The Gordons and the Scots Guards were still in attendance upon the guns, but they had been advanced very close to the enemy’s trenches, and there were no other troops in support.  Under these circumstances it was imperative that the Highlanders should rally, and Major Ewart with other surviving officers rushed among the scattered ranks and strove hard to gather and to stiffen them.  The men were dazed by what they had undergone, and Nature shrank back from that deadly zone where the bullets fell so thickly.  But the pipes blew, and the bugles sang, and the poor tired fellows, the backs of their legs so flayed and blistered by lying in the sun that they could hardly bend them, hobbled back to their duty.  They worked up to the guns once more, and the moment of danger passed.

But as the evening wore on it became evident that no attack could succeed, and that therefore there was no use in holding the men in front of the enemy’s position.  The dark Cronje, lurking among his ditches and his barbed wire, was not to be approached, far less defeated.  There are some who think that, had we held on there as we did at the Modder River, the enemy would again have been accommodating enough to make way for us during the night, and the morning would have found the road clear to Kimberley.  I know no grounds for such an opinion—­but several against it.  At Modder Cronje abandoned his lines, knowing that he had other and stronger ones behind him.  At Magersfontein a level plain lay behind the Boer position, and to abandon it was to give up the game altogether.  Besides, why should he abandon it?  He knew that he had hit us hard.  We had made absolutely no impression upon his defences.  Is it likely that he would have tamely given up all his advantages and surrendered the fruits of his victory without a struggle?  It is enough to mourn a defeat without the additional agony of thinking that a little more perseverance might have turned it into a victory.  The Boer position could only be taken by outflanking it, and we were not numerous enough nor mobile enough to outflank it.  There lay the whole secret of our troubles, and no conjectures as to what might under other circumstances have happened can alter it.

About half-past five the Boer guns, which had for some unexplained reason been silent all day, opened upon the cavalry.  Their appearance was a signal for the general falling back of the centre, and the last attempt to retrieve the day was abandoned.  The Highlanders were dead-beat; the Coldstreams had had enough; the mounted infantry was badly mauled.  There remained the Grenadiers, the Scots Guards, and two or three line regiments who were available for a new attack.  There are occasions, such as Sadowa, where a General must play his last card.  There are others where with reinforcements in his rear, he can do better by saving his force and trying once again.  General Grant had an axiom that the best time for an advance was when you were utterly exhausted,