they had no doubt, would be opened up to them by the success of five or six hundred tough veterans who had volunteered to win that position or die in the attempt.  They had, however, to reckon with men whose gallantry was proved at Elandslaagte and the night attack on Gun Hill—­men who are endowed with the rare quality which Napoleon the Great called “two o’clock in the morning courage.”  One has to praise the Imperial Light Horse so often, that reiteration may sound like flattery.  But they deserve every distinction that can be given to them for having by superb steadiness, against great odds, saved the force on Bester’s Ridge from a very serious calamity, if not from actual disaster.  They must share the credit to some extent, however, with two small bodies of men already mentioned, who happened to be on Waggon Hill neither for fighting nor watch-keeping—­the few bluejackets of H.M.S. Powerful in charge of the big gun which had been brought up that night for mounting there, and the handful of Royal Engineers under Lieutenants Digby-Jones and Dennis, preparing the necessary epaulements for that weapon.  When firing began, the gun being still on its waggon, all that could be done was to outspan its team of oxen.  Then bluejackets and sappers, seizing each his rifle, took their places behind slight earthworks, prepared to fight it out manfully.  The only tribute they need ask for is that their roll of dead and wounded may be borne in memory.  Out of thirty all told, the Royal Engineers lost two officers killed and fifteen men wounded.  Of the few sailors, one was killed and one wounded.  This record seems hard to beat; but the Imperial Light Horse could point to heaps of dead and maimed in proof of the dauntless stand they made, for the living continued to fight where their gallant comrades fell, scorning to quit an inch of ground to the Boers, though they knew by the rifle fire flashing round them in the darkness that they were hopelessly outnumbered from the first.  Their brigadier speaks of them as men with no nerves at all.  When one was hit, another stepped quietly up to his place and went on shooting as if at target-practice, though he had no more cover than a small stone to lie behind; and this happened not once but a score of times, the officers taking an equal share in the fight with their men, who speak with pride of the gallantry shown by Captains de Rothe and Codrington, Lieutenants Webb, Pakeman, Adams, Campbell, and Richardson, and the active veteran Major Doveton, who cheered his men on after he had received two bullet wounds, one of which shattered his fore-arm and shoulder.