“Throw up your hands and surrender.”  The language was English, but the accent was Dutch; a moment, an awful second of time, the rifle barrels gleamed coldly towards that little group of men, who stood their ground as pine trees stand on their mountain sides in bonny Scotland.  Then out on the African air there rang a voice, proud, clear, and high as clarion note:  “Fix bayonets, Gordons!” Like lightning the strong hands gripped the ready steel; the bayonets went home to the barrel as the lips of lover to lover.  Rifles spoke from the Boer lines, and men reeled a pace from the British and fell, and lay where they fell.  Again that voice with the Scottish burr on every note:  “Charge, Gordons!  Charge!” and the dauntless Scotchman rushed on at the head of his fiery few.  The Boer’s heart is a brave heart, and he who calls them cowards lies; but never before had they faced so grim a charge, never before had they seen a torrent of steel advancing on their lines in front of a tornado of flesh and blood.  On rushed the Scots, on over fallen comrades, on over rocks and clefts, on to the ranks of the foe, and onward through them, sweeping them down as I have seen wild horses sweep through a field of ripening corn.  The bayonets hissed as they crashed through breastbone and backbone.  Vainly the Boer clubbed his rifle and smote back.  As well might the wild goat strike with puny hoofs when the tiger springs.  Nothing could stay the fury of that desperate rush.  Do you sneer at the Boers?  Then sneer at half the armies of Europe, for never yet have Scotland’s sons been driven back when once they reached a foe to smite.

How do they charge, these bare-legged sons of Scotia?  Go ask the hills of Afghanistan, and if there be tongues within them they will tell you that they sweep like hosts from hell.  Ask in sneering Paris, and the red records of Waterloo will give you answer.  Ask in St. Petersburg, and from Sebastopol your answer will come.  They thought of the dreary morning hours of Magersfontein, and they smote the steel downwards through the neck into the liver.  They thought of the row of comrades in the graves beside the Modder, and they gave the Boers the “haymaker’s lift,” and tossed the dead body behind them.  They thought of gallant Wauchope riddled with lead, and they sent the cold steel, with a horrible crash, through skull and brain, leaving the face a thing to make fiends shudder.  They thought of Scotland, and they sent the wild slogan of their clan ringing along the line until the British troops, far off along the veldt, hearing it, turned to one another, saying:  “God help the Boers this hour; our Jocks are into ’em with the bay’nit!”

But when they turned to gather up those who had fallen, then they found that he whose lion soul had pointed them the crimson path to duty was to lead them no more.  The noble heart that beat so true to honour’s highest notes was not stilled, but a bullet missing the brain had closed his eyes for ever to God’s sunlight, leaving him to go through life in darkness; and they mourned for him as they had mourned for noble, white-souled Wauchope, whose prototype he was.  They knew that many a long, long year would roll away before their eyes would rest upon his like again in camp or bloody field.  But it gladdened their stern warrior hearts to know that the last sight he ever gazed upon was Scotland sweeping on her foes.