There had been no smoke, but there came a long crescendo hoot, rising into a shrill wail.  The shell hummed over the soldiers like a great bee, and sloshed into soft earth behind them.  Then another—­and yet another—­and yet another.  But there was no time to heed them, for there was the hillside and there the enemy.  So at it again with the good old murderous obsolete heroic tactics of the British tradition!  There are times when, in spite of science and book-lore, the best plan is the boldest plan, and it is well to fly straight at your enemy’s throat, facing the chance that your strength may fail before you can grasp it.  The cavalry moved off round the enemy’s left flank.  The guns dashed to the front, unlimbered, and opened fire.  The infantry were moved round in the direction of Sandspruit, passing through the little town of Dundee, where the women and children came to the doors and windows to cheer them.  It was thought that the hill was more accessible from that side.  The Leicesters and one field battery—­the 67th—­were left behind to protect the camp and to watch the Newcastle Road upon the west.  At seven in the morning all was ready for the assault.

Two military facts of importance had already been disclosed.  One was that the Boer percussion-shells were useless in soft ground, as hardly any of them exploded; the other that the Boer guns could outrange our ordinary fifteen-pounder field gun, which had been the one thing perhaps in the whole British equipment upon which we were prepared to pin our faith.  The two batteries, the 13th and the 69th, were moved nearer, first to 3000, and then at last to 2300 yards, at which range they quickly dominated the guns upon the hill.  Other guns had opened from another crest to the east of Talana, but these also were mastered by the fire of the 13th Battery.  At 7.30 the infantry were ordered to advance, which they did in open order, extended to ten paces.  The Dublin Fusiliers formed the first line, the Rifles the second, and the Irish Fusiliers the third.

The first thousand yards of the advance were over open grassland, where the range was long, and the yellow brown of the khaki blended with the withered veld.  There were few casualties until the wood was reached, which lay halfway up the long slope of the hill.  It was a plantation of larches, some hundreds of yards across and nearly as many deep.  On the left side of this wood—­that is, the left side to the advancing troops—­there stretched a long nullah or hollow, which ran perpendicularly to the hill, and served rather as a conductor of bullets than as a cover.  So severe was the fire at this point that both in the wood and in the nullah the troops lay down to avoid it.  An officer of Irish Fusiliers has narrated how in trying to cut the straps from a fallen private a razor lent him for that purpose by a wounded sergeant was instantly shot out of his hand.  The gallant Symons, who had refused to dismount, was shot through the stomach and fell from his horse mortally wounded.  With an excessive gallantry, he had not only attracted the enemy’s fire by retaining his horse, but he had been accompanied throughout the action by an orderly bearing a red pennon.  ’Have they got the hill?  Have they got the hill?’ was his one eternal question as they carried him dripping to the rear.  It was at the edge of the wood that Colonel Sherston met his end.