stones. The Dublin Fusiliers, through being in
a more difficult position, had been unable to get up as quickly as the
others, and most of the hard-breathing excited men who crowded under the
wall were of the Rifles and of the Irish Fusiliers. The air was so full
of bullets that it seemed impossible to live upon the other side of this
shelter. Two hundred yards intervened between the wall and the crest of
the kopje. And yet the kopje had to be cleared if the battle were to be
won.

Out of the huddled line of crouching men an officer sprang shouting, and
a score of soldiers vaulted over the wall and followed at his heels. It
was Captain Connor, of the Irish Fusiliers, but his personal magnetism
carried up with him some of the Rifles as well as men of his own
command. He and half his little forlorn hope were struck down--he, alas!
to die the same night--but there were other leaders as brave to take his
place. 'Forrard away, men, forrard away!' cried Nugent, of the Rifles.
Three bullets struck him, but he continued to drag himself up the
boulder-studded hill. Others followed, and others, from all sides
they came running, the crouching, yelling, khaki-clad figures, and the
supports rushed up from the rear. For a time they were beaten down by
their own shrapnel striking into them from behind, which is an amazing
thing when one considers that the range was under 2000 yards. It was
here, between the wall and the summit, that Colonel Gunning, of the
Rifles, and many other brave men met their end, some by our own bullets
and some by those of the enemy; but the Boers thinned away in front
of them, and the anxious onlookers from the plain below saw the waving
helmets on the crest, and learned at last that all was well.

But it was, it must be confessed, a Pyrrhic victory. We had our hill,
but what else had we? The guns which had been silenced by our fire had
been removed from the kopje. The commando which seized the hill was that
of Lucas Meyer, and it is computed that he had with him about 4000
men. This figure includes those under the command of Erasmus, who made
halfhearted demonstrations against the British flank. If the shirkers
be eliminated, it is probable that there were not more than a thousand
actual combatants upon the hill. Of this number about fifty were killed
and a hundred wounded. The British loss at Talana Hill itself was 41
killed and 180 wounded, but among the killed were many whom the army
could ill spare. The