Of the three Boer hills which had to be taken the nearest (or eastern one) was now in the hands of the British.  The furthest (or western one) was that on which the Irish Brigade was still crouching, ready at any moment for a final spring which would take them over the few hundred yards which separated them from the trenches.  Between the two intervened a central hill, as yet untouched.  Could we carry this the whole position would be ours.  Now for the final effort!  Turn every gun upon it, the guns of Monte Christo, the guns of Hlangwane!  Turn every rifle upon it—­the rifles of Barton’s men, the rifles of Hart’s men, the carbines of the distant cavalry!  Scalp its crown with the machine-gun fire!  And now up with you, Lancashire men, Norcott’s men!  The summit or a glorious death, for beyond that hill your suffering comrades are awaiting you!  Put every bullet and every man and all of fire and spirit that you are worth into this last hour; for if you fail now you have failed for ever, and if you win, then when your hairs are white your blood will still run warm when you think of that morning’s work.  The long drama had drawn to an end, and one short day’s work is to show what that end was to be.

But there was never a doubt of it.  Hardly for one instant did the advance waver at any point of its extended line.  It was the supreme instant of the Natal campaign, as, wave after wave, the long lines of infantry went shimmering up the hill.  On the left the Lancasters, the Lancashire Fusiliers, the South Lancashires, the York and Lancasters, with a burr of north country oaths, went racing for the summit.  Spion Kop and a thousand comrades were calling for vengeance.  ’Remember, men, the eyes of Lancashire are watching you,’ cried the gallant MacCarthy O’Leary.  The old 40th swept on, but his dead body marked the way which they had taken.  On the right the East Surrey, the, Cameronians, the 3rd Rifles, the 1st Rifle Brigade, the Durhams, and the gallant Irishmen, so sorely stricken and yet so eager, were all pressing upwards and onwards.  The Boer fire lulls, it ceases—­they are running!  Wild hat-waving men upon the Hlangwane uplands see the silhouette of the active figures of the stormers along the sky-line and know that the position is theirs.  Exultant soldiers dance and cheer upon the ridge.  The sun is setting in glory over the great Drakensberg mountains, and so also that night set for ever the hopes of the Boer invaders of Natal.  Out of doubt and chaos, blood and labour, had come at last the judgment that the lower should not swallow the higher, that the world is for the man of the twentieth and not of the seventeenth century.  After a fortnight of fighting the weary troops threw themselves down that night with the assurance that at last the door was ajar and the light breaking through.  One more effort and it would be open before them.