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Up on the bullet-swept hill the long fringes of fighting men took no more heed of the elements than would two bulldogs who have each other by the throat. Up the greasy hillside, foul with mud and with blood, came the Boer reserves, and up the northern slope came our own reserve, the Devon Regiment, fit representatives of that virile county.
Kelly left his wounded, and Jenkyns, the young civilian, took again a sword and pistol, and with the boy Hamilton as their leader, and with twelve staunch and true men of the Guides behind them, they opened the door. Then charging forth, they quickly crossed the bullet-swept courtyard, and fell with fury on the amazed gunners and the crowd behind the wall.
In that race through that bullet-swept zone I felt a common bond of kinship with the Irish soldier who was running as fast as his legs could carry him from the Battle of the Wilderness in the American Civil War and General Sherman, noticing him, turned his horse in the direction of the fleeing soldier and halted him up. "Here, you soldier, what are you running away for?"
Corporal Sam lifted his bleeding fist and struck him across the mouth. The sergeant dragged the two apart, slipped an arm under his comrade's, and led him away as one leads a child. A moment later the surge of the retreating crowd had almost carried them off their feet. But the sergeant kept a tight hold, and steered his friend back every yard of the way along the bullet-swept foreshore.
He conceived of himself as wounded, though not fatally, and carried to the rear out of some bullet-swept firing-line. He was just twenty-three years of age. Adventure had its fascination, and the world was still a place full of splendid possibilities. At the end of his two days of dreaming he returned, flushed with his great purposes, to the realities of life.
Many withdrew down the hill, running the gauntlet of the enemy's fire as they emerged from the boulders on to the open ground, while others clung to their positions, some from a soldierly hope that victory might finally incline to them, others because it was clearly safer to lie among the rocks than to cross the bullet-swept spaces beyond.
I believe upon my soul the general chose him for the duty, so that the fellow might set himself right. There were three hundred yards of bullet-swept flat ground, and a message to be carried across them. Had Wilmington toppled off his horse on the way, why, there were the whispers silenced for ever. Had he ridden through alive he earned distinction besides. But he didn't dare; he refused!
No officer could have compelled the men to undertake such a hazardous journey across a bullet-swept plain, but Oelfse and Sheppard acted on their own responsibility, succeeded in reaching the Krugersdorp commando without being hit, and gave to the commandant the information which undoubtedly saved him and his men from being captured.
It is the warfare of Nicholson's Nek, not that of Laffan's Plain, which has to be learned in the future. During those weary hours lying on the bullet-swept hill and listening to the eternal hissing in the air and clicking on the rocks, the British soldiers could see the fight which raged to the south of them.
Then, while his voice rose to its highest, while he seemed, out there alone in the bullet-swept street, a very incarnation of the battle spirit the end came for him. He flung up his arms, rose, staggered towards the shelter of the churchyard, turned half round in the direction of the men who fired at him, and dropped dead. Lord Dunseveric stepped forward and tapped Neal on the shoulder.
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