It was a soldiers’ battle in the good old primeval British style, an Alma on a small scale and against deadlier weapons.  The troops advanced in grim silence against the savage-looking, rock-sprinkled, crag-topped position which confronted them.  They were in a fierce humour, for they had not breakfasted, and military history from Agincourt to Talavera shows that want of food wakens a dangerous spirit among British troops.  A Northumberland Fusilier exploded into words which expressed the gruffness of his comrades.  As a too energetic staff officer pranced before their line he roared in his rough North-country tongue, ’Domn thee!  Get thee to hell, and let’s fire!’ In the golden light of the rising sun the men set their teeth and dashed up the hills, scrambling, falling, cheering, swearing, gallant men, gallantly led, their one thought to close with that grim bristle of rifle-barrels which fringed the rocks above them.

Lord Methuen’s intention had been an attack from front and from flank, but whether from the Grenadiers losing their bearings, or from the mobility of the Boers, which made a flank attack an impossibility, it is certain that all became frontal.  The battle resolved itself into a number of isolated actions in which the various kopjes were rushed by different British regiments, always with success and always with loss.  The honours of the fight, as tested by the grim record of the casualty returns, lay with the Grenadiers, the Coldstreams, the Northumberlands, and the Scots Guards.  The brave Guardsmen lay thickly on the slopes, but their comrades crowned the heights.  The Boers held on desperately and fired their rifles in the very faces of the stormers.  One young officer had his jaw blown to pieces by a rifle which almost touched him.  Another, Blundell of the Guards, was shot dead by a wounded desperado to whom he was offering his water-bottle.  At one point a white flag was waved by the defenders, on which the British left cover, only to be met by a volley.  It was there that Mr. E. F. Knight, of the ‘Morning Post,’ became the victim of a double abuse of the usages of war, since his wound, from which he lost his right arm, was from an explosive bullet.  The man who raised the flag was captured, and it says much for the humanity of British soldiers that he was not bayoneted upon the spot.  Yet it is not fair to blame a whole people for the misdeeds of a few, and it is probable that the men who descended to such devices, or who deliberately fired upon our ambulances, were as much execrated by their own comrades as by ourselves.

The victory was an expensive one, for fifty killed and two hundred wounded lay upon the hillside, and, like so many of our skirmishes with the Boers, it led to small material results.  Their losses appear to have been much about the same as ours, and we captured some fifty prisoners, whom the soldiers regarded with the utmost interest.  They were a sullen slouching crowd rudely clad, and they represented probably the