sed, and he could
not weaken it by sending reinforcements up the hill. But the roar of
the musketry was rising louder and louder. It was becoming clearer that
there was the main attack. It was a Majuba Hill action up yonder, a
thick swarm of skirmishers closing in from many sides upon a central
band of soldiers. But the fusiliers were hopelessly outnumbered, and
this rock fighting is that above all others in which the Boer has an
advantage over the regular. A helio on the hill cried for help. The
losses were heavy, it said, and the assailants numerous. The Boers
closed swiftly in upon the flanks, and the fusiliers were no match for
their assailants. Till the very climax the helio still cried that they
were being overpowered, and it is said that even while working it
the soldier in charge was hurled over the cliff by the onrush of the
victorious Boers.

The fight of the mounted infantry men had been at half-past four. At
six the attack upon the hill had developed, and Clements in response
to those frantic flashes of light had sent up a hundred men of the
yeomanry, from the Fife and Devon squadrons, as a reinforcement. To
climb a precipitous thousand feet with rifle, bandolier, and spurs, is
no easy feat, yet that roar of battle above them heartened them upon
their way. But in spite of all their efforts they were only in time
to share the general disaster. The head of the line of hard-breathing
yeomen reached the plateau just as the Boers, sweeping over the remnants
of the Northumberland Fusiliers, reached the brink of the cliff. One by
one the yeomen darted over the edge, and endeavoured to find some cover
in the face of an infernal point-blank fire. Captain Mudie of the staff,
who went first, was shot down. So was Purvis of the Fifes, who followed
him. The others, springing over their bodies, rushed for a small trench,
and tried to restore the fight. Lieutenant Campbell, a gallant young
fellow, was shot dead as he rallied his men. Of twenty-seven of the
Fifeshires upon the hill six were killed and eleven wounded. The
statistics of the Devons are equally heroic. Those yeomen who had not
yet reached the crest were in a perfectly impossible position, as the
Boers were firing from complete cover right down upon them. There was
no alternative for them but surrender. By seven o'clock every British
soldier upon the hill, yeoman or fusilier, had been killed, wounded,
or taken. It is not true that the supply of cartridges ran ou