ily made, the troops pushing
forward stubbornly behind a cloud of cavalry, and having to fight almost
every foot of the way.

On January 20th the division under Sir Charles Warren, a general of
great African experience, had reached and occupied the southern crests
of a high table-land stretching to the western hills of Ladysmith, and
on the 23rd this gallant force charged and took at the point of the
bayonet a huge hill known as Spion Kop, the key of the Boer position.

It was a daring feat, and was performed under cover of darkness with a
dash and daring equal to that shown by our lads at the heights of Alma,
when the Russian hordes were scattered and chased away as a disordered
rabble.

But ill-luck again attended our efforts. On our side the slope of Spion
Kop was so steep that it was scarcely possible to scale it, while to
hoist guns of large calibre to the top was an impossibility. On the
summit our troops manned the Boer trenches, and for a whole day kept
back the enemy, who again and again attacked it in great force. And all
the time every gun that could bear from their other positions poured in
a continuous hail of exploding shell, converting Spion Kop into a
veritable inferno, in which no man could live for long. Without many
batteries of powerful cannon the position was untenable, and after a
heroic and stubborn resistance our brave soldiers withdrew slowly and in
perfect order.

Then the whole force retired on the Tugela, and while the majority
returned to their camp at Chieveley, a division clung to the northern
bank of the river at Potgieter's Drift, and entrenched themselves, more
than doubly determined to break through the Boer position and relieve
their comrades in Ladysmith on a future occasion.

On our aide, during more than a week of stubborn fighting, the losses in
killed, wounded, and missing amounted to 1600, officers again forming a
large proportion of the casualties, an illustration, if a sad one, of
the glorious dash and courage shown in leading their men.

Within little more than a week after leaving Natal, Jack Somerton and
the staff-officer whom he had met on board the transport were seated in
the train _en route_ for Lord Methuen's camp on the Modder River. It
was a long and tedious run--now crawling along the iron track, and
scaling steep acclivities which barred their onward progress, and round
the sides of which the railway could be seen winding in and out, and
later rattling