he various kopjes were rushed by
different British regiments, always with success and always with loss.
The honours of the fight, as tested by the grim record of the casualty
returns, lay with the Grenadiers, the Coldstreams, the Northumberlands,
and the Scots Guards. The brave Guardsmen lay thickly on the slopes, but
their comrades crowned the heights. The Boers held on desperately and
fired their rifles in the very faces of the stormers. One young officer
had his jaw blown to pieces by a rifle which almost touched him.
Another, Blundell of the Guards, was shot dead by a wounded desperado
to whom he was offering his water-bottle. At one point a white flag was
waved by the defenders, on which the British left cover, only to be met
by a volley. It was there that Mr. E. F. Knight, of the 'Morning Post,'
became the victim of a double abuse of the usages of war, since his
wound, from which he lost his right arm, was from an explosive bullet.
The man who raised the flag was captured, and it says much for the
humanity of British soldiers that he was not bayoneted upon the spot.
Yet it is not fair to blame a whole people for the misdeeds of a few,
and it is probable that the men who descended to such devices, or who
deliberately fired upon our ambulances, were as much execrated by their
own comrades as by ourselves.

The victory was an expensive one, for fifty killed and two hundred
wounded lay upon the hillside, and, like so many of our skirmishes with
the Boers, it led to small material results. Their losses appear to have
been much about the same as ours, and we captured some fifty prisoners,
whom the soldiers regarded with the utmost interest. They were a sullen
slouching crowd rudely clad, and they represented probably the poorest
of the burghers, who now, as in the middle ages, suffer most in battle,
since a long purse means a good horse. Most of the enemy galloped very
comfortably away after the action, leaving a fringe of sharpshooters
among the kopjes to hold back our pursuing cavalry. The want of horsemen
and the want of horse artillery are the two reasons which Lord Methuen
gives why the defeat was not converted into a rout. As it was, the
feelings of the retreating Boers were exemplified by one of their
number, who turned in his saddle in order to place his outstretched
fingers to his nose in derision of the victors. He exposed himself to
the fire of half a battalion while doing so, but he probably was
aware that w