hour before the start officers engaged had no idea
of it. O si sic omnia! At ten o'clock a band of men slipped out of the
town. There were six hundred of them, all irregulars, drawn from the
Imperial Light Horse, the Natal Carabineers, and the Border Mounted
Rifles, under the command of Hunter, youngest and most dashing of
British Generals. Edwardes and Boyston were the subcommanders. The men
had no knowledge of where they were going or what they had to do, but
they crept silently along under a drifting sky, with peeps of a quarter
moon, over a mimosa-shadowed plain. At last in front of them there
loomed a dark mass--it was Gun Hill, from which one of the great
Creusots had plagued them. A strong support (four hundred men) was left
at the base of the hill, and the others, one hundred Imperials, one
hundred Borders and Carabineers, ten Sappers, crept upwards with Major
Henderson as guide. A Dutch outpost challenged, but was satisfied by a
Dutch-speaking Carabineer. Higher and higher the men crept, the silence
broken only by the occasional slip of a stone or the rustle of their own
breathing. Most of them had left their boots below. Even in the darkness
they kept some formation, and the right wing curved forward to outflank
the defence. Suddenly a Mauser crack and a spurt of flame--then another
and another! 'Come on, boys! Fix bayonets!' yelled Karri Davies. There
were no bayonets, but that was a detail. At the word the gunners were
off, and there in the darkness in front of the storming party loomed
the enormous gun, gigantic in that uncertain light. Out with the
huge breech-block! Wrap the long lean muzzle round with a collar of
gun-cotton! Keep the guard upon the run until the work is done!
Hunter stood by with a night light in his hand until the charge was in
position, and then, with a crash which brought both armies from their
tents, the huge tube reared up on its mountings and toppled backwards
into the pit. A howitzer lurked beside it, and this also was blown into
ruin. The attendant Maxim was dragged back by the exultant captors, who
reached the town amid shoutings and laughter with the first break of
day. One man wounded, the gallant Henderson, is the cheap price for the
best-planned and most dashing exploit of the war. Secrecy in conception,
vigour in execution--they are the root ideas of the soldier's craft. So
easily was the enterprise carried out, and so defective the Boer
watch, that it is probable that if al