And now the Boers were thickening round them on every side.  Christian de Wet, a name soon to be a household word, marshaled the Boer attack, which was soon strengthened by the arrival of Van Dam and his Police.  At five o’clock the fire began, at six it was warm, at seven warmer still.  Two companies of the Gloucesters lined a sangar on the tread of the sole, to prevent any one getting too near to the heel.  A fresh detachment of Boers, firing from a range of nearly one thousand yards, took this defence in the rear.  Bullets fell among the men, and smacked up against the stone breastwork.  The two companies were withdrawn, and lost heavily in the open as they crossed it.  An incessant rattle and crackle of rifle fire came from all round, drawing very slowly but steadily nearer.  Now and then the whisk of a dark figure from one boulder to another was all that ever was seen of the attackers.  The British fired slowly and steadily, for every cartridge counted, but the cover of the Boers was so cleverly taken that it was seldom that there was much to aim at.  ‘All you could ever see,’ says one who was present, ‘were the barrels of the rifles.’  There was time for thought in that long morning, and to some of the men it may have occurred what preparation for such fighting had they ever had in the mechanical exercises of the parade ground, or the shooting of an annual bagful of cartridges at exposed targets at a measured range.  It is the warfare of Nicholson’s Nek, not that of Laffan’s Plain, which has to be learned in the future.

During those weary hours lying on the bullet-swept hill and listening to the eternal hissing in the air and clicking on the rocks, the British soldiers could see the fight which raged to the south of them.  It was not a cheering sight, and Carleton and Adye with their gallant comrades must have felt their hearts grow heavier as they watched.  The Boers’ shells bursting among the British batteries, the British shells bursting short of their opponents.  The Long Toms laid at an angle of forty-five plumped their huge shells into the British guns at a range where the latter would not dream of unlimbering.  And then gradually the rifle fire died away also, crackling more faintly as White withdrew to Ladysmith.  At eleven o’clock Carleton’s column recognised that it had been left to its fate.  As early as nine a heliogram had been sent to them to retire as the opportunity served, but to leave the hill was certainly to court annihilation.

The men had then been under fire for six hours, and with their losses mounting and their cartridges dwindling, all hope had faded from their minds.  But still for another hour, and yet another, and yet another, they held doggedly on.  Nine and a half hours they clung to that pile of stones.  The Fusiliers were still exhausted from the effect of their march from Glencoe and their incessant work since.  Many fell asleep behind the boulders.  Some sat doggedly with their useless rifles and empty pouches beside