ed men who were in front of or around the rear guns. Colonel
Benson seems to have just ridden back to the danger point when the Boers
delivered their furious attack.

Louis Botha with his commando is said to have ridden sixty miles in
order to join the forces of Grobler and Oppermann, and overwhelm the
British column. It may have been the presence of their commander or a
desire to have vengeance for the harrying which they had undergone upon
the Natal border, but whatever the reason, the Boer attack was made
with a spirit and dash which earned the enthusiastic applause of every
soldier who survived to describe it. With the low roar of a great
torrent, several hundred horsemen burst through the curtain of mist,
riding at a furious pace for the British guns. The rear screen of
Mounted Infantry fell back before this terrific rush, and the two bodies
of horsemen came pell-mell down upon the handful of Buffs and the guns.
The infantry were ridden into and surrounded by the Boers, who found
nothing to stop them from galloping on to the low ridge upon which the
guns were stationed. This ridge was held by eighty of the Scottish
Horse and forty of the Yorkshire M.I., with a few riflemen from the 25th
Mounted Infantry. The latter were the escort of the guns, but the former
were the rear screen who had fallen back rapidly because it was the game
to do so, but who were in no way shaken, and who instantly dismounted
and formed when they reached a defensive position.

These men had hardly time to take up their ground when the Boers were
on them. With that extraordinary quickness to adapt their tactics to
circumstances which is the chief military virtue of the Boers, the
horsemen did not gallop over the crest, but lined the edge of it, and
poured a withering fire on to the guns and the men beside them. The
heroic nature of the defence can be best shown by the plain figures of
the casualties. No rhetoric is needed to adorn that simple record. There
were thirty-two gunners round the guns, and twenty-nine fell where they
stood. Major Guinness was mortally wounded while endeavouring with his
own hands to fire a round of case. There were sixty-two casualties out
of eighty among the Scottish Horse, and the Yorkshires were practically
annihilated. Altogether 123 men fell, out of about 160 on the ridge.
'Hard pounding, gentlemen,' as Wellington remarked at Waterloo, and
British troops seemed as ready as ever to endure it.

The gunners were,