THE HEROES OF MAGERSFONTEIN
Dec. 11, 1899
1. During the night it was considered expedient that the Highland Brigade, 4,000 strong, under General Wauchope, should get close enough to the lines of the foe to make it possible to charge the heights. At midnight the gallant but ill-fated men moved cautiously through the darkness toward the kopje where the Boers were most strongly intrenched. They were led by a guide who was supposed to know every inch of the country, out into the darkness of an African night.
2. So onward until three of the clock on the Monday. Then out of the darkness a rifle rang sharp and clear, a herald of disaster—a soldier had tripped in the dark over the hidden wires laid down by the enemy. In a second, in the twinkling of an eye, the searchlights of the Boers fell broad and clear as the noonday sun on the ranks of the doomed Highlanders, though it left the enemy concealed in the shadows of the frowning mass of hills behind them. For one brief moment the Scots seemed paralysed by the suddenness of their discovery, for they knew that they were huddled together like sheep within fifty yards of the trenches of the foes.
3. Then clear above the confusion rolled the voice of the General: "Steady, men, steady!"—and like an echo to the veterans out came the crash of nearly a thousand rifles not fifty paces from them. The Highlanders reeled before the shock like trees before the tempest; their best, their bravest, fell in that wild hail of lead. General Wauchope was down, riddled with bullets; yet gasping, dying, bleeding from every vein, the Highland chief raised himself on his hands and knees and cheered his men forward. Men and officers fell in heaps together.
4. The Black Watch charged, and the Gordons and the Seaforths, with a yell that stirred the British camp below, rushed onward to death or disaster. The accursed wires caught them around the legs until they floundered like trapped wolves, and all the time the rifles of the foe sang the song of death in their ears. They fell back broken and beaten, leaving nearly 1,300 dead and wounded, just where the broad breast of the grassy veldt melts into the embrace of the rugged African hills; and an hour later, the dawning came of the dreariest day that Scotland has known for a generation past.
5. Of her officers, the flower of her chivalry, the pride of her breeding, but few remained to tell the tale—a sad tale truly, but one untinted with dishonour nor smirched with disgrace, for up these heights under similar circumstances, even a brigade of devils could scarce have hoped to pass. All that mortal man could do the Scots did; they tried, they failed, they fell, and there is nothing left us now but to revere their memory and give them a place of honour in the pages of history.
6. Three hundred yards to the rear of the little township of Modder River, just as the sun was sinking in a blaze of African splendour, on the evening of Tuesday, the 12th of December, a long shallow grave lay exposed in the breast of the veldt. To the westward, the broad river fringed with trees runs murmuringly; to the eastward, the heights still held by the enemy, scowled menacingly; north and south the veldt undulated peacefully; a few paces to the northward of that grave, fifty dead Highlanders lay dressed as they had fallen on the field of battle: they had followed their chief to the field, and they were to follow him to the grave.
7. How grim and stern these men looked as they lay face upward to the sky, with great hands clutched in the last agony, and brows still knit with the stern lust of the strife in which they had fallen. The plaids, dear to every Highland clan, were represented there, and out of the distance came the sound of pipes. It was the General coming to join his men. There, right under the eyes of the enemy, moved with slow and solemn tread all that remained of the Highland Brigade. In front of them walked the chaplain, with bared head, dressed in his robes of office; then came the pipers with their pipes, sixteen in all, and behind them, with arms reversed, moved the Highlanders, dressed in all the regalia of their regiments, and in the midst the dead General, borne by four of his comrades. Out swelled the pipes to the strains of "The Flowers of the Forest," now ringing proud and high until the soldier's head went back in haughty defiance—and eyes flashed through tears like sunlight on steel, now sinking to moaning wail like a woman mourning for her first-born, until the proud heads drooped forward till they rested on heaving chests, and tears rolled down the wan and scarred faces, and the choking sobs broke through the solemn rhythm of the march of death.
8. Right up to the grave they marched, then broke away in companies, until the General lay in the shallow grave with a Scottish square of armed men around him. Only the dead man's son and a small remnant of his officers stood with the chaplain and the pipers, while the solemn service of the church was spoken.
9. Then once again the pipes pealed out, and "Lochaber No More" cut through the stillness like a cry of pain until one could almost hear the widow in her Highland home mourning for the soldier she would welcome back no more.
10. Then, as if touched with the magic of one thought, the soldiers turned their tear-damped eyes from the still form in the shallow grave toward the height where Cronje, the Lion of Africa, and his soldiers stood. Then every cheek flushed crimson, and strong jaws set like steel, and the veins on the hands that clasped the rifle handles swelled almost to bursting with the fervour of the grip, and that look from those silent, armed men spoke more eloquently than ever spoke the tongues of orators. For on each frowning face the spirit of vengeance sat, and each sparkling eye asked silently for blood.
11. At the head of the grave, at the point nearest the enemy, the General was laid to sleep, his officers grouped around him, while in line behind him, his soldiers were laid in a double row wrapped in their blankets. No shots were fired over the dead men resting so peacefully, only the salute was given, and then the men marched campwards as the darkness of an African night rolled over the far-stretching breadth of the veldt.
—From "The London Daily News" (By permission)
Par. 1. Note the Grouping, Pause, and Shading in the last sentence. Compare the Grouping in the preceding sentence, in the last sentence of Par. 4, in the first sentence of Par. 7, and in the second sentence of Par. 10.
Explain the Inflection and Emphasis on the phrases parallel in construction, in the fifth and sixth sentences of Par. 7, and the second sentence of Par. 10.