caprice of one of these shrieking iron devils would be most trying to anyone.  But apparently you can get accustomed to anything.  The regiment where the officer had been killed a few minutes before was less cheerful and callous.  The little group of officers crouching in the scanty shelter had seen one of their number plucked out of their midst and slain—­uselessly as it seemed.  They advised us to take cover, which we would gladly have done had there been any worth speaking of; for at this moment the Boers discharged their Vickers-Maxim gun—­the ’pom-pom’—­and I have never heard such an extraordinary noise.  Seven or eight bangs, a rattle, an amazing cluttering and whistling overhead, then the explosions of the little shells, which scarred the opposite hillside in a long row of puffs of brown dust and blue-white smoke, suggesting a lash from a knotted scourge.

‘Look out!’ we were told, ‘they always follow that with a shell.’  And so they did, but it passed overhead without harming anyone.  Again the Vickers-Maxim flung its covey of projectiles.  Again we crouched for the following shell; but this time it did not come—­immediately.  I had seen quite enough, however, so we bade our friends good luck—­never good-bye on active service—­and hurried, slowly, on account of appearances, from this unhealthy valley.  As we reached our horses I saw another shell burst among the infantry.  After that there was another interval.  Further on we met a group of soldiers returning to their regiment One lad of about nineteen was munching a biscuit.  His right trouser leg was soaked with blood, I asked whether he was wounded.  ’No, sir; it’s only blood from an officer’s head,’ he answered, and went on—­eating his biscuit.  Such were the fortunes for four days of the two brigades forming Warren’s left attack.

I have already written a general account of the final action of Spion Kop on January 24, and have little to add.  As soon as the news spread through the camps that the British troops were occupying the top of the mountain I hurried to Gun Hill, where the batteries were arrayed, and watched the fight from a flank.  The spectacle was inconsiderable but significant.  It was like a shadow peep-show.  Along the mighty profile of the hill a fringe of little black crotchets advanced.  Then there were brown and red smudges of dust from shells striking the ground and white puffs from shrapnel bursting in the air—­variations from the black and white.  Presently a stretcher borne by five tiny figures jerks slowly forward, silhouetted on the sky-line; more shells; back goes the stretcher laden, a thicker horizontal line than before.  Then—­a rush of crotchets rearwards—­one leading two mules, mules terrified, jibbing, hanging back—­all in silhouette one moment, the next all smudged with dust cloud; God help the driver; shadows clear again; driver still dragging mules—­no, only one mule now; other figures still running rearwards.  Suddenly reinforcements arrive, hundreds of them; the whole sky-line bristles with crotchets moving swiftly along it, bending forward almost double, as if driving through a hailstorm.  Thank heaven for that—­only just in time too—­and then more smudges on the shadow screen.