casualties until the wood was reached,
which lay halfway up the long slope of the hill. It was a plantation of
larches, some hundreds of yards across and nearly as many deep. On
the left side of this wood--that is, the left side to the advancing
troops--there stretched a long nullah or hollow, which ran
perpendicularly to the hill, and served rather as a conductor of bullets
than as a cover. So severe was the fire at this point that both in the
wood and in the nullah the troops lay down to avoid it. An officer of
Irish Fusiliers has narrated how in trying to cut the straps from a
fallen private a razor lent him for that purpose by a wounded sergeant
was instantly shot out of his hand. The gallant Symons, who had refused
to dismount, was shot through the stomach and fell from his horse
mortally wounded. With an excessive gallantry, he had not only attracted
the enemy's fire by retaining his horse, but he had been accompanied
throughout the action by an orderly bearing a red pennon. 'Have they got
the hill? Have they got the hill?' was his one eternal question as they
carried him dripping to the rear. It was at the edge of the wood that
Colonel Sherston met his end.

From now onwards it was as much a soldiers' battle as Inkermann. In the
shelter of the wood the more eager of the three battalions had pressed
to the front until the fringe of the trees was lined by men from all of
them. The difficulty of distinguishing particular regiments where all
were clad alike made it impossible in the heat of action to keep any
sort of formation. So hot was the fire that for the time the advance
was brought to a standstill, but the 69th battery, firing shrapnel at a
range of 1400 yards, subdued the rifle fire, and about half-past eleven
the infantry were able to push on once more.

Above the wood there was an open space some hundreds of yards across,
bounded by a rough stone wall built for herding cattle. A second wall
ran at right angles to this down towards the wood. An enfilading rifle
fire had been sweeping across this open space, but the wall in front
does not appear to have been occupied by the enemy, who held the kopje
above it. To avoid the cross fire the soldiers ran in single file under
the shelter of the wall, which covered them to the right, and so reached
the other wall across their front. Here there was a second long delay,
the men dribbling up from below, and firing over the top of the wall and
between the chinks of the