A miserable tale is best told badly.  On the night of Sunday, October 29, No. 10 Mountain Battery, four and a half companies of the Gloucestershire Regiment, and six of the Royal Irish Fusiliers—­some 1000 men in all—­were sent out to seize a nek some seven miles north-west of Ladysmith.  At daybreak they were to operate on the enemy’s right flank—­the parallel with Majuba is grimly obvious—­in conjunction with an attack from Ladysmith on his centre and right.  They started.  At half-past ten they passed through a kind of defile, the Boers a thousand feet above them following every movement by ear, if not by eye.  By some means—­either by rocks rolled down on them or other hostile agency, or by sheer bad luck—­the small-arm ammunition mules were stampeded.  They dashed back on to the battery mules; there was alarm, confusion, shots flying—­and the battery mules stampeded also.

On that the officer in command appears to have resolved to occupy the nearest hill.  He did so, and the men spent the hours before dawn in protecting themselves by schanzes or breastworks of stones.  At dawn, about half-past four, they were attacked, at first lightly.  There were two companies of the Gloucesters in an advanced position; the rest, in close order, occupied a high point on the kopje; to line the whole summit, they say, would have needed 10,000 men.  Behind the schanzes the men, shooting sparely because of the loss of the reserve ammunition, at first held their own with little loss.

But then, as our ill-luck or Boer good management would have it, there appeared over a hill a new Boer commando, which a cool eye-witness put at over 2000 strong.  They divided and came into action, half in front, half from the kopjes in rear, shooting at 1000 yards into the open rear of the schanzes.  Men began to fall.  The two advanced companies were ordered to fall back; up to now they had lost hardly a man, but once in the open they suffered.  The Boers in rear picked up the range with great accuracy.

And then—­and then again, that cursed white flag!

It is some sneaking consolation that for a long time the soldiers refused to heed it.  Careless now of life, they were sitting up well behind their breastworks, altering their sights, aiming coolly by the half-minute together.  At the nadir of their humiliation they could still sting—­as that new-come Boer found who, desiring one Englishman to his bag before the end, thrust up his incautious head to see where they were, and got a bullet through it.  Some of them said they lost their whole firing-line; others no more than nine killed and sixteen wounded.