say nothing
of preventing these people from being absolutely ruined. It is only a
pity that we had not our horses with us. If we had, not many of the
Boers would have recrossed the river. But we could not have taken them
with us without being detected before we got into position, and in that
case we might have had a hard fight, and matters would probably have
turned out altogether differently."

There was a general expression of assent, for all felt that in an equal
fight the Boers, being twice their own numbers, would have been more
than a match for them. It was evening when they returned to Dundee,
having come across no more Boers during the day's work. Directly they
arrived at the little camp where they had left the tents standing in
charge of their two Kaffirs, Chris wrote a short report of their doings,
stating briefly that they had come upon a party of forty-five Boers in
the act of driving off the cattle and sacking the house of Mr. Fraser, a
loyal settler. Having dismounted and divided into two parties, they had
attacked the Boers and driven them off, with the loss of ten killed and
eight seriously wounded left on the field. Many of their horses had been
killed. The wounded Boers had been sent in a cart to Vant's Drift, and
the farmer and his herds had been escorted as far as the line of
railway, which they had crossed and were making for Ladysmith. There had
been no casualties among his party.

Field rode over with this report and delivered it at headquarters,