As the morning wore on, the fight on the summit grew fiercer and fiercer. Fresh troops were continually arriving, for in the daylight the climb was not so excessively difficult, till the small space was packed with men. Just before the first reinforcements came up there was a moment when disaster was narrowly avoided. The British force in one of the outlying trenches was demoralised by its losses and by the fire. About twenty men threw up their hands and shouted that they would surrender to the Boers not a hundred yards away. On this, says Mr. Winston Churchill, Colonel Thorneycroft dashed to the spot. "The Boers advancing to take the prisoners--as at Nicholson's Nek--were scarcely thirty yards away. Thorneycroft shouted to the Boer leader: 'You may go to----! I command on this hill and allow no surrender. Go on with your firing.' Which latter they did with terrible effect, killing many. The survivors, with the rest of the firing line, fled 200 yards," but then were rallied and regained the lost ground. It was owned by the Boers themselves after the battle that the British soldiers had "fought with desperate bravery and died like men." Despite the disadvantage of the ground, despite the tremendous bombardment, they could not and would not be forced back. The heaps of dead grew higher; an awful breastwork of corpses was built to shelter the living; the trickle of wounded to the rear became a stream; but the fight flickered to and fro and the summit was still held. [Sidenote: Lack of artillery support.]