Certainly a portion of them had been led between two fires--between that of the village and that from the eminence; but the British fire was hindered by the danger of injuring their friends, and in a very short time the major grasped the fact that it was waste of energy to try and defend the village, which was only lightly attacked, and quite time for him to retire and lead his men to the support of the colonel. His orders had hardly been given to the various centres to fall back from the trenches and houses held, when the agreed-upon signal flew up from the top of the kopje in a long line of light, followed by the bursting of a rocket, whose stars lit up the cloud of smoke rising round the mount. Everything had been so well planned beforehand that there was not the slightest confusion: the men fell back steadily to the village square, leaving the Boers still firing out of the darkness into the defensive lines; and then, as steadily as if in a review, the advance was made to cut through the investing crowd, which, facing the other way, was keeping up a tremendous fire. The signal for the advance was given with another rocket fired from the square as a warning to the colonel to cease firing on their side; and then the men steadily commenced their arduous task, the leading company going on in rushes, seizing the shelters, pouring in volleys, and driving the Boers before them and to right and left, in spite of their determined resistance to hold that which they had surprised by rising, as it were, as Sergeant James afterwards said, right out of the earth. The holders of the village under the major numbered pretty well half of the total force remaining to the colonel, and, led by the major himself, two companies went at the strong force of the enemy drawn across their way, like a wedge, in spite of the concentrated fire delivered by the desperate men, who had to give way. The second body was under Captain Edwards, and Roby and Lennox and Dickenson had the dangerous post of bringing on the single company that formed the rear-guard. The start was made without a man down. Three or four had slight wounds, but in the rear-guard not a man had been hit, while for some distance after quitting the redoubt they were still exempt. But the leading company was beginning to suffer badly: men kept on falling or staggering out to seek shelter in trench, rifle-pit, or behind boulder, and for a while the battle raged fiercely and but little progress was made, a crowd of the enemy pressing up from either side to take the places of those who fell or were beaten back, till the order was given in a lull to fix bayonets.