When our cavalry reconnaissance was pushed forward after the successful night attack on Gun Hill, the Hussars got into a very tight place, from which they extricated themselves by a dash that cost many lives, and some wounded were left on the field with their dead comrades.  Ambulances were sent out for them under a flag of truce.  As one Hussar was being carried on a stretcher, a young Boer jeered at him, using epithets that were so coarse and cowardly that they roused the ire of a bearded veteran who probably fought against our troops nineteen years ago.  With one blow he felled the youngster, and thereby gave him an object-lesson in the treatment that is meet for those who abuse a helpless foe.  To chivalry of a similar kind Captain Paley owed his life when wounded after the night attack on Surprise Hill, according to the story told by one who heard it while the wounded officer was being brought back to camp next day.  In the confusion and darkness Captain Paley’s men did not see him fall directly after he had given the order for them to charge.  He was left there sorely wounded, and one of the many foreigners now fighting against us in the enemy’s ranks levelled a rifle at him, but was stopped before he could pull the trigger by a blow from the butt-end of a rifle that sent him reeling.  Again it was a grey-bearded veteran who had come so timely to the rescue of an Englishman.  If many such stories are told we must either come to the conclusion that the older Boers do not entertain against us the hatred with which they are credited, or that there is one of their number who goes about the battlefield from fight to fight seeking opportunities to succour British soldiers in distress.  At any rate, all this is simply history repeating itself.  Mr. Carter, in his impartial narrative of the former Boer war, tells us:—­

“Similar evidence was furnished after every encounter our troops had with the Dutch.  It was the young men—­some mere boys of fifteen—­who displayed, with pardonable ignorance, bragging insolence.  The men of maturer years, with very few exceptions, behaved like men, and in the hour of victory in many instances restrained the braggarts from committing cowardly acts.  In this fight at the Nek, Private Venables of the 58th, who was one of the prisoners taken by the Boers, owed his life to Commandant De Klerck, who intervened at a moment when several Boers had their guns pointed at the wounded soldier.”

It is not, however, very reassuring to find that but for such timely intervention wounded men might possibly be shot or ill-treated, and therefore our soldiers will not be restrained from risking their lives to rescue a fallen comrade merely by the announcement that “we are at war with a civilised foe, to whose care the wounded in battle may be confidently left.”  We may be thankful for the fact that saving life under fire is still regarded as an act worthy of the Victoria Cross “for valour.”