h the dull murmur of many feet, the dense column,
nearly four thousand strong, wandered onwards through the rain and the
darkness, death and mutilation crouching upon their path.

It matters not what gave the signal, whether it was the flashing of a
lantern by a Boer scout, or the tripping of a soldier over wire, or the
firing of a gun in the ranks. It may have been any, or it may have been
none, of these things. As a matter of fact I have been assured by a Boer
who was present that it was the sound of the tins attached to the alarm
wires which disturbed them. However this may be, in an instant there
crashed out of the darkness into their faces and ears a roar of
point-blank fire, and the night was slashed across with the throbbing
flame of the rifles. At the moment before this outflame some doubt as
to their whereabouts seems to have flashed across the mind of their
leaders. The order to extend had just been given, but the men had not
had time to act upon it. The storm of lead burst upon the head and right
flank of the column, which broke to pieces under the murderous volley.
Wauchope was shot, struggled up, and fell once more for ever. Rumour
has placed words of reproach upon his dying lips, but his nature, both
gentle and soldierly, forbids the supposition. 'What a pity!' was the
only utterance which a brother Highlander ascribes to him. Men went
down in swathes, and a howl of rage and agony, heard afar over the veld,
swelled up from the frantic and struggling crowd. By the hundred they
dropped--some dead, some wounded, some knocked down by the rush and sway
of the broken ranks. It was a horrible business. At such a range and in
such a formation a single Mauser bullet may well pass through many men.
A few dashed forwards, and were found dead at the very edges of the
trench. The few survivors of companies A, B, and C of the Black Watch
appear to have never actually retired, but to have clung on to the
immediate front of the Boer trenches, while the remains of the other
five companies tried to turn the Boer flank. Of the former body only six
got away unhurt in the evening after lying all day within two hundred
yards of the enemy. The rest of the brigade broke and, disentangling
themselves with difficulty from the dead and the dying, fled back out of
that accursed place. Some, the most unfortunate of all, became caught in
the darkness in the wire defences, and were found in the morning hung up
'like crows,' as one specta