new plans for advance could be set into action.  Before describing what these plans were and the disappointing fate which awaited them, we will return to the story of the siege of Ladysmith, and show how narrowly the relieving force escaped the humiliation—­some would say the disgrace—­of seeing the town which looked to them for help fall beneath their very eyes.  That this did not occur is entirely due to the fierce tenacity and savage endurance of the disease-ridden and half-starved men who held on to the frail lines which covered it.

CHAPTER 13.

The siege of Ladysmith.

Monday, October 30th, 1899, is not a date which can be looked back to with satisfaction by any Briton.  In a scrambling and ill-managed action we had lost our detached left wing almost to a man, while our right had been hustled with no great loss but with some ignominy into Ladysmith.  Our guns had been outshot, our infantry checked, and our cavalry paralysed.  Eight hundred prisoners may seem no great loss when compared with a Sedan, or even with an Ulm; but such matters are comparative, and the force which laid down its arms at Nicholson’s Nek is the largest British force which has surrendered since the days of our great grandfathers, when the egregious Duke of York commanded in Flanders.

Sir George White was now confronted with the certainty of an investment, an event for which apparently no preparation had been made, since with an open railway behind him so many useless mouths had been permitted to remain in the town.  Ladysmith lies in a hollow and is dominated by a ring of hills, some near and some distant.  The near ones were in our hands, but no attempt had been made in the early days of the war to fortify and hold Bulwana, Lombard’s Kop, and the other positions from which the town might be shelled.  Whether these might or might not have been successfully held has been much disputed by military men, the balance of opinion being that Bulwana, at least, which has a water-supply of its own, might have been retained.  This question, however, was already academic, as the outer hills were in the hands of the enemy.  As it was, the inner line—­Caesar’s Camp, Wagon Hill, Rifleman’s Post, and round to Helpmakaar Hill—­made a perimeter of fourteen miles, and the difficulty of retaining so extensive a line goes far to exonerate General White, not only for abandoning the outer hills, but also for retaining his cavalry in the town.

After the battle of Ladysmith and the retreat of the British, the Boers in their deliberate but effective fashion set about the investment of the town, while the British commander accepted the same as inevitable, content if he could stem and hold back from the colony the threatened flood of invasion.  On Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday the commandoes gradually closed in upon the south and east, harassed by some cavalry operations and reconnaissances upon our part,