must share the
credit to some extent, however, with two small bodies of men already
mentioned, who happened to be on Waggon Hill neither for fighting nor
watch-keeping--the few bluejackets of H.M.S. _Powerful_ in charge of the
big gun which had been brought up that night for mounting there, and the
handful of Royal Engineers under Lieutenants Digby-Jones and Dennis,
preparing the necessary epaulements for that weapon. When firing began,
the gun being still on its waggon, all that could be done was to outspan
its team of oxen. Then bluejackets and sappers, seizing each his rifle,
took their places behind slight earthworks, prepared to fight it out
manfully. The only tribute they need ask for is that their roll of dead
and wounded may be borne in memory. Out of thirty all told, the Royal
Engineers lost two officers killed and fifteen men wounded. Of the few
sailors, one was killed and one wounded. This record seems hard to beat;
but the Imperial Light Horse could point to heaps of dead and maimed in
proof of the dauntless stand they made, for the living continued to
fight where their gallant comrades fell, scorning to quit an inch of
ground to the Boers, though they knew by the rifle fire flashing round
them in the darkness that they were hopelessly outnumbered from the
first. Their brigadier speaks of them as men with no nerves at all. When
one was hit, another stepped quietly up to his place and went on
shooting as if at target-practice, though he had no more cover than a
small stone to lie behind; and this happened not once but a score of
times, the officers taking an equal share in the fight with their men,
who speak with pride of the gallantry shown by Captains de Rothe and
Codrington, Lieutenants Webb, Pakeman, Adams, Campbell, and Richardson,
and the active veteran Major Doveton, who cheered his men on after he
had received two bullet wounds, one of which shattered his fore-arm and
shoulder.

By that time the sun was rising above Bulwaan in a halo of orange,
crimson, and purple, and men could count the grim faces of their
enemies. Ladysmith was aroused at dawn by the rattle of incessant rifle
fire rolling along Bester's Ridge from end to end. Up to that time no
big guns had spoken on either side, and people came out of their houses
slowly, in sulky humour at having their rest disturbed before the
conventional hour for shelling to begin. While they listened to the
continuous crackling as of damp sticks in a huge bo