he largest end hill of the opposite range.
Meantime, from three or four spots along the sides of those hills, locks
and puffs of white smoke float out, followed at long intervals by deep,
sonorous reports; and if you look to the left a bit, where our naval
guns are at work, you will see the Boer shells bursting close to or over
them. The artillery duet goes on between the two, while still the
infantry, unmolested as yet, crawls and crawls towards those hills."

This is our first sight of an infantry attack, and it doesn't impress me
at first at all. Its cold-bloodedness, the absence of all excitement,
make it so different from one's usual notions of a battle. It is really
difficult to believe that those little, sauntering figures are
"delivering an attack." They don't look a bit as if they were going to
fight. The fact is, they have a long distance to cover before reaching
the hills, and must go fairly slow. Accordingly, you see them strolling
leisurely along as if nothing particular were happening; while the hills
themselves, except for the occasional puffs of smoke, look; quite bare
and empty; ridges of stone and rock, interspersed with grass tussocks,
heaped up against the hot, blue sky.

But now, as they advance farther across the plain, the muffled,
significant sound of the Mauser fire begins. The front of the attack is
already so far across that it is impossible to see how they are faring
from here; but it is evident that our shell fire, heavy though it has
been, for all our guns have been in action some time now, has not turned
the Boers out of their position. The big chunks of rock are an
excellent defence against shrapnel, and behind them they lie, or down in
the hollow of the hills, as we saw them earlier in the day, to be called
up when the attack approached; and now, gathering along the crest, their
fire quickens gradually from single shots to a roar. But it has no
effect on that fatal sauntering! Of the men who leave this side nigh on
two hundred will drop before they reach the other, but still, neither
hurrying nor pausing, on they quietly stroll, giving one, in their
uniform motion over that wide plain, a sense as of the force and
implacability of some tidal movement. And, as you watch, the
significance of it all grows on you, and you see that it is just its
very cold-bloodedness and the absence of any dash and fury that makes
the modern infantry attack such a supreme test of courage.

Of the details of