took their places behind slight earthworks, prepared to fight it out manfully. The only tribute they need ask for is that their roll of dead and wounded may be borne in memory. Out of thirty all told, the Royal Engineers lost two officers killed and fifteen men wounded. Of the few sailors, one was killed and one wounded. This record seems hard to beat; but the Imperial Light Horse could point to heaps of dead and maimed in proof of the dauntless stand they made, for the living continued to fight where their gallant comrades fell, scorning to quit an inch of ground to the Boers, though they knew by the rifle fire flashing round them in the darkness that they were hopelessly outnumbered from the first. Their brigadier speaks of them as men with no nerves at all. When one was hit, another stepped quietly up to his place and went on shooting as if at target-practice, though he had no more cover than a small stone to lie behind; and this happened not once but a score of times, the officers taking an equal share in the fight with their men, who speak with pride of the gallantry shown by Captains de Rothe and Codrington, Lieutenants Webb, Pakeman, Adams, Campbell, and Richardson, and the active veteran Major Doveton, who cheered his men on after he had received two bullet wounds, one of which shattered his fore-arm and shoulder. By that time the sun was rising above Bulwaan in a halo of orange, crimson, and purple, and men could count the grim faces of their enemies. Ladysmith was aroused at dawn by the rattle of incessant rifle fire rolling along Bester's Ridge from end to end. Up to that time no big guns had spoken on either side, and people came out of their houses slowly, in sulky humour at having their rest disturbed before the conventional hour for shelling to begin. While they listened to the continuous crackling as of damp sticks in a huge bonfire, few among them realised that the sounds indicated anything more serious than a Boer demonstration which would fizzle out quickly, and even when bullets began to fall in the town itself, or went whistling away overhead, the only comment made was that Mauser rifles must have a marvellous range if they could send bullets so far beyond the ridge aimed at. Bulwaan's 6-inch Creusot opened fire as the sun rose behind it in a splendour of orange and crimson clouds. The white smoke changed to wreaths of blue and deep purple against that glowing sky, while people waited to hear the gurgling scream of a shell. It did not come the way they expected, but burst above the dark crest of Caesar's Camp. Then the watchers, relieved because the big guns had found other occupation than battering down houses, went back to bed or to their morning baths, little thinking that the fate of Ladysmith was at the moment dependent on men who lay among rocks, or behind grass tussocks, looking through rifle sights at such short range that they could almost see the colour of each other's eyes.