Note 66 — Chapter VI · THE BOER AND HIS REPUBLICS

Some persons going to visit the grave found the hand of one of the dead men, supposed to be that of Theunis de Klerk, protruding from the earth with the finger pointing right upward. It was taken to indicate that the men had been buried alive. But there is no reason necessarily to believe this. The soldiers had probably thrown only a thin layer of earth over the bodies, which being buried immediately while still warm, the muscles had probably contracted after death and forced the hand out with the rigid finger.