From Capetown to Ladysmith: An Unfinished Record of the South African War

RONG-A MISERABLE STORY-THE WHITE FLA

ith, N

een in all-the same hard, thick-set bodies that Ladysmith had cheered six days before as they marched in, square-shouldered through the mud, from Dundee. The same bodies-but the elastic w

e was far more haggard. Inside were one other officer, the doctor, and the quarter-master. That was all the mess, except a second lieutenant, a boy

t the hard campaign had been lost at Dundee. Now it was the regiment was lost, and there was nobody to eat the tinned meats and pickles. The common words "Natal Field Force" on the boxes cut like a knife. In the middle of the tent, on a table of cases, so low that to reach it you must sit on the ground, were the japann

break they were to operate on the enemy's right flank-the parallel with Majuba is grimly obvious-in conjunction with an attack from Ladysmith on his centre and right. They started. At half-past ten they passed through a kind of defile, the Boers a thousand feet above them following every mov

t dawn, about half-past four, they were attacked, at first lightly. There were two companies of the Gloucesters in an advanced position; the rest, in close order, occupied a high point on the kopje;

ivided and came into action, half in front, half from the kopjes in rear, shooting at 1000 yards into the open rear of the schanzes. Men began to fall. The two advanced

n again, that cu

ming coolly by the half-minute together. At the nadir of their humiliation they could still sting-as that new-come Boer found who, desiring one Englishman to his bag before the end, thr

succoured their prisoners there, so they tended and succoured him here. One commandant wished to send the wounded to Pretoria; the others, more prudent as well as more humane, decided to send them back into Ladysmith. They gave the whole men the water out of their own bottles; they gave the wounded the blankets off their own saddles and slept themselves on the naked veldt. They were short of transport, and t

They said that they had Rhodes shut up in Kimberley, and would hang him when they caught him. That on their side-and on ours? We fought them all that morning in a fight that for the moment may wait. At th