The officer inside the besieged town and the private soldier outside attempting to save him—­are one in this, that they know how to die; and England calls each ‘hero’!

And so through blood and fire, over heaps of slain, General Sir Redvers Duller passed into Ladysmith—­passed in just in time; passed in to see men with wan cheeks and sunken eyes—­an army of skeletons; but passed in to find the old flag still flying.

[Illustration:  AMBULANCE WORK ON THE FIELD.]

Chapter XV

LADYSMITH

The defence of Ladysmith by Sir George White and his heroic band of soldiers will rank as one of the finest feats in British history.  It is not for us to tell the story of the siege.  Historians of the war will do that.  We need only remind our readers that from October 30, 1899, when the bombardment began, to February 28, 1900, when General Buller’s advance guard marched into the town, our troops were closely besieged—­besieged so closely that the Boers thought there was no possible chance of relief.  ‘Ladysmith will never be relieved,’ said a Boer to one of our chaplains.  ’No troops in the world will ever be able to get through Colenso to Ladysmith.  It is absolutely impregnable.’  But they did, and one hardly knows which to admire most the dogged persistence of General Buller and his men or the heroic defence, the patient, confident waiting of the beleaguered troops.

=’Thank God, We have Kept the Flag Flying.’=

It is, however, with the Ladysmith garrison we are concerned at the present time.  These men had but little of the excitement of battle to stir their nerves and inspire them for fresh efforts.  They had to fight the sterner fight,—­the fight with disease and famine.  They watched their comrades sicken and die—­not one at a time, but by scores and hundreds—­but they held on and held out for Queen and country.

    ’While ever upon the topmost roof
      Our banner of England blew.’

‘Thank God, we have kept the flag flying!’ said Sir George White, when at last deliverance came.  The words will become historic, and fathers will tell their sons for long centuries to come how in Ladysmith, as at Lucknow, English soldiers preferred rather to die than to surrender; and how, surrounded as they were, they, for old England’s sake, kept the flag flying.

It remains for us to tell the story of Christian work in connection with the siege, and through all the darkness of those terrible four months such work runs as a golden thread of light.

=Christian Workers in Ladysmith.=

There were in Ladysmith when the siege began three Church of England chaplains and one acting chaplain, viz.:  Rev. E.G.F.  Macpherson (senior chaplain), at first attached to the Divisional troops; Rev. A.V.C.  Hordern, attached to the Cavalry Brigade; Rev. J.G.W.  Tuckey, attached to the 7th Brigade; and the Rev. D. McVarish (acting chaplain), attached to the 8th Brigade.  In addition to these there were Archdeacon Barker, of the local civilian church, and the Rev. G. Pennington, a local clergyman attached as acting chaplain to the Colonial Volunteers.