weary marching, and he knew that they were worthy of his trust. He gave his
orders. The Leinsters and the Scots Guards, tall, gaunt, hunger-stricken
warriors, whose ribs could be counted through their ragged khaki coats,
swung out as cheerily as if they had never known the absence of a meal or
the fatigue of a dreary march. The Irishmen chaffed the Scots, and the
Scots yelled badinage back to the sons of Erin, and onward they went,
onward and upward, over the rock-strewn ground, through the narrow passes,
fixing their bayonets where the ground looked likely to hold a hidden foe,
ready at a moment's notice to charge into the blackness that lay engulfed
in those dreary passes. But the enemy did not wait for them. As the Eighth
Division advanced, making the rocky headlands ring with the rhythm of their
martial tread, the Boers fell back like driven deer, and the bugle spoke to
the Scottish bagpipe until the silent hills gave tongue, and echo answered
echo until the wearied ear sickened for silence. Onward we swept, until
Commando Nek lay like a grinning gash in the face of nature far in our
rear. When we did halt the men threw themselves down on the freezing earth,
and wolfed a biscuit; then, stretching themselves face downwards on the
grass, they slept with their rifles ready to their hands, their greatcoats
around them, and above only the stars, that seemed to freeze in the
boundless billows of eternal blue. Onward again, before the silver
sentinels above us had faded before the blushing face of the dawning. With
faces begrimed with dirt, with feet blistered by contact with flinty
boulders, with tattered garments flapping around them like feathers on
wounded waterfowl, officers and men faced the unknown, as their fathers
faced it before them. Meanwhile Hunter was pressing towards Fouriesburg
from Relief's Nek, his scouts--the well-known "Tigers," under Major
Remington--well in advance of his main column.

Rundle gave an order to Driscoll, Captain of the Scouts, who had done such
good service to the Eighth Division. What passed between the general and
the Irish captain no man knows, probably no man will ever know. But when
Driscoll rode up at the mad gallop so characteristic of the man there was
that in his hard, ugly, wind-tanned face which spoke of stern deeds to be
done. He did not ride alone, this Irish-Indian Volunteer captain--Rundle's
own _aide_, Lord Kensington, of the 15th Hussars, was on his right
hand, and on h