up to it. From the forking to the station
was a broken plain of two thousand yards. This plain had to be
overcome, with such assistance as the hills gave. The hills were pretty
uniform in height, and nowhere above thirty feet. The railway cut
directly through the main range, giving the enemy a field of fire for
his machine-guns. The range, with its double fold across our front,
gave the artillery cover, and enabled us to conceal the smallness of
our force; and on both sides of the station it broke into a wilderness
of little knobs and hollows, by which we might creep up.

The shrapnel was uncomfortably close as we crossed to the first sweep
of hilly ground. But it was bursting high, and no casualties occurred.
We halted behind the hills, and the artillery left their wagons, taking
their guns into position where the range curved north-westerly. Here
two four-gun batteries put up a slow and not heavy bombardment on the
station. We waited and watched the shrapnel bursting five hundred yards
to our right. About noon the Leicestershires were ordered to support
the 53rd and 51st Sikhs in an attack on the station. (The 56th Rifles
were in reserve throughout the action.) D Company was to move on the
left of the railway as a flank-guard, and went forward under Captain
Creagh.

I must now speak of Second-Lieutenant Fowke, our tallest subaltern. In
place of the orthodox shade of khaki he wore a reddish-brown
shooting-jacket, which shimmered like bright silk if there was any sun.
Nevertheless he was the only Leicestershire subaltern who went through
all our battles unwounded. Of his cheerfulness and courage, his wit,
and the love with which his colleagues and his men regarded him, the
reader will learn. Fowke was detached with his platoon to act on our
extreme left in co-operation with our handful of Indian cavalry. The
operation was an undesirable one, to advance into a maze of tiny hills,
held by an enemy of unknown strength; and as Fowke moved off I
remembered the Sieur de Joinville's _Memoirs_ and a passage mentioned
between us the previous day. So, as I wished him good luck, I said, 'Be
of good cheer, seneschal, for we shall yet talk over this day in the
ladies' bowers.' Once upon a time Fowke had read for Holy Orders, a
fact which contributed not a little to the astonishment and delight
with which he was regarded. He smiled gravely in answer to me, and
moved on. But after the scrap he told me that he wished just then that