Through our glasses we espied six helmeted men slowly retreating up the mountain, pausing at every dozen yards to fire a volley at some invisible enemy.  Three of them reached the top.  The sentries were being driven in.

General Botha now arrived with the reserve force.  All dismounted.

“Put your horses out of sight,” were his first words to his men, “they will draw the enemy’s fire.”

Scarcely had he spoken when a shrapnel shell burst overhead, and three horses were lying on their backs, snorting and kicking.  Then came another and another.  Both went wide.  The animals were quickly led behind the hill, and the 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.