enches, to a condition of pitiable impotence.
Only the third field-battery and the Naval battery could move, and these
were quickly drawn off to a place of safety. Amidst this scene of
tragedy and uproar the Devons and West Surrey were steadily pursuing
their way with a heroism that absolutely defies description. The enemy
was driven out of the platelayers' and surrounding houses, and Colenso
village was cleared. What the guns failed to do the bayonet
accomplished, and before the glint of the steel--the cold, stern steel
they so much dread--the Boers had bolted. But all around them Krupps and
Maxims and Hotchkiss guns were still working hard, spouting and
shrieking, and tearing earth and men and horses, and throwing them
together in one horrible, hideous heap.

Certainly the advance of Hildyard's men was a noble achievement. Their
effort to capture the road bridge and hold the village of Colenso in
face of a scene of carnage was an act of splendid courage and
determination; but they were assailed with so deadly a storm of shot and
shell that they had no choice but to retire. Though they had imagined
the village to be evacuated, the place had been swarming with Boers,
they evidently having expected to be attacked in this quarter. Not only
were they strongly intrenched, but the guns on the surrounding hills
commanded the position, and when the Boers were temporarily routed the
guns still continued to sweep the whole place with such unerring
accuracy and fierceness that the ground was thickly strewn with the
bodies of the mangled. Until those guns could be silenced, efforts of
the infantry were so much waste of valiant flesh and blood; but our
power to silence them was at an end. The guns of the 14th and 66th
Batteries were doomed. They had, as before said, been approached too
close to the river, and thus been exposed to the unerring rifle-fire of
the Boer mercenaries. The attack was immediately returned, but before
long the whole party, officers, gunners, and horses, were simply mown
down. As fast as more horses were brought up they were annihilated. In
addition to this the gunners ran short of ammunition. To await the
arrival of this, such survivors as there were doubled back to the
shelter of a donga twenty yards in their rear. At that time there was
no intention of abandoning the guns. Superb were the efforts made to
save them. Three officers rushed forward into the open, and, with some
heroic drivers and such horses a