Then a man rose to his
feet, and, looking at them earnestly, gave a shout of alarm. The others
leapt up at once and ran towards their ponies; these were fifty yards
away, and before they could reach them Chris and his party dashed up,
rifle in hand. "Surrender," he shouted in Dutch, "or we fire! Down with
your rifles!"
Seeing that resistance was useless the Boers threw down their weapons,
and in a minute were tied hand and foot with the ropes from their
saddles. They were then lashed to bushes at some little distance from
each other, so as to prevent their rolling together and loosening each
other's cords. The natives with them had at the first alarm fled at full
speed, and were already out of sight. Then the whole party rode to a
ridge a quarter of a mile back, dismounted at its foot, and crawled up
to the crest. A mile away some fifty men could be seen wearily making
their way on foot towards them.
"We have done quite enough in the way of fighting," Chris said, "and I
should think that they have had more than enough; we will get them to
surrender if we can. We will wait till they are within forty or fifty
yards and then fire a few shots over their heads, and see what comes of
it. We have good cover here, and they are in the open.
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