Major Childe accepted his orders with alacrity, and started forth on what seemed, as I watched from a grassy ridge, a most desperate enterprise.  The dark brown mass of Bastion Hill appeared to dominate the plain.  On its crest the figures of the Boers could be seen frequently moving about.  Other spurs to either flanks looked as if they afforded facilities for cross fire.  And to capture this formidable position we could dismount only about a hundred and fifty men; and had, moreover, no artillery support of any kind.  Yet as one examined the hill it became evident that its strength was apparent rather than real.  Its slopes were so steep that they presented no good field of fire.  Its crest was a convex curve, over and down which the defenders must advance before they could command the approaches, and when so advanced they would be exposed without shelter of any kind to the fire of the covering troops.  The salient was so prominent and jutted out so far from the general line of hills, and was besides shaped so like a blunted redan, that its front face was secure from flanking fire.  In fact there was plenty of dead ground in its approaches, and, moreover, dongas—­which are the same as nullahs in India or gullies in Australia—­ran agreeably to our wishes towards the hill in all directions.  When first we had seen the hill three days before we had selected it as a weak point in the Dutch line.  It afterwards proved that the Boers had no illusions as to its strength and had made their arrangements accordingly.

So soon as the dismounted squadrons had begun their advance, Colonel Byng led the two who were to cover it forward.  The wood we were to reach and find shelter in was about a thousand yards distant, and had been reported unoccupied by the Boers, who indeed confined themselves strictly to the hills after their rough handling on the 18th by the cavalry.  We moved off at a walk, spreading into a wide open order, as wise colonial cavalry always do.  And it was fortunate that our formation was a dispersed one, for no sooner had we moved into the open ground than there was the flash of a gun faraway among the hills to the westward.  I had had some experience of artillery fire in the armoured train episode, but there the guns were firing at such close quarters that the report of the discharge and the explosion of the shell were almost simultaneous.  Nor had I ever heard the menacing hissing roar which heralds the approach of a long-range projectile.  It came swiftly, passed overhead with a sound like the rending of thin sheets of iron, and burst with a rather dull explosion in the ground a hundred yards behind the squadrons, throwing up smoke and clods of earth.  We broke into a gallop, and moved in curving course towards the wood.  I suppose we were a target a hundred yards broad by a hundred and fifty deep.  The range was not less than seven thousand yards, and we were at the gallop.  Think of this, Inspector-General of Artillery:  the Boer gunners fired ten or eleven