Gradually, in face of the deluge of shot and shell, the Inniskilling Fusiliers, the Connaught Rangers, and one company each of the Dublin Fusiliers, had wound their way towards the eastern spurs of Railway Hill, and in the late afternoon were ready for the attack. General Hart gave the word. Then, up the rugged stone-strewn heights the troops laboriously began to climb. Soon they reached a point, some hundred yards above, whence the Boers could pepper them with ease. At the same time from the adjacent hill more bullets whizzed upon them. Yet, with this horrible fire on their flanks and the deadly fusillade from the front, they persevered, dropping one after another like ripe fruit in a gust of wind. Volley after volley poured down on them, but up they went, cutting through wire, leaping boulders, and hurling themselves forward, and in such grand style, that the Boers, seeing the determined glitter of the bayonet, thought it wiser to retreat. They receded some two hundred yards up the hill, while the troops occupied the first position. Then, in the growing dusk, the Dutchmen were seen taking a commanding place on a somewhat higher or parent peak of the hill. From this point the Inniskillings, flushed with their first triumph, deemed it necessary to rout them. Fire streamed and spouted, the dim gloom of twilight came on; still the Irishmen, through the mist of evening and flashings furious from every side, advanced along the hill--a glorious, a tragic advance. One after another bit the dust. Men in mute or groaning agony lay prone in the gathering dusk. First went a major, afterwards another, and then two captains of this gallant band. The Boers had known their business. Some of their kopjes are of the nature of spider-webs; the outer fringe involves entanglement; and this especial eminence was of that particular nature that the second Boer position commanded the first. The Dutchmen, even as they receded, were able to mow down the men as they advanced, by a converging fire, against which it was impossible to stand. It was now an almost hand-to-hand struggle between doughty Dutchman and dashing Briton. The Inniskillings were close, but every inch was gained with appalling loss to their numbers--indeed, the charging companies might almost have been described as individual men!