stones watching the whole show.  After a shot or two all our guns got the range, a mere stone’s throw for the great five-inchers.  Their shrapnel burst along the rise, and we could see the hail of bullets after each explosion dusting the ground along the top where the Boers lay.  The enemy answered very intermittently, mostly from their Long Tom far back, which our big guns kept feeling for.  I never heard anything like the report of these big guns of ours and the shriek of the shells as they went on their way.

After the cannonade had been kept up for a bit, the infantry began their advance.  This was, I think, the finest performance I have seen in the whole campaign.  The Gordons did it; the Dargai battalion.  They came up, line by line, behind our ridge and lay down along with us.  Then, at the word “Advance,” the front line got up and walked quietly down the slope, and away towards the opposite hill, walking in very open order, with gaps of about fifteen yards between the men.  A moment or two would pass.  Then when the front line had gone about fifty yards, the “Advance” would again be repeated, and another line of kilted men would lift themselves leisurely up and walk off.  So on, line behind line, they went on their way, while we watched them, small dark figures clearly seen on the white grass, through our glasses with a painful interest.  Before they had reached half way across, the vicious, dull report, a sort of double “crick-crack,” of the Mausers began.  Our guns were raining shrapnel along the enemy’s position, shooting steady and fast to cover the Gordons’ advance; but the Boers, especially when it comes to endurance, are dogged fellows.  They see our infantry coming, and nothing will move them till they have had their shot.  Soon we can see the little puffs of dust round the men, that mark where the bullets are striking.  All the further side, up the long gradual slope to the Boer rocks, has been burnt black and bare, and the bullets, cutting through the cinders, throw up spots of dust, that show white against the black.  Men here and there stagger and fall.  It is hard to see whether they fall from being hit, or whether it is to shoot themselves.  The fire gets faster and faster, our guns thunder, and through the drifting smoke of the veldt fires we can still see the Gordons moving onward.  Then among the looking-out group, crouched near the guns, goes a little gasp and mutter of excitement.  We catch on the black background, glistening in the sun, the quick twinkle of a number of little steel points.  They are fixing bayonets!  Now the little figures move quicker.  They make for the left side of the ridge.  A minute more, and along the sky-line we see them appear, a few at first, then more and more.  They swing to the right, where the enemy’s main position lies, and disappear.  There is a sharp, rapid interchange of shots, and then the fire gradually lessens and dies away, and the position is captured.  They have lost a hundred men in ten minutes, but they’ve done the trick.