Dawn broke upon the summit, and parties of Boers stole forward to renew the weary assault. But the place was tenanted only by the dead and dying--a vast charnel-house testifying gloriously to the devoted heroism of the resistance. Two hundred British corpses, many torn by shells and dismembered beyond recognition, lay upon the mountain top, and beside them lay many burghers in their last long sleep. "In some of the trenches and parts of the kopje where the fire was hottest," writes a Boer correspondent, "bodies were actually entangled, as if the dying men had clutched each other in the death struggle, the spirit of battle in their souls as they sped from earth. On all sides were mute evidences of the desperate nature of the battle. Dozens of stones were spattered with blood, and empty Lee-Metford shells lay about everywhere by the bucketful, testifying that the English had spent an enormous amount of ammunition. Many cartridge belts were found entirely empty." In one trench, raked steadily by the Boer fire, sixty bodies lay within a hundred feet. And all about was the strange pathetic litter of the battlefield; letters and papers, testaments, battered helmets, broken firearms. Here and there the long grass had caught fire, burning mules and men. [Illustration: [_Photo by Cribb._ FLAG SIGNALLING. The impossibility of using this mode of communication was one of the minor causes of the loss of Spion Kop. (See page 297.)] Even the Boers themselves were strangely moved by the evidence of the heroism with which their as heroic attacks had been encountered. Yet, in their usual fashion, they were not content with the victory which they had achieved, but must needs fall to magnifying it by misrepresenting alike the British losses and their own. They professed to have buried 620 dead on Spion Kop and placed our total loss in killed at 1,000. Mr. Webster Davis, an American official, who had been mysteriously converted to Krugerism at Pretoria, went over the battlefield and pretended to have counted 400 British dead, even after the 620 had been buried. Which, it may be said, only served to show that American politicians do not always tell the truth. Their own killed the Boer official version placed at 51, their wounded at 123, and this, they said, was the "heaviest loss yet sustained by our forces in any engagement." The pretty effort of fiction deceived no one. Though they were elated--and justly elated--at their great success, it is well known that the feeling of satisfaction passed when the losses were counted. One man, Louis Botha, had won the day; had the British army possessed its Botha, what might it not have achieved, asked even the plain burghers. And the time was coming when the British army should find a Botha--and a greater than Botha--a general who had skill to plan, faith to inspire, and capacity unflinchingly to execute. [Illustration: ON SPION KOP THE DAY AFTER THE BATTLE.