have been aware of their existence, received the alarm and opened fire.  Possibly the situation might have been saved if an order to charge had been given at once, and the Highlanders had heard the skirl of the pipes; but Wauchope had at the first shot rushed forward impetuously towards the flashing Mausers.  With his life he measured the unknown distance to the trenches, and at the supreme moment his Highlanders lost their leader and knew not whom to follow.

The sudden stroke of the impact falling upon men of dissimilar temperament reacted on them diversely.  The majority absorbed it by throwing themselves upon the ground on which they stood; others recoiled mechanically upon the companies in rear; while to not a few it was a stimulus which projected them into the jaws of death gaping before them in the dim light.  A mixed body, hardly exceeding the strength of three companies, pushed on in obedience to the last words that fell from Wauchope’s lips, to reinforce the right; and succeeded in wriggling round the eastward flank of the enemy’s advanced trenches and in shattering a foreign contingent in the Boer service which was holding the gap of level ground between the low arc and the Magersfontein Ridge.  The little force of progressives came under the fire of the British guns which opened upon the ridge at daybreak, but a remnant under Wilson drove a keen-edged but slender wedge into the curve of the Boer position, and was favourably placed to storm the ridge.  A few score of Highlanders were now fingering the key with which it seemed possible to unlock the sluice gates and allow the flood waters of war to overwhelm the foe.  But War is a game of chance.  The key was snatched away and the issue of the day reversed by a man who had lost his way.

In the absence of Delarey, who was absent at Kimberley, P. Cronje was in chief command of the Boer forces.  His Head-Quarters were at Brown’s Drift on the Modder, six miles from the key of the position on Magersfontein.  The sound of the bombardment notified him that an infantry attack was imminent, and he hurried off to make the final arrangements for meeting it.  These he seems to have completed to his satisfaction, and he rested for an hour or two, rising soon after midnight.  In the darkness and rain he lost his way on the unfamiliar ground.  But chance found him at daybreak close to the gap which Wilson’s little band of Highlanders had hewn in his line, and their promising advance was effectually repressed, as they were simultaneously fired on by Cronje’s escort on their front and by a commando which had come up on their right rear.

Daylight found the shattered and dismembered Highland Brigade lying in patches upon the veld, with their leader dead before their eyes; themselves unable to advance or retreat, conspicuous, hungry, thirsty, and soon to be scorched by the midsummer sun at the zenith; and there they lay for eight hours.  Only the shells of the artillery, which from daylight onwards played upon the trenches and partially mastered the fire from them, saved the Highland Brigade from destruction.