Our horses were left at the bottom of the hill, without anyone on guard as usual. On reaching the top, we were greeted by steady infantry fire and by a few shrapnel shells, which we received without responding till ten o’clock. Then, leaning a little upon our right, we began to fire. We numbered about a hundred--fifty foreigners, and as many Boers; for the majority of those who had been with us the night before--perhaps 500 Europeans, and a rather smaller number of Burghers--had returned to the laager, and had not come back. It is true that the day had been a hard one for them, and that they had had to bear the brunt of the battle under a heavy artillery fire. Up to this moment nothing serious had been attempted. But about eleven o’clock the whole of the Royal Canadian contingent arrived in open formation. They were greeted on their passage by our two 75 millimetre guns, which had taken up a position on our left at the foot of the kopje. I heard afterwards that the guns, though they had been remarkably well laid, had not been very effective, the shells with fuses having fallen without exploding. In consequence of this, only two or three men, who had been struck full by the shells as if they had been bullets, had been killed. Several others were knocked over by the shock, but picked themselves up unharmed. I got this information later from a superior officer of an English regiment who had been present in the engagement. About one o’clock, without any order and without any reason, the Boers, who were occupying another little kopje on our left, forsook their position. The English artillerymen at once rushed forward, and now began to fire upon us at a distance of 3,500 metres. Then, all at once, there was a cry of, ’To the horses!’ At our feet, behind us in the plain, a regiment of Lancers, who had come round the big kopje where we were stranded as on an island, sweep forward in loose order, to seize our horses which are sheltered below. There is a rush to protect them. A few Boers, coming from I know not whence, took ambush in a little spruit, and drove off the Lancers by a withering fire; but while this feint was being carried out, the English made another rush forward, more serious than the first. A fierce fusillade was kept up on both sides. We are now only hanging on to the kopje by the left corner. Suddenly, not having been able to seize our horses, the enemy open a terrible artillery fire upon them obliquely. The Boers retreat before it, and the position becomes untenable; we have only just time to reach our horses. As we come down the kopje, one of my comrades, who is a great declaimer of verse, recites ’Rolla’; but his memory fails him at a certain verse, and he asks me to help him out. I reply that I don’t know ’Rolla,’ but my answer is cut short by a shell which, passing between us, bursts and carries off the head of a Burgher clean from the nape of the neck.