lliam Tell, and they had a mind to be
the swivel by which the army of Queen Victoria should swing from almost
perpetual disaster, in large and small degree, to victory.

From the first trenches on and on to the second trenches higher up! But
here the Boer in his burrow with his mauser rifle roaring, and his
heart fierce with hatred and anger at the surprise, laid down to the
bloody work with an ugly determination to punish remorselessly his
fellow-citizens of the veld and the others. It was a fire which only
bullet-proof men could stand, and these were but breasts of flesh and
muscle, though the will was iron.

Up, up, and up, struggled these men of the indomitable will. Step by
step, while man after man fell wounded or dead, they pushed forward,
taking what cover was possible; firing as steadily as at Aldershot;
never wasting shots, keeping the eye vigilant for the black slouch hat
above the rocks, which told that a Boer's head was beneath it, and
might be caught by a lightning shot.

Step by step, man by man, troop by troop, they came nearer to the
hedges of stone behind which an inveterate foe with grim joy saw a
soldier fall to his soft-nosed bullet; while far down behind these men
of a forlorn hope there was hurrying up artillery which would presently
throw its lyddite and its shrapnel on the top of the hill up where
hundreds of Boers held, as they thought, an impregnable position. At
last with rushes which cost them almost as dearly in proportion as the
rush at Balaclava cost the Light Brigade, Byng's men reached the top,
mad with the passion of battle, vengeful in spirit because of the
comrades they had lost; and the trenches emptied before them. As they
were forsaken, men fought hand to hand and as savagely as ever men
fought in the days of Rustum.

In one corner, the hottest that the day saw, Rudyard and Barry Whalen
and a scattered handful of men threw themselves upon a greatly larger
number of the enemy. For a moment a man here and there fought for his
life against two or three of the foe. Of these were Rudyard and Barry
Whalen. The khaki of the former was shot through in several places, he
had been slashed in the cheek by a bullet, and a bullet had also passed
through the muscle of his left forearm; but he was scarcely conscious
of it. It seemed as though Fate would let no harm befall him; but, in
the very moment, when on another part of the ridge his men were waving
their hats in victory, three Boers sp