hich he threw both himself
and them into the most critical corner of the fight.

While the Coldstreams, the Grenadiers, and the Yorkshire Light Infantry
were holding back the Boer attack upon our right flank the indomitable
Gordons, the men of Dargai, furious with the desire to avenge their
comrades of the Highland Brigade, had advanced straight against the
trenches and succeeded without any very great loss in getting within
four hundred yards of them. But a single regiment could not carry the
position, and anything like a general advance upon it was out of the
question in broad daylight after the punishment which we had received.
Any plans of the sort which may have passed through Lord Methuen's
mind were driven away for ever by the sudden unordered retreat of the
stricken brigade. They had been very roughly handled in this, which was
to most of them their baptism of fire, and they had been without food
and water under a burning sun all day. They fell back rapidly for a
mile, and the guns were for a time left partially exposed. Fortunately
the lack of initiative on the part of the Boers which has stood our
friend so often came in to save us from disaster and humiliation. It is
due to the brave unshaken face which the Guards presented to the enemy
that our repulse did not deepen into something still more serious.

The Gordons and the Scots Guards were still in attendance upon the guns,
but they had been advanced very close to the enemy's trenches, and
there were no other troops in support. Under these circumstances it was
imperative that the Highlanders should rally, and Major Ewart with other
surviving officers rushed among the scattered ranks and strove hard
to gather and to stiffen them. The men were dazed by what they had
undergone, and Nature shrank back from that deadly zone where the
bullets fell so thickly. But the pipes blew, and the bugles sang, and
the poor tired fellows, the backs of their legs so flayed and blistered
by lying in the sun that they could hardly bend them, hobbled back to
their duty. They worked up to the guns once more, and the moment of
danger passed.

But as the evening wore on it became evident that no attack could
succeed, and that therefore there was no use in holding the men in front
of the enemy's position. The dark Cronje, lurking among his ditches and
his barbed wire, was not to be approached, far less defeated. There are
some who think that, had we held on there as we did at the M