Instances of individual heroism were not wanting at this trying moment. One Highlander, seeing three or four mounted sheikhs, who were hounding on their men, rushed out at the leader of them and bayoneted him on his horse. Whilst the Black Watch were retiring, hard pressed, a private rushed at one of the enemy who was slashing right and left, and ran him through with his bayonet, so violently that he had to drag the wounded man with him for some distance before the soldier could extract the weapon. Every soldier who stumbled or fell during the retreat was at once done for, the enemy darting forward in squads and thrusting their spears into him as long as a sign of life remained. The nature of the struggle may be gathered from the fact that of twenty men who formed a section of a company of the Black Watch when charging up to the ravine, only three escaped alive, and they were badly wounded. As has been related above, the formation of isolated groups among the retreating soldiers assisted to bring about the rally which took place in about twenty minutes. But a more powerful aid, and one without which Davis's square might have shared the fate of Baker's force at El-Teb, was at hand. The 1st Brigade, under Buller, had been attacked at the same time as the 2nd Brigade, and from its position at some 400 to 500 yards distance from the ravine, it had the advantage of a wider fire radius. The men were formed in square, the 75th on the right, and the 89th on the left being the leading regiments with the 60th in the rear and the 9 and 7-pounder guns in the centre. Whilst the narrowness of the space between the slope and the 2nd Brigade enabled the enemy to "rush" the square before the infantry had time to fire more than a round or two, the distance between the slope and Buller's troops rendered it impossible for the enemy to reach them in face of a well-directed fire. Not one of the Soudanese who ran nearer than eighty yards to Buller's square lived to tell the tale. There was no hurry, no flurry in the handling of this brigade. The men formed up, shoulder to shoulder, in leisurely order when they saw the enemy coming on. Their deliberate volleys sounded like the harsh grating sound of the sea on a shingly beach, and when the smoke drifted slowly away the plain reappeared black with the bodies of the dead and dying.