The remnants of them were struggling to get away in the twilight over a bit of rocky plain on our left. There the Dragoon Guards got them, and three times went through. A Dragoon Guards corporal who was there tells me the Boers fell off their horses and rolled among the rocks, hiding their heads in their arms and calling for mercy—calling to be shot, anything to escape the stab of those terrible lances. But not many escaped. "We just gave them a good dig as they lay," were the corporal's words. Next day most of the lances were bloody.
The victory was ours. We had gained a stony and muddy little hill strewn with the bodies of dead and wounded peasants, clerks, lawyers, and other kinds of men. Most were from Johannesburg. Nearly all spoke English like their native language. In one corner on the slope of the hill towards their little camp and waggons I counted fourteen dead together. In one of the tents were three dead men, all killed by the same shell, apparently whilst asleep. Yet I do not think there were more than thirty actually killed among the rocks in all. It is true that darkness fell rapidly, and the rain was blinding; but I was nearly two hours on the ground moving about. The wounded lay very thick, groaning and appealing for help. In coming down I nearly trod on the upturned white face of an old white-bearded man. He was lying quite silent, with a kind of dignity. We asked who he was. He said: "I am Kock, the father of Judge Kock. No, I am not the commandant. He is the commandant." But the old man was wrong. He himself had been in command, though instead of fighting he had read the Bible and prayed. One bullet had passed through his shoulder, another through his groin. So he lay still and read no more. Near him was a boy with a hand just a mixture of shreds and bones and blood. But he too was very quiet, and only asked for a handkerchief to bind it together. Others were gradually dying. Many were not found till daylight. The dead of both sides lay unburied till Monday.
In the mud and stones just above the captured guns, General French stood giving directions for the bivouac, and dictating a message to Sir George White praising the troops, especially the infantry who had been commanded by Colonel Ian Hamilton. The assemble kept sounding over the hill, and Gordons tried to sift themselves from Manchesters, and Light Horse from Devons. All were shouting and questioning and calling to each other in the dark. Soon they settled down; the Boers had left scores of saddles, coats, and Kaffir blankets, provisions, too, water-bottles, chickens, and in one case a flask of carbolic disinfectant, which a British soldier analysed as "furrin wine." So, on the whole, the fellows made themselves fairly comfortable in spite of the cold and wet. Then I felt my way down over the rocks, taking care, if possible, not to tread on anything human, and then sought out the difficult twelve-mile track to Ladysmith over the veldt and hills, lighted towards midnight by a waning and clouded moon.
CHAPTER V
BATTLE OF TINTA INYONI
LADYSMITH, October 27, 1899.
If you want to "experience a shock," as the doctors say, be with the head of a column advancing leisurely along a familiar road only six miles from camp, and have a shell flung almost at your feet from a neighbouring mountain top. That was my fortune about the breakfast time of peaceable citizens last Tuesday morning. A squadron of Lancers and some of the Natal Carbineers were in front. Just behind me a battery was rumbling along. A little knot of the staff was close by, and we were all just preparing to halt. We stood on the Newcastle road, north of the town, not far from our first position at the Elands Laagte battle of the Saturday before. The road is close to the railway there, and I was watching an engine and truck going down with a white-flag flying, bringing back poor Colonel Chisholme's body for burial. Suddenly on the left from the top of a mountain side beyond a long rocky ridge I saw the orange flash of a big gun. The next moment came the familiar buzz and scream of a great shell, the crash, the squealing fragments, the dust splashing up all round us as they fell. I have never seen men and horses gallop faster than in our rapid right-wheel over the open ground towards a Kaffir kraal. I think only one horse was badly hurt, but at no military tournament have I seen artillery move in such excellent style. It was all over in a minute. The Boers must have measured the range to a yard, and just have kept that gun loaded and waiting.
But in tactics jokes may be mistakes. That shot revealed the enemy's position. Within ten minutes our gunners had snipt the barbed wire fences along the railway, had dashed their guns across, and were dragging them up that low rocky ridge—say, 300ft. to 400ft. high—which had now so suddenly become our front and fighting position. Three field batteries went up, and close behind them came the Gloucesters on the right, a few companies of the second 60th (K.R.R.) the Liverpools and the Devons in order on the centre and left. On our right we had some of the 19th Hussars and 5th Lancers; on our left a large mixed force of the mounted Natal Volunteers, who were soon strongly engaged in a small valley at the end of the ridge, and suffered a good deal all day. But the chief work and credit lay with our guns. Till they got into position, found the range and began to fire, the enemy's shells kept dropping over the ridge and plumping into the ground. None were so successful as the first, and only few of them burst, but shells are very unpleasant, and it was a relief when at the second or third shot from our batteries we found the enemy's shells had ceased to arrive. We had destroyed the limber, if not the gun, and after that the shells were all on one side. Some say the Boers had two guns, but I only saw one myself, and I watched it as a mouse watches a cat. One does.