back to a new site
to support the 13th, Lieutenant J. F. A. Higgins, having been left
with the team in the donga, succeeded in righting the gun, and
restored it to its place in the line. A few minutes previously,
Captain W. Thwaites, with six men, had ridden forward, and now
returned, bringing with him on a new limber the gun which had been
disabled in the open. Only the old limber and a wagon of stores
remained derelict.

[Sidenote: The Infantry, under the protection of the guns, get away.]

[Sidenote: The Naval guns appear and silence the Boers.]

So covered, the infantry had been getting away with unimpaired
discipline, but in great confusion, owing to the intermixture of units
and the extreme exhaustion of the men. Two Maxims were abandoned, but
useless, on the kopjes--those of the Leicestershire regiment and 2nd
King's Royal Rifles--the mules of both having been shot or stampeded
by the last outburst from the Boer lines. The enemy made no serious
attempt to follow up the retirement. Some Boers did indeed speed
forward to the now empty kopjes, and began shooting rapidly from
thence, but under the fine practice of the 13th battery the musketry
soon dwindled. The Creusot on Pepworth Hill sounded on the right, and
every part of the route to be traversed by the troops lay within range
of its projectiles. About noon, a report, as loud as that of the great
French cannon itself, came from the direction of the town, and the
batteries on Pepworth sank immediately to silence under the repeated
strokes of shells from British Naval guns. Captain the Honourable
Hedworth Lambton, R.N., had detrained his command of two 4.7-in.,
three 12-pr. 12-cwt. quick-firing guns, with some smaller pieces, 16
officers and 267 men at 10 a.m., the very time when the enemy's 6-in.
shells were bursting over the railway station.[132] After conferring
with Colonel Knox, he was in two hours on his way towards the fight
with the 12-pounders, reaching the place held by Hamilton's brigade.
But in view of the imminent retirement, this was too far forward, and
Lambton was ordered back. Whilst he was in the act of Withdrawing,
the gunners on Pepworth, descrying the strings of moving bullocks,
launched a shell which pitched exactly upon one of the guns, and
tumbled it over. Lambton, however, coming into action nearer the town,
opened heavily and accurately on his antagonist, and reduced him to
immediate silence.

[Footnote 132: Rear-Admiral Sir