ps was any sign of suffering allowed to
escape him. At the station of the Bearer company he dismounted, and
was carried to the dressing station in a dhoolie. Five minutes later,
at 9.35 a.m., the surgeon pronounced his wound to be fatal, and the
news was telegraphed to Ladysmith.

[Footnote 92: There were for each gun 154 rounds, including
60 reserve.]

[Sidenote: His impulse tells.]

[Sidenote: K.R.R. seize wall of upper terrace.]

[Sidenote: R.I.F join and also threaten Boer right.]

The life of the General was not thrown away; his action had immediate
effect. Before he had quitted the wood a dying man, parties of
soldiers were already pushing forward from its front wall across the
100 yards of bullet-swept flat intervening between them and the first
slopes of Talana proper. On the right, the first to break cover, four
and a half companies of the King's Royal Rifles emerged in small
parties from Smith's farm. Leaving there two companies in support,
they pushed up along the right side of the transverse wall, in full
view of Lennox Hill, and suffering from its fire. So rapid were their
movements that the Boer shooting was hasty and ill-aimed, and the
losses were but few. Some distance forward they leapt across to the
left of the transverse wall, and reconnoitring that bounding the upper
terrace, found it, to their surprise, unoccupied by the enemy.[93]
Other groups, in response to signals, then worked their way upward,
until soon a considerable number of Riflemen were under the wall. On
their left the Royal Irish Fusiliers supported the attack. Two and a
half companies ("E.," "F." and half of "C.") of this battalion had,
when General Symons came to the front, been sent to the edge of the
wood, and these, seeing what the Rifles had done, streamed straight up
to the wall. "A." and half of "D." companies, which had been boldly
and independently handled wide on the left, avoiding the dongas,
pushed on gradually to well within five hundred yards of the enemy's
extreme right, on which they brought their rifles to bear. The other
half of "C." company, with men of other battalions, amounting to about
one hundred in all, had lain with the three companies of King's Royal
Rifles in the enclosure of Smith's farm, and advanced with them. One
company ("B.") Royal Irish Fusiliers had been ordered forward on the
left by General Symons himself immediately he arrived in the wood.
This company, perceiving the falla