a small boulder to look through glasses at the enemy, who were pouring in a hail of bullets from a distance of little more than 150 yards, a bullet struck him in the forehead, and there he lay, apparently lifeless, with every sense dead to the din of war about him.  A few minutes later Colonel Frank Rhodes heard that a staff-officer had been hit.  He came at once to the conclusion that it was the young friend who had been his companion daily since they sailed from England early in September.  As he went forward to make sure, Lieutenant Lannowe, of the 4th Dragoon Guards, aide-de-camp to Colonel Hamilton, joined him, and these two, passing unscathed across the shot-torn slopes, found Lord Ava lying sorely wounded, but still alive, where Boer bullets were falling thickest about the Imperial Light Horse.  They carried him to a place of less danger, and there Colonel Rhodes bandaged the wound, while a skilful surgeon’s aid was being summoned.  By that time Majors Julian, of the Royal Army Medical Corps, and Davis, medical officer of the Imperial Light Horse, had their hands full, having rendered aid to many wounded men under the heaviest fire, utterly regardless of danger to themselves.  The first operation, without which recovery would have been hopeless, was, however, performed there, while Mauser bullets whistled through the air, and Lord Ava, still unconscious, was borne from the field.

The few bluejackets, Gordons, Imperial Light Horse, and Engineers, under Lieutenant Digby-Jones, R.E., were still holding their ground manfully on the extreme westerly crest of Waggon Hill.  The Boers were within point-blank range of them on two sides, while beyond the crest and down into Bester’s Valley hundreds of others were waiting for the first sign of panic among our men to rush the position, but held in check by a company of the 60th Rifles and a few Light Horse occupying a small sangar on that side.  The ridge, however, was being shelled by the enemy’s guns from Middle Hill and Blaauwbank with such accuracy that many of our men were wounded by that fire, but not a Boer was hit, though the fighting lines were less than 100 yards apart.  The 21st Battery Field Artillery, out in comparatively open ground beyond Range Post, swept with shrapnel the slopes and kloofs of Mounted Infantry Hill on one side, and Major Goulburn’s battery, the 42nd, searched the reverse slope of that knoll, smiting the head of a movement by which our foes tried to strengthen their attack.  The Natal artillery had done similar service at an earlier stage against another body, and though under heavy rifle fire they still stuck to their guns manfully.  Our naval 12-pounder mounted near this battery, but having double the range, played upon Middle Hill, trying by rapid and accurate fire to silence the big Creusot gun there, or baffle its aim.