genuine emotion, "It has all
been in vain! Our men are worn out. They can do no more!"

He was a Hollander, and also a gentleman; that is to say, he was not one
of those Hollanders who lived on the fat of the land, and then turned
against us in our adversity; rather was he of the rarer stamp of Coster,
who glorified his mother country by nobly dying for that of his
adoption.

"Cheer up!" I replied. "There are other hills."

"To-morrow will tell," he said, as he bade me good-night.

And the morrow did. In the grey dawn two hatless and bootless young men
came stumbling down into the laager.

"The British have taken the hill!"

Startled, we gazed at Spion Kop's top--only five hundred yards away, but
invisible, covered by the thick mist as with a veil. The enemy were
there, we knew it; they could not see us as yet, but the mist would soon
clear away, and then....

Our guns were rapidly trained on the spot, our men placed in position,
and we waited.

I ran into the tent to telegraph the news to Colenso. No reply to my
hasty call. The wire is cut!

"Go at once," said the chief, "and repair the line."

As I rode off the mist cleared, and a few minutes later the fight had
begun. The cable ran about a thousand yards behind our firing line, and
as I went along, my eyes fixed on the wire, the noise of the battle
sounded in my ears like the roar of a prairie fire. Jagged pieces of
shell came whizzing past, shrieking like vampires in their hunt for
human flesh.

Searching carefully for the fault, my progress was slow, and it was
afternoon when the Johannesburg laager was reached. Here I found a
despatch-rider, who said that reinforcements had arrived at Spion Kop
early in the morning, that our men had immediately climbed the hill, and
that, the issue being very, uncertain, we might have to retreat during
the night.

The line was still interrupted, although I had repaired several faults.
I accordingly rode back to Spion Kop early the next morning. When I
entered the laager it was to find that all the waggons had already
retreated, and the tents standing deserted. Not quite deserted, for in
one of them half a dozen bodies were lying. The enemy had unexpectedly
retired during the night, and the entire commando was now on the hill,
gazing at the plentiful harvest reaped by our Nordenfeldts. Thither I
also went.

British ambulance men were busy collecting corpses. It was a mournful
sight; it seemed to me as if war reall