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Updated: May 16, 2025
Fortunately they were in heliographic communication with Oliphant's Nek, and learned upon the 23rd that Babington had been ordered to their relief. All day Cunninghame's men were under a long-range fire, but on the 24th Babington appeared, and the British force was successfully extricated, having seventy-five casualties.
On the further side of this wood was a little sloping plain not more than three hundred paces wide, and beyond it lay the seaward Nek through which they must pass on their journey to the stead.
Their vigorous resistance foiled the enterprise and Delarey was driven off. Soon, however, the sound of firing on the heights showed that the Northumberland Fusilier posts on each side of the Nek were in action.
In anticipation of such a development one field-battery had been placed on the rough slope that juts northward from Range Post, through which runs the main road to Colenso in the south and to several of the Drakensberg passes in the west. Up through a gorge deeply fretted by Klip River this battery commanded the long bare nek.
Then about a hundred of his men formed up to charge the ridge-according to the 58th's precedent at the Nek; but as they dashed forward they opened out in a long line, which was a considerable improvement on the 58th's tactics; when they had gotten to within 200 yards of the ridge the concealed Boers opened out on them and emptied 20 saddles.
In front of them, hardly visible, stretched a long black kopje. It was the very Nicholson's Nek which they had come to occupy. Carleton and Adye must have heaved a sigh of relief as they realised that they had actually struck it. The force was but two hundred yards from the position, and all had gone without a hitch.
The battle began at three in the afternoon, and continued without intermission through the whole night. The vessels, drifting together, struck on the shoal called the Nek, near Wydeness. In the heat of the action the occurrence was hardly heeded.
On the 30th of October the Boers had already mounted a 40-pounder gun on Peppworth's Hill, north of the town, with which on that day they opened fire at a distance of over 6,000 yards, much outranging the army field artillery. It was in connection with the general sortie of the garrison to seize that position that the disaster of Nicholson's Nek was incurred.
On the same day that De la Rey made his coup at Uitval's Nek, Grobler had shown his presence on the north side of the town by treating very roughly a couple of squadrons of the 7th Dragoon Guards which had attacked him.
Yes, it is very good, nothing could be better, for I know the off-saddling place by the stream in Tiger's Nek, and it is a nice place for men to hide behind the rocks and trees. Listen now for the plan, and be sure you understand it. When these people are off-saddled and eating their food, you Kaffirs will fall on them with the spear and the kerry alone, mind and they will come to their end."
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