fourth shell
pitched clean into a labouring waggon with its double team of eight
horses. It was full of shells. We held our breath for an explosion. But,
when the smoke cleared, only the near wheeler was on his side, and the
waggon had a wheel in the air. The batteries unlimbered and bayed again,
and again the Boer guns were silent. Now for the attack.

The attack was to be made on their front and their left flank--along the
hog-back of the big kopje. The Devons on our left formed for the front
attack; the Manchesters went on the right, the Gordons edged out to the
extreme rightward base, with the long, long boulder-freckled face above
them. The guns flung shrapnel across the valley; the watchful cavalry
were in leash, straining towards the enemy's flanks. It was about a
quarter to five, and it seemed curiously dark for the time of day.

No wonder--for as the men moved forward before the enemy the heavens
were opened. From the eastern sky swept a sheer sheet of rain. With the
first stabbing drops horses turned their heads away, trembling, and no
whip or spur could bring them up to it. It drove through mackintoshes as
if they were blotting-paper. The air was filled with hissing; underfoot
you could see solid earth melting into mud, and mud flowing away in
water. It blotted out hill and dale and enemy in one grey curtain of
swooping water. You would have said that the heavens had opened to drown
the wrath of man. And through it the guns still thundered and the khaki
columns pushed doggedly on.

The infantry came among the boulders and began to open out. The supports
and reserves followed up. And then, in a twinkling, on the stone-pitted
hill-face burst loose that other storm--the storm of lead, of blood, of
death. In a twinkling the first line was down behind rocks firing fast,
and the bullets came flicking round them. Men stopped and started,
staggered and dropped limply as if the string were cut that held them
upright. The line pushed on; the supports and reserves followed up. A
colonel fell, shot in the arm; the regiment pushed on.

They came to a rocky ridge about twenty feet high. They clung to cover,
firing, then rose, and were among the shrill bullets again. A major was
left at the bottom of that ridge, with his pipe in his mouth and a
Mauser bullet through his leg; his company pushed on. Down again, fire
again, up again, and on! Another ridge won and passed--and only a more
hellish hail of bullets beyond it. M