and bullets.  The Zouaves ensconced themselves in this excellent bit of cover and after their exertions prepared to get a little rest.  Suddenly, to their astonishment, a Prussian shell fell plump into the hollow, and although it hurt nobody the entire company leapt to their feet and never stopped until they found themselves within the ramparts of Paris.  Yet these men had faced a deadly fire all day when they expected it.

No troops in the world could have done anything in face of the Magersfontein fire:  some of the Highlanders, however, lay down and maintained their position actually within 200 yards of the Boer lines throughout the day.  They had scarcely any cover, and if they showed themselves by any movement they were picked off by the enemy’s sharp-shooters.  Several of our wounded told me that they had seen one Boer, got up in the most sumptuous manner—­polished jackboots, silk neck-cloth and cigar—­strolling leisurely about outside the trenches and firing with extraordinary accuracy at the recumbent figures which dotted the ground before him.

As the Brigade fell back various units were, in the darkness inextricably mixed up, and our losses became more severe as the accuracy of the enemy’s fire increased.  The booming of our artillery and the rush of our shells upon the Boer trenches put fresh heart into our temporarily disheartened troops, and rallying lines were formed in various directions.  Occasional rushes were made towards the almost invisible enemy over the slope already thickly dotted with the bodies of our dead and wounded, and at the close of the disastrous day several gallant Highlanders were found lying dead across the wire entanglements within 150 yards of the Boers, riddled with bullets.  The 12th Lancers dismounted, and at one moment, advanced as infantry right up to the Boer trenches.  Every one I spoke to expressed the warmest admiration for their coolness and pluck.

A sergeant in the Black Watch, when all the officers had apparently been struck down, cried out to the Highlanders near him:  “Charge, men, and prepare to meet your God!” He rushed forward at the head of a few comrades and fell dead with a bullet through his brain within a yard or two of the trenches.  There is something truly sublime in this man’s devotion to his duty.  Many and many an individual act of heroism was displayed during those awful moments in the semi-darkness when the enemy opened fire on our crowded battalions.  British officers stood upright, utterly regardless of self, doing their best to rally the shaken troops, and then falling beneath the pitiless hail of bullets.  Later on the hillside was littered with field-glasses.

Almost 1,000 yards from the line of kopjes three lines of wire had been placed, which were cut during our advance, and other entanglements were stretched just in front of the trenches.  Several men in each company carried wire-cutters with them, but to stand up and snip through lines of barbed wire when the Mauser bullets and the deadly shells of the Pom-Pom gun are tearing up the soil around is perilous work.  Some of these entanglements had already been removed after the bombardment on Sunday night, for E Company of the Black Watch and a company of the Seaforths went forward about 7 P.M. in skirmishing order and pulled up the iron stakes and knocked over three parallel lines of barbed wire.