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Updated: June 17, 2025
Back there, under the shelter of the schooner, it was all very well to talk, and they had been very brave when they had all flung themselves upon Hoang. Here, face to face with the enemy, the sun striking off heliograph flashes from their knives and spades, it was a vastly different matter. The thing, to Wilbur's mind, should have been done suddenly if it was to be done at all.
Into his mind came the memory of something he had read of the heliograph, and of methods of signalling with mirrors Closely, now, he watched three flashes in quick succession pause two flashes pause one flash pause one flash pause two flashes pause three flashes pause. For several minutes the artist waited, his eyes fixed on the distant spot under the haze.
It was this that made them have recourse to the device of the heliograph. So three or four days passed before Muriel dared to approach M. Peyron's cottage. When she did at last go there with Felix, it was in the early morning, before the fierce tropical sun, that beat full on the island, had begun to exert its midday force and power.
As the midday gun was fired in the cantonment the flash of the heliograph from the peak told that the Takht-i-Shah was won. While Baker was sweeping the spur and climbing the lofty peak of the main ridge, his reserve, which remained in the plain, was in sharp action against masses of assailants from the city and other bodies from the villages about Beni Hissar.
The curious omission to inform White in Ladysmith that an attack on Colenso was to be made on December 15 may have arisen from Buller's doubts as to its issue, or from reluctance to heliograph a message in a cipher of which the enemy might have the key. The story of the Battle of Colenso is mainly the narrative of the action of two important components of the Army of Natal.
If we went to the left we could only advance 2,000 paces before being visible to the English on the kop close to Hopetown, from where they could make known our movements by heliograph. At our front, at our back, on our left, the outlook was hopeless; and to the right lay the cruel river.
Therefore they stayed blazing away at each other until the grey dawn gave place to swift sunrise. Then the Boers, who had a heliograph with them behind Intombi Spur, flashed to Bulwaan the signal "Maak Vecht," and our friend "Puffing Billy" as the big 6-inch Creusot is called promptly made fight in a way that was astonishing in a weapon whose grooves must be worn nearly smooth by frequent firing.
I pulled out the rest of the stuff; there was a complete heliograph apparatus, and a little red cap, such as the Algerians wear, satisfying us both that the man doing the work used the uniform of an Algerian. On leaving the room, carrying the stuff with us and going down stairs, we saw a box against the wall and I heard a funny noise from it as if it contained something alive.
There is no sound of fighting this side of the Tugela, only a few shells falling on Spion Kop, where Boer tents can be seen once more whitening the steep. We need no heliograph signal to tell us the meaning of all this.
After the roar of battle ceased on Tuesday, we knew by signs that could not be mistaken that Sir Redvers Buller had gained a great victory even before the heliograph flashed to us the glad tidings in his own words.
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