Yet they held their ground and stayed in greater peril than was ever mortal man before.  But the infantry were drawing very near.  At last the Dutchmen fled.  One, a huge fellow in a brown jersey, tarried to spring on the parapet and empty his magazine once more into the approaching ranks, and while he did so a 50 lb. lyddite shell burst, as it seemed, in the midst of him, and the last defender of Inniskilling Hill vanished.

Then the artillery put up their sights and began to throw their shells over the crest of hill and ridge, so that they might overtake fugitives.  The valleys behind fumed and stewed.  Wreaths of dust and smoke curled upward.  The infantry crowned the trenches all along the line, some firing their rifles at the flying enemy, others beckoning to nearer folk to surrender, and they all cheered in the triumph of successful attack till the glorious sound came down to us who watched, so that the whole army took up the shout, and all men knew that the battle of Pieters was won.

Forthwith came orders for the cavalry to cross the river, and we mounted in high expectation, knowing that behind the captured hill lay an open plain stretching almost to the foot of Bulwana.  We galloped swiftly down to the pontoon bridge, and were about to pass over it, when the General-in-Chief met us.  He had ridden to the other bank to see for himself and us.  The Boer artillery were firing heavily to cover the retreat of their riflemen.  He would not allow us to go across that night lest we should lose heavily in horses.  So the brigade returned disappointed to its former position, watered horses, and selected a bivouac.  I was sent to warn the Naval Battery that a heavy counter-stroke would probably be made on the right of Barton’s Brigade during the night, and, climbing the spur of Monte Cristo, on which the guns were placed, had a commanding view of the field.

In the gathering darkness the Boer artillery, invisible all day, was betrayed by its flashes.  Two ‘pom-poms’ flickered away steadily from the direction of Doorn Kloof, making a regular succession of small bright flame points.  Two more guns were firing from the hills to our left.  Another was in action far away on our right.  There may have been more, but even so it was not much artillery to oppose our eleven batteries.  But it is almost an open question whether it is better to have many guns to shoot at very little, or few guns to shoot at a great deal; hundreds of shells tearing up the ground or a dozen plunging into masses of men.  Personally, I am convinced that future warfare will be to the few, by which I mean that to escape annihilation soldiers will have to fight in widely dispersed formations, when they will have to think for themselves, and when each must be to a great extent his own general; and with regard to artillery, it appears that the advantages of defensive action, range, concealment, and individual initiative may easily counterbalance numbers and discipline.  The night fell upon these reflections, and I hastened to rejoin the cavalry.