A strange battery came lurching up from the British rear, unheralded, unknown, the weary gasping horses panting at the traces, the men, caked with sweat and dirt, urging them on into a last spasmodic trot.  The bodies of horses which had died of pure fatigue marked their course, the sergeants’ horses tugged in the gun-teams, and the sergeants staggered along by the limbers.  It was the 62nd Field Battery, which had marched thirty-two miles in eight hours, and now, hearing the crash of battle in front of them, had with one last desperate effort thrown itself into the firing line.  Great credit is due to Major Granet and his men.  Not even those gallant German batteries who saved the infantry at Spicheren could boast of a finer feat.

Now it was guns against guns, and let the best gunners win!  We had eighteen field-guns and the naval pieces against the concealed cannon of the enemy.  Back and forward flew the shells, howling past each other in mid-air.  The weary men of the 62nd Battery forgot their labours and fatigues as they stooped and strained at their clay-coloured 15-pounders.  Half of them were within rifle range, and the limber horses were the centre of a hot fire, as they were destined to be at a shorter range and with more disastrous effect at the Tugela.  That the same tactics should have been adopted at two widely sundered points shows with what care the details of the war had been pre-arranged by the Boer leaders.  ’Before I got my horses out,’ says an officer, ’they shot one of my drivers and two horses and brought down my own horse.  When we got the gun round one of the gunners was shot through the brain and fell at my feet.  Another was shot while bringing up shell.  Then we got a look in.’  The roar of the cannon was deafening, but gradually the British were gaining the upper hand.  Here and there the little knolls upon the further side which had erupted into constant flame lay cold and silent.  One of the heavier guns was put out of action, and the other had been withdrawn for five hundred yards.  But the infantry fire still crackled and rippled along the trenches, and the guns could come no nearer with living men and horses.  It was long past midday, and that unhappy breakfast seemed further off than ever.

As the afternoon wore on, a curious condition of things was established.  The guns could not advance, and, indeed, it was found necessary to withdraw them from a 1200 to a 2800-yard range, so heavy were the losses.  At the time of the change the 75th Battery had lost three officers out of five, nineteen men, and twenty-two horses.  The infantry could not advance and would not retire.  The Guards on the right were prevented from opening out on the flank and getting round the enemy’s line, by the presence of the Riet River, which joins the Modder almost at a right angle.  All day they lay under a blistering sun, the sleet of bullets whizzing over their heads.  ‘It came in solid streaks like telegraph wires,’