It was a terrible ordeal for those twenty-two men lying flat behind the rocks. The Maxim bullets literally rained on them, and, unprotected by the rocks, every soul of that little band would have been wiped out in a few moments. Steve heard (in fact, felt) a continuous patter against the rock in front of him. It seemed to him as if a whole battery of Maxims were firing at that particular rock. The chips of rock and sand were raining upon him, thrown up by the bullets. Luckily his rock was just large enough to protect him against the heavy and continuous fire. Once he just peeped over a little dent in the rock, took aim and fired, when _whew_ came a bullet right through his hat. Next moment his body must have moved slightly outside the line protected by the rock, when he felt a stinging sensation at his hip, a bullet had just grazed him. He got several more through his clothing in this way, as he moved and wormed himself about to take aim to fire. Luckily the Maxims could not fire all over at once, and while they fired at one party the other party would take advantage of the diversion in their favour to rain well-aimed shots on the enemy, and when a Burgher fired he reckoned upon one enemy being the less, either wounded or killed. For a Transvaal Boer never wastes ammunition; he never fires unless he is sure of his aim. A pang of pity went through Steve’s heart as he saw the poor troopers of Jameson dropping down one after the other; he felt that, although they were guilty of a great wrong to his country, still they were human, and to be hurled into eternity while participating in such a cowardly, back-handed blow against a people who had looked upon them as friends, and not as foes, was awful. And while aiming his rifle as accurately as he could, he murmured a prayer for the souls of those that he was helping to send to the judgment seat of God, but--in self-defence, in defence of country and national existence. When first the fight began, Steve had felt the trembling, half fear, half suspense and excitement, usually experienced by the soldier on first facing the fire of battle. But soon he felt as calm and cool as if he were taking part in a target practice. ‘By Heaven, but these English can fight better than I thought,’ remarked a Burgher on the left of Steve. ‘I have never known them to fight so bravely before; I will give them credit for that.’ ‘Yes, they do fight bravely,’ replied an old man next to him. ‘I never saw a brave fight such as this in 1881; but you must remember they have had their training in South Africa.’ ‘True,’ was the reply.