ly three-quarters of a mile. Colonel Brander at first
considered the practicability of delaying the attack on the main wall
until the Gurkhas had completed their flanking movements, cleared the
Tibetans out of the sangars that enfiladed our advance in the valley,
and reached a position on the hills beyond the wall, whence they could
fire into the enemy's rear. But the cliffs were so sheer that the ascent
was deemed impracticable, and the next morning it was decided to make a
frontal attack without waiting for the Gurkhas to turn the flank. No one
for a moment thought it could be done.

The troops marched out of camp at ten o'clock. One company of the 32nd
Pioneers, under Captain Cullen, was detailed to attack on the right,
and a second company, under Captain Bethune, to follow the river-bed,
where they were under cover of the high bank until within 400 yards of
the wall, and then rush the centre of the position. The 1st Mounted
Infantry, under Captain Ottley, were to follow this company along the
valley. The guns, Maxims, and one company of the 32nd in reserve,
occupied a small plateau in the centre. Half a company of the 8th
Gurkhas were left behind to guard the camp. A second half-company, under
Major Row, were sent along the hillside on the left to attack the
enemy's extreme right sangar, but their progress over the shifting shale
slopes and jagged rocks was so slow that the front attack did not wait
for them.

The fire from the wall was very heavy, and the advance of Cullen's and
Bethune's companies was checked. Bethune sent half a company back, and
signalled to the mounted infantry to retire. Then, compelled by some
fatal impulse, he changed his mind, and with half a company left the
cover of the river-bed and rushed out into the open within forty yards
of the main wall, exposed to a withering fire from three sides. His
half-company held back, and Bethune fell shot through the head with only
four men by his side--a bugler, a store-office babu, and two devoted
Sikhs. What the clerk was doing there no one knows, but evidently the
soldier in the man had smouldered in suppression among the office files
and triumphed splendidly. It was a gallant reckless charge against
uncounted odds. Poor Bethune had learnt to despise the Tibetans' fire,
and his contempt was not unnatural. On the march to Gyantse the enemy
might have been firing blank cartridges for all the effect they had left
on our men. At Dzama Tang Bethune had ma