r the foe. But the Irishmen's blood was
up, and some, at any cost, determined to reach the other side to get one
grip of the enemy, but what many of them thought to be the other bank
was merely the bank of a winding spruit, which took them no farther
towards the foe. The disappointment and rage was intense. Boom, boom,
went the cannons roaring their dirge of death; bang, bang, bellowed the
Naval battery in reply; rattling and raking came the bullets above the
heads of the plunging Irishmen; splash, splash, sang the cold muddy
water in their ears as they scrambled from rock to stone or swam for
dear life. All that gallantry could do was done, but there was no
appreciable advance with them, or indeed anywhere--ill-luck or bad
management frustrated the best efforts on every hand. Men fell in heaps;
horses with half their bodies blown away littered the veldt; the guns
were stuck fast--useless lumber, too valuable to leave, too heavy to get
away. Some say that had it not been for the action of the artillery
commander in taking a whole brigade division--three batteries--up at a
gallop to within 700 yards of the enemy's trenches, the day might still
have been ours. The valiant Irishmen would still have pursued their
risky advance. Others declared that the want of proper scouting caused
the whole fiasco, and that all the pluck of the Irish Brigade was so
much heroism wasted. They had no information relative to the
intrenchments of the place to be attacked by them, nor any conception of
the strength of the opposition they were liable to meet. No scouts
appear to have discovered the position of the ford by which they were
ordered to cross, or the nearness of the enemy to that point, and
consequently the brigade marched in quarter-column into the very jaws of
death, only deploying when shells had already begun to burst in their
midst. Like the guns of the Royal Artillery, they found themselves
before they were prepared in the midst of a close and deadly
fusillade--the more deadly and unnerving because on the clearest of days
not a whiff of smoke betrayed the quarters from whence the murderous
assaults were coming.

[Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE ATTEMPTED PASSAGE OF THE RIVER BY GENERAL
BULLER ON DECEMBER 15.]

General Barton's brigade, like Hart's and Hildyard's, failed to effect
its object. It was found impossible to obtain possession of Hlangwane
Hill, which was much more strongly held than it was believed to be. The
troops w