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Conspicuous for pluck among the bravest, he met death where he had faced it in nearly every action since joining this force with the righting line. Of all who fell dead or mortally wounded in the heroic defence of Bester's Ridge, none will be more sincerely mourned than he. The civilians of Ladysmith join with the troops in expressions of respectful sympathy to Lord Dufferin and his family.
Just as Colonel Metcalfe arrived at Cæsar's Camp, with four companies of the Rifle Brigade to reinforce and prolong our fighting line, the Boer gunners turned their attention to another point, where, in the low ground among trees by Klip River, Major Abdy was bringing the 53rd Field Battery into action. This proved to be the turning-point of the fight on the eastern spur of Bester's Ridge.
This afternoon I paid a visit to Brigadier-General Hamilton in his tent beside the Manchesters on Cæsar's Camp. Through all the glorious history of their services in Flanders, the Peninsula, the Crimea, or Afghanistan, men of the gallant 63rd have never done harder work than on breezy Bester's Ridge, where they have furnished outposts and fatigue parties every day for four weary months.
One company of the Imperial Light Horse, being on outpost duty south of Waggon Hill, had conceived the idea of a midnight raid on Bester's Farm, whence the Boers, after an effective occupation of several weeks, had retired, leaving a Red Cross flag still attached to a thorn bush in the garden, by way of suggesting that poultry and pigs should be regarded as under the protection of the Geneva Convention.
Noon passed without any Majuba Day salute, but an hour later Bulwaan battery fired twelve shots up Bester's Valley at cattle and men cutting grass, then turned to shell Cove Ridge and Observation Hill, on which one of Captain Christie's howitzers had been mounted during the night. Thus they made up a salute of twenty-one guns. "Puffing Billy" seemed bent on showing what he could do.
Many a brave fellow, who had fought and won at Dundee or at Elandslaagte, who with fierce, courage had endured in the foremost line in the struggle at Bester's Ridge, now fell a victim to enteric fever or dysentery in the camp at Intombi.
Our defences begin to take shape, so that their strong and weak points can be estimated. Southward is a long brown hog-backed hill, which the local people call Bester's Ridge, though military authorities divide it into Cæsar's Camp, with Maiden's Castle forming a spur in the inner curve towards Ladysmith, and Waggon Hill.
Yesterday numbers of Boers were seen retiring from Pieter's Station across the ridges towards Bester's Valley, but no sign of a general retreat yet beyond the report of scouts, who say that several guns have been seen going back at a gallop behind Bulwaan, followed by nearly two hundred waggons. Last night we heard rifle-firing on the ridges south of Cæsar's Camp and Waggon Hill.
If the supports swarming thickly in Bester's Valley and the kloofs behind Mounted Infantry Hill had come on with anything like the determination shown by the intrepid 500 who first seized Waggon Hill, there must have been many anxious moments for our General.
It takes time, he says, 'but I flatter myself that any men who have worked under me are at least grounded in the rudiments of their profession. Adrian, he says, 'was there anything wrong with the men who upset Van Bester's applecart last month when he was trying to cross the line to join Piper with those horses he'd stole from Gabbitas? "'No, Generaal, says Van Zyl.
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