them.  Some picked cartridges off their dead comrades.  What were they fighting for?  It was hopeless, and they knew it.  But always there was the honour of the flag, the glory of the regiment, the hatred of a proud and brave man to acknowledge defeat.  And yet it had to come.  There were some in that force who were ready for the reputation of the British army, and for the sake of an example of military virtue, to die stolidly where they stood, or to lead the ‘Faugh-a-ballagh’ boys, or the gallant 28th, in one last death-charge with empty rifles against the unseen enemy.  They may have been right, these stalwarts.  Leonidas and his three hundred did more for the Spartan cause by their memory than by their living valour.  Man passes like the brown leaves, but the tradition of a nation lives on like the oak that sheds them—­and the passing of the leaves is nothing if the bole be the sounder for it.  But a counsel of perfection is easy at a study table.  There are other things to be said—­the responsibility of officers for the lives of their men, the hope that they may yet be of service to their country.  All was weighed, all was thought of, and so at last the white flag went up.  The officer who hoisted it could see no one unhurt save himself, for all in his sangar were hit, and the others were so placed that he was under the impression that they had withdrawn altogether.  Whether this hoisting of the flag necessarily compromised the whole force is a difficult question, but the Boers instantly left their cover, and the men in the sangars behind, some of whom had not been so seriously engaged, were ordered by their officers to desist from firing.  In an instant the victorious Boers were among them.

It was not, as I have been told by those who were there, a sight which one would wish to have seen or care now to dwell upon.  Haggard officers cracked their sword-blades and cursed the day that they had been born.  Privates sobbed with their stained faces buried in their hands.  Of all tests of discipline that ever they had stood, the hardest to many was to conform to all that the cursed flapping handkerchief meant to them.  ’Father, father, we had rather have died,’ cried the Fusiliers to their priest.  Gallant hearts, ill paid, ill thanked, how poorly do the successful of the world compare with their unselfish loyalty and devotion!

But the sting of contumely or insult was not added to their misfortunes.  There is a fellowship of brave men which rises above the feuds of nations, and may at last go far, we hope, to heal them.  From every rock there rose a Boer—­strange, grotesque figures many of them—­walnut-brown and shaggy-bearded, and swarmed on to the hill.  No term of triumph or reproach came from their lips.  ’You will not say now that the young Boer cannot shoot,’ was the harshest word which the least restrained of them made use of.  Between one and two hundred dead and wounded were scattered over the hill.  Those who were within reach of human help