General Hart,' said the aide-de-camp. 'Then good-bye!'
cried his fellows. A grim humour ran through his nature. It is gravely
recorded and widely believed that he lined up a regiment on a hill-top
in order to teach them not to shrink from fire. Amid the laughter of his
Irishmen, he walked through the open files of his firing line holding a
laggard by the ear. This was the man who had put such a spirit into the
Irish Brigade that amid that army of valiant men there were none who
held such a record. 'Their rushes were the quickest, their rushes were
the longest, and they stayed the shortest time under cover,' said a
shrewd military observer. To Hart and his brigade was given the task of
clearing the way to Ladysmith.

The regiments which he took with him on his perilous enterprise were the
1st Inniskilling Fusiliers, the 2nd Dublin Fusiliers, the 1st Connaught
Rangers, and the Imperial Light Infantry, the whole forming the famous
5th Brigade. They were already in the extreme British advance, and now,
as they moved forwards, the Durham Light Infantry and the 1st Rifle
Brigade from Lyttelton's Brigade came up to take their place. The hill
to be taken lay on the right, and the soldiers were compelled to pass in
single file under a heavy fire for more than a mile until they reached
the spot which seemed best for their enterprise. There, short already
of sixty of their comrades, they assembled and began a cautious advance
upon the lines of trenches and sangars which seamed the brown slope
above them.

For a time they were able to keep some cover, and the casualties were
comparatively few. But now at last, as the evening sun threw a long
shadow from the hills, the leading regiment, the Inniskillings, found
themselves at the utmost fringe of boulders with a clear slope between
them and the main trench of the enemy. Up there where the shrapnel was
spurting and the great lyddite shells crashing they could dimly see a
line of bearded faces and the black dots of the slouch hats. With a yell
the Inniskillings sprang out, carried with a rush the first trench,
and charged desperately onwards for the second one. It was a supremely
dashing attack against a supremely steady resistance, for among all
their gallant deeds the Boers have never fought better than on that
February evening. Amid such a smashing shell fire as living mortals have
never yet endured they stood doggedly, these hardy men of the veld, and
fired fast and true into the