So the soldiers succoured the Boer wounded, and we told the prisoners that they would be shown courtesy and kindness worthy of brave men and a famous quarrel.  The Boer dead were collected and a flag of truce was sent to the enemy’s lines to invite a burying and identification party at dawn.  I have often seen dead men, killed in war—­thousands at Omdurman—­scores elsewhere, black and white, but the Boer dead aroused the most painful emotions.  Here by the rock under which he had fought lay the Field Cornet of Heilbronn, Mr. de Mentz—­a grey-haired man of over sixty years, with firm aquiline features and a short beard.  The stony face was grimly calm, but it bore the stamp of unalterable resolve; the look of a man who had thought it all out, and was quite certain that his cause was just, and such as a sober citizen might give his life for.  Nor was I surprised when the Boer prisoners told me that Mentz had refused all suggestions of surrender, and that when his left leg was smashed by a bullet he had continued to load and fire until he bled to death; and they found him, pale and bloodless, holding his wife’s letter in his hand.  Beside him was a boy of about seventeen shot through the heart.  Further on lay our own two poor riflemen with their heads smashed like eggshells; and I suppose they had mothers or wives far away at the end of the deep-sea cables.  Ah, horrible war, amazing medley of the glorious and the squalid, the pitiful and the sublime, if modern men of light and leading saw your face closer, simple folk would see it hardly ever.

It could not be denied that the cavalry had scored a brilliant success.  We had captured twenty-four, killed ten, and wounded eight—­total, forty-two.  Moreover, we had seen the retreating Boers dragging and supporting their injured friends from the field, and might fairly claim fifteen knocked out of time, besides those in our hands, total fifty-seven; a fine bag, for which we had had to pay scarcely anything.  Two soldiers of the Mounted Infantry killed; one trooper of the Imperial Light Horse slightly, and one officer, Captain Shore—­the twenty-third officer of this regiment hit during the last three months—­severely wounded.

CHAPTER XVII

THE BATTLE OF SPION KOP

Venter’s Spruit:  January 25, 1900.

It is the remarkable characteristic of strong races, as of honourable men, to keep their tempers in the face of disappointment, and never to lose a just sense of proportion; and it is, moreover, the duty of every citizen in times of trouble to do or say or even to think nothing that can weaken or discourage the energies of the State.  Sir Redvers Buller’s army has met with another serious check in the attempt to relieve Ladysmith.  We have approached, tested, and assailed the Boer positions beyond the Tugela, fighting more or less continuously for five days, and the result is that we find they cannot be pierced from