It is a
difficult thing to bring off a crossing shot at that pace, and in a few
hundred yards we were over the slope and out of shot. I have seen lots
of our men have much narrower escapes than this.
Well, after all that, we will get back to the action. Having located the
enemy, the Guides all collected behind the conical hill, climbed up, and
from the edges of it began shooting down into the Boer position. Here we
were joined by the Black Watch, who carried on the same game. It was
not, however, at all a paying game, and the fact that the Boers had not
held this hill themselves, though so close to their position, is
sufficient of itself to show their remarkable skill in choice of ground.
For the hill, conical and regular in shape, was perfectly bare, and
while they behind the sharp ledges and in the fissures of the rocks
below were well concealed from the men above, these as they crept round
the smooth hillside came into immediate view against the sky. The sleet
of bullets shaving the hill edge was like the wind whistling past. The
Black Watch lost a lot of men here. In the afternoon the Guides and some
of Lovat's Scouts pushed forward on the left and gained a low ridge,
where, lying down, we could command a part of the enemy's position, and
send in a flanking fire. This manoeuvre was useful and suggested a plan
for next day. That night I had to take out a picket on a hill on our
south-east front and had but a sorry time of it; for it was a bitterly
cold, rather wet night, and the position was not without its anxiety.
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