of the relieving column. It was a magnificent, manly, and
moving spectacle. You must imagine the dry, burning heat, the fine,
yellow dust, the white glare of the sunshine, and in the heat and glare
and dust the great interminable column of men in ragged khaki crowding
down the main street, twenty-two thousand strong, cheering and shouting,
with the sweat running off their red faces and cutting little rivulets in
the dust that caked their cheeks. Some of them were so glad that, though
in the heaviest marching order, they leaped up and down and stepped out
of line to dance to the music of the bagpipes. For hours they crowded
past, laughing, joking, and cheering, or staring ahead of them, with lips
wide apart, panting in the heat and choking with the dust, but always
ready to turn again and wave their helmets at Sir George White.

It was a pitiful contrast which the two forces presented. The men of the
garrison were in clean khaki, pipe-clayed and brushed and polished, but
their tunics hung on them as loosely as the flag around its pole, the
skin on their cheek-bones was as tight and as yellow as the belly of a
drum, their teeth protruded through parched, cracked lips, and hunger,
fever, and suffering stared from out their eyes. They were so ill and so
feeble that the mere exercise of standing was too severe for their
endurance, and many of them collapsed, falling back to the sidewalk,
rising to salute only the first troop of each succeeding regiment. This
done, they would again sink back and each would sit leaning his head
against his musket, or with his forehead resting heavily on his folded
arms. In comparison the relieving column looked like giants as they came
in with a swinging swagger, their uniforms blackened with mud and sweat
and bloodstains, their faces brilliantly crimsoned and blistered and
tanned by the dust and sun. They made a picture of strength and health
and aggressiveness. Perhaps the contrast was strongest when the
battalion of the Devons that had been on foreign service passed the
"reserve" battalion which had come from England. The men of the two
battalions had parted five years before in India, and they met again in
Ladysmith, with the men of one battalion lining the streets, sick,
hungry, and yellow, and the others, who had been fighting six weeks to
reach it, marching toward them, robust, red-faced, and cheering mightily.
As they met they gave a shout of recognition, and the men broke ran