wounded, all helped to
aggravate the din. Boers were fast climbing the mountain sides, and
the troops, worn out and almost expended, were beginning to lose the
spirit of discipline that hitherto had sustained them. The officers
stepped forward boldly, sword in one hand and revolver in the other,
but to no purpose. Only an insignificant number of men now responded
to the command.

[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF MAJUBA HILL.

Drawn by R. Caton Woodville, from Notes supplied by Officers
present.

The officer to the left, with the glass in his hand, is General
Colley, who, to facilitate his ascent of the hill, took off his
boots, and, during the engagement, wore only socks and slippers. He,
with others, is urging the soldiers to maintain their position. The
Highlander with the bandage on his face was wounded, but bravely
continued to fight. The Highlander on the right, apparently asleep,
was shot dead while taking aim. The officer in the immediate
foreground towards the right, to whom the doctor is offering a
flask, is Major L. C. Singleton, of the 92nd Gordon Highlanders, who
died of his wounds. The figure pressing forward on the extreme left
of the picture is the Special Correspondent of the _Standard_
newspaper.]

Mr. Carter declares that when Lieutenant Hamilton of the 92nd asked
Sir George Colley's permission to charge with the bayonet, he
replied, "Wait a while." Such humanity was almost inhumanity, for
waiting placed at stake many lives that might have been saved. The
correspondent says:--

"Evidently Sir George Colley allowed his feelings of humanity to
stand in the way of the request of the young officer. We were forty
yards at the farthest from the enemy's main attacking party. In
traversing these forty yards our men would have been terribly
mauled, no doubt, by the first volley, but the ground sloped gently
to the edge of the terrace along which the enemy were lying, and the
intervening space would be covered in twenty seconds--at all events,
so rapidly by the survivors of the first volley, that the Boers,
mostly armed with the Westley-Richards cap rifle, would not have had
time to reload before our men were on them. I am not sure that the
first rush of the infantry would not have demoralised the enemy,
and that their volley would have been less destructive than some
imagined. If only a score of our men had thrust home, the enemy must
have been routed. At a close-quarter conflict, what use would their
emp