We had just reached the hollow behind the advanced kopje from which I had watched the attack on the previous evening, when suddenly a shrapnel shell burst in the air above our heads with a sharp, startling bang.  The hollow and slope of the hill were crowded with Infantry battalions lying down in quarter column.  The bullets and splinters of the shell smote the ground on all sides.  We were both mounted and in the centre of the cone of dispersion.  I was immediately conscious that nothing had happened to me, though the dust around my horse was flicked up, and I concluded that everyone had enjoyed equally good fortune.  Indeed, I turned to Brooke, and was about to elaborate my theory that shrapnel is comparatively harmless, when I saw some stir and turmoil and no less than eight men were picked up killed or wounded by this explosion.  I have only once before seen in war such a successful shell, and on that occasion I was studying the effect from the other side.

My respect for modern artillery was mightily increased by this example of its power.  Two more shells followed in quick succession.  The first struck down four men, and broke in two the leg of an Infantry officer’s charger, so that the poor beast galloped about in a circle, preventing his rider from dismounting for some time; the second shore along the Howitzer Battery, killing one soldier and wounding an officer, five soldiers, and three horses.  All this occurred in a space of about two minutes, and the three shells between them accounted for nineteen men and four horses.  Then the gun, which was firing ‘on spec,’ and could not see the effect of its fire, turned its attention elsewhere; but the thought forced itself on me, ‘Fancy if there had been a battery.’  The crowded Infantry waiting in support would certainly have been driven out of the re-entrant with frightful slaughter.  Yet in a European war there would have been not one, but three or four batteries.  I do not see how troops can be handled in masses under such conditions, even when in support and on reverse slopes.  Future warfare must depend on the individual.

We climbed on to the top of the kopje, which was sprinkled with staff officers and others—­all much interested in the exhibition of shell fire, which they discussed as a purely scientific question.  Inniskilling Hill was still crowned with the enemy, though they no longer showed above their trenches.  Its slopes were scored with numerous brown lines, the stone walls built by the attacking brigade during the night, and behind these the telescope showed the Infantry clustering thickly.  The Boers on their part had made some new trenches in advance of those on the crest of the hill, so that the opposing firing lines were scarcely three hundred yards apart, which meant that everyone in them must lie still or run grave risks.  Thus they remained all day, firing at each other continually, while on the bare ground between them the dead and wounded lay thickly scattered, the dead mixed with the living, the wounded untended, without dressings, food, or water, and harassed by the fire from both sides and from our artillery.  It was a very painful thing to watch these poor fellows moving about feebly and trying to wriggle themselves into some position of safety, and it reminded me of the wounded Dervishes after Omdurman—­only these were our own countrymen.