ed and fifty officers and men
wounded--with fortunately, a small proportion of killed--and fell mainly
on the Lancashire Fusiliers, the Dublin Fusiliers (always in the front),
and the Royal Lancaster Regiment. They were not disproportioned to the
apparent advantage gained.

On the 21st the action was renewed. Hart's and Woodgate's brigades on
the right made good and extended their lodgments, capturing all the Boer
trenches of their first defensive line along the edge of the plateau. To
the east of 'Bastion Hill' there runs a deep _re-entrant_, which
appeared to open a cleft between the right and centre of the Boer
position. The tendency of General Hildyard's action, with five
battalions and two batteries, on the British left this day was to drive
a wedge of infantry into this cleft and so split the Boer position in
two. But as the action developed, the great strength of the second line
of defence gradually revealed itself. It ran along the crest of the
plateau, which rises about a thousand yards from the edge in a series of
beautiful smooth grassy slopes of concave surface, forming veritable
glacis for the musketry of the defence to sweep; and it consisted of a
line of low rock and earth redoubts and shelter trenches, apparently
provided with overhead cover, and cleverly arranged to command all
approaches with fire--often with cross-fire, sometimes with converging
fire. Throughout the 21st, as during the 20th, the British artillery,
consisting of six field batteries and four howitzers, the latter
apparently of tremendous power, bombarded the whole Boer position
ceaselessly, firing on each occasion nearly three thousand shells. They
claim to have inflicted considerable loss on the enemy, and must have
inflicted some, but failed utterly and painfully to silence the
musketry, to clear the trenches, or reach and overpower the Dutch
artillery, which did not number more than seven or eight guns and two
Maxim shell-guns, but which were better served and manoeuvred and of
superior quality. The losses in the action of the 20th were about one
hundred and thirty officers and men killed and wounded, but this must be
regarded as severe in the face of the fact that no serious collision or
even contact took place.

During the 22nd and 23rd the troops held the positions they had won, and
the infantry were subjected to a harassing shell fire from the Boer
guns, which, playing from either flank, searched the _re-entrants_ in
which the