ning to sound. If only they
could attract the attention of that balloon! Vainly they wagged flags at
it. Serene and unresponsive it brooded over the distant battle.

And now the Boers were thickening round them on every side. Christian
de Wet, a name soon to be a household word, marshaled the Boer attack,
which was soon strengthened by the arrival of Van Dam and his Police. At
five o'clock the fire began, at six it was warm, at seven warmer still.
Two companies of the Gloucesters lined a sangar on the tread of
the sole, to prevent any one getting too near to the heel. A fresh
detachment of Boers, firing from a range of nearly one thousand yards,
took this defence in the rear. Bullets fell among the men, and smacked
up against the stone breastwork. The two companies were withdrawn, and
lost heavily in the open as they crossed it. An incessant rattle and
crackle of rifle fire came from all round, drawing very slowly but
steadily nearer. Now and then the whisk of a dark figure from one
boulder to another was all that ever was seen of the attackers. The
British fired slowly and steadily, for every cartridge counted, but the
cover of the Boers was so cleverly taken that it was seldom that there
was much to aim at. 'All you could ever see,' says one who was present,
'were the barrels of the rifles.' There was time for thought in
that long morning, and to some of the men it may have occurred what
preparation for such fighting had they ever had in the mechanical
exercises of the parade ground, or the shooting of an annual bagful of
cartridges at exposed targets at a measured range. It is the warfare of
Nicholson's Nek, not that of Laffan's Plain, which has to be learned in
the future.

During those weary hours lying on the bullet-swept hill and listening
to the eternal hissing in the air and clicking on the rocks, the British
soldiers could see the fight which raged to the south of them. It was
not a cheering sight, and Carleton and Adye with their gallant comrades
must have felt their hearts grow heavier as they watched. The Boers'
shells bursting among the British batteries, the British shells bursting
short of their opponents. The Long Toms laid at an angle of forty-five
plumped their huge shells into the British guns at a range where the
latter would not dream of unlimbering. And then gradually the rifle fire
died away also, crackling more faintly as White withdrew to Ladysmith.
At eleven o'clock Carleton's column recognis