With Steyn and De Wet | Page 7

three wounded put out of their pain.
Taking the best shelter possible, we gazed upon the drama being unfolded before us.
The attack was now in full swing. The grating British volleys, the ceaseless mill of independent firing, the sharp flash of the British guns, the fierce whirr of our French shells, the deep boom of Long Tom resounding through the valleys. Who can describe it all?
Yet hardly a single combatant could be discerned. Attacked and attackers alike were invisible. One soldier only stood in plain view on the crest of the hill, signalling with a flag. Our men reached the crest, and the soldier disappeared. Whether in response to his signals or not, reinforcements presently reached the hill.
In long, thin lines of yellow they ran across the plateau to the crest, hoping to drive the Boers back the way they had come. As it approached the line grew thinner and thinner, until there was nothing of it left. And so on, for hour after hour, the yellow lines of gallant men flung themselves into the open, only to fall beneath the raging fire poured upon them from the sternly held mountain crest.
Down the hill our wounded dribbled, thirsty men, pale men, men covered with blood and weeping with rage. How grim must be the fire they have just passed through! One man is brought down lying across a horse. His face hangs in strips, shattered by a dum-dum bullet. Thank goodness, some of ours are using buckshot to-day!
A Boer mounts on a waggon.
"Who will take in ammunition?"
No response.
I turn to my chief. "Do you advise me to try?"
"I cannot; you must decide for yourself."
Throwing a sack of cartridges over my horse's back, I set off. No sooner in the open, than whizz, whizz, went the bullets past my ear. The pony stopped, confused. I struck the spurs into his flanks, and on we flew, the rapid motion, the novelty of the affair, and the continual whistle of the bullets producing in me a peculiar feeling of exaltation.
Then the sack tumbled off. I sprang down, hooked the bridle to a tree, rushed back for the bag, and started forward again. The firing now became so severe that I raced for a clump of trees, hoping to find temporary shelter there. Some of our men were here, lying behind the slender tree-trunks and taking a shot at the enemy now and then.
"Absolutely impossible to live in the open," they said. "Better wait awhile and see how things go."
I laid myself down under the trees and listened to the bullets as they sang through the branches.
The very heavens vibrated as the roar of artillery grew ever fiercer, and the loud echoes rolled along from hill to hill and died away in an awful whisper that shook the grass-tops like an autumn wind.
What were those lines of Bret Harte's about the humming of the battle bees?... I could not remember.
My eyelids grew heavy and presently I was fast asleep.
"Wake up! They're coming round to cut us off. We must clear!" And away went my friend.
Knowing their horses would soon out-distance my heavily laden pony, and trusting to get away unobserved, I took his bridle and led him away. For about twenty yards all went well. Then suddenly there broke loose over us the thickest storm of lead I ever wish to experience. Whether it was a Maxim or not I could not say, but it seemed to me as if the whole British army was bent on my destruction. Like raindrops on a dusty road the bullets struck around me. The pony snorted, shivered, and sometimes stood stock still. I jerked the bridle savagely and struggled on, without the slightest hope of escaping, and thinking what a cruel shame it was that I should be shot at like a deer. Finally the shelter of a dry watercourse was reached. Following this for some distance, I encountered another party of our men, to whom I handed my charge, too shaken to repeat the experiment. The firing now slackened off, and I returned to my chief, full of mortification over my failure.
It was evident the hill would not be taken that afternoon, so we returned to our tent, intending to come back the next morning. Late that evening, however, Colonel Villebois passed and told us our forces had been withdrawn, General Botha being ordered to Colenso, where Buller had made a feint attack to help Ladysmith.
Our struggle was therefore a failure, but it had not been made in vain, since it proved once again that we also could storm a fortified hill, and fight a losing fight--the hardest fight of all.

SPION KOP
Something peculiar began to be observed about the British camp at Chieveley. The naval guns still flashed by day, the searchlight still signalled to Ladysmith of