e always the same evidence of a man who habitually
hopes that all will go well, and is in consequence remiss in making
preparations for their going ill. But unhappily in every one of these
instances they did go ill, though the slowness of the Boers enabled
us, both at Dundee and at Ladysmith, to escape what might have been
disaster.

Sir George White has so nobly and frankly taken upon himself the blame
of Nicholson's Nek that an impartial historian must rather regard his
self-condemnation as having been excessive. The immediate causes of the
failure were undoubtedly the results of pure ill-fortune, and depended
on things outside his control. But it is evident that the strategic plan
which would justify the presence of this column at Nicholson's Nek
was based upon the supposition that the main army won their action at
Lombard's Kop. In that case White might swing round his right and pin
the Boers between himself and Nicholson's Nek. In any case he could then
re-unite with his isolated wing. But if he should lose his battle--what
then? What was to become of this detachment five miles up in the air?
How was it to be extricated? The gallant Irishman seems to have waved
aside the very idea of defeat. An assurance was, it is reported, given
to the leaders of the column that by eleven o'clock next morning they
would be relieved. So they would if White had won his action. But--

The force chosen to operate independently consisted of four and a half
companies of the Gloucester regiment, six companies of the Royal Irish
Fusiliers, and No. 10 Mountain Battery of six seven-pounder screw-guns.
They were both old soldier regiments from India, and the Fusiliers had
shown only ten days before at Talana Hill the stuff of which they were
made. Colonel Carleton, of the Fusiliers, to whose exertions much of the
success of the retreat from Dundee was due, commanded the column, with
Major Adye as staff officer. On the night of Sunday, October 29th,
they tramped out of Ladysmith, a thousand men, none better in the army.
Little they thought, as they exchanged a jest or two with the outlying
pickets, that they were seeing the last of their own armed countrymen
for many a weary month.

The road was irregular and the night was moonless. On either side the
black loom of the hills bulked vaguely through the darkness. The column
tramped stolidly along, the Fusiliers in front, the guns and Gloucesters
behind. Several times a short halt was called