it. Then at once above the average fusillade and
cannonade rose the extraordinary rattling roll of Mauser musketry in
great volume. If the reader wishes to know exactly what this is like he
must drum the fingers of both his hands on a wooden table, one after
the other as quickly and as hard as he can. I turned my telescope on the
Dutch defences. They were no longer deserted. All along the rim of the
trenches, clear cut and jet black, against the sky stood a crowded line
of slouch-hatted men, visible as far as their shoulders, and wielding
what looked like thin sticks.

Far below by the red ironwork of the railway bridge--2,000 yards, at
least, from the trenches--the surface of the ground was blurred and
dusty. Across the bridge the Infantry were still moving, but no longer
slowly--they were running for their lives. Man after man emerged from
the sheltered railroad, which ran like a covered way across the enemy's
front, into the open and the driving hail of bullets, ran the gauntlet
and dropped down the embankment on the further side of the bridge into
safety again. The range was great, but a good many soldiers were hit and
lay scattered about the ironwork of the bridge. 'Pom-pom-pom,'
'pom-pom-pom,' and so on, twenty times went the Boer automatic gun, and
the flights of little shells spotted the bridge with puffs of white
smoke. But the advancing Infantry never hesitated for a moment, and
continued to scamper across the dangerous ground, paying their toll
accordingly. More than sixty men were shot in this short space. Yet this
was not the attack. This was only the preliminary movement across the
enemy's front.

The enemy's shells, which occasionally burst on the advanced kopje, and
a whistle of stray bullets from the left, advised us to change our
position, and we moved a little further down the slope towards the
river. Here the bridge was no longer visible. I looked towards the
hill-top, whence the roar of musketry was ceaselessly proceeding. The
Artillery had seen the slouch hats, too, and forgetting their usual
apathy in the joy of a live target, concentrated a most hellish and
terrible fire on the trenches.

Meanwhile the afternoon had been passing. The Infantry had filed
steadily across the front, and the two leading battalions had already
accumulated on the eastern spurs of Inniskilling Hill. At four o'clock
General Hart ordered the attack, and the troops forthwith began to
climb the slopes. The broken ground