to me.

"I will give you just enough time to get back and to tell your officer
in command that, if he does not surrender at once, I shall shell him and
storm his position. He will be allowed exactly ten minutes to make up
his mind--then the white flag must appear."

"But where is your gun?" the orderly asked. In reply I pointed to the
Maxim-Nordenfeldt, which stood a few hundred paces behind us, surrounded
by some burghers.

"Will you give us your word of honour," he asked me when he caught sight
of the gun, "not to stir from your position till we have got ten miles
away? That is the only condition on which we will abandon our
positions."

I again allowed him to finish, although his demand filled me with the
utmost astonishment. I asked myself what sort of men this English
officer imagined the Boer Generals to be.

"I demand unconditional surrender," I then said. "I give you ten minutes
from the moment you dismount on arriving at your camp; when those ten
minutes have passed I fire."

He slung round, and galloped back to his camp, the stones flying from
his horse's hoofs.

He had hardly dismounted before the white flag appeared. It did not take
us long to reach the camp, and there we found fifty-eight mounted men.
These prisoners I despatched that evening to join the convoy.