Altogether some 800 patients passed through the field hospitals during the day. The men showed the utmost pluck and endurance." [Illustration: THE FATAL TELEGRAM: "KILLED IN ACTION."] And yet in the midst of the scene of suffering and sorrow one thing consoles the heart. Why was it that these men faced these frightful conditions and endured the rain of bullets and shrapnel and shell splinters? Was it not because of their faith in those unseen things for which the Christian martyr of old laid down his life? The martyr died for God; these men were ready to endure all things for duty and for their country. Of such motives the Englishman rarely speaks. Yet in the heart of the nation "there is an instinctive recognition that a man's part is not to shirk the hardships or escape from the sorrows of life." It was this recognition that had brought thousands of men--"duke's son, cook's son, son of a belted earl"--of their own free will thousands of miles across the sea to lay down their lives in the flower of their age. [Sidenote: Impressions of an eye-witness.] [Sidenote: DEC. 15, 1899.] _Our Wounded Well-treated by the Boers._] The impression produced upon spectators by the fight is thus described by one who was present, not as a correspondent or combatant. "X and _I_," he writes, "were present through that massacre of our poor brave troops and volunteers at Colenso on Friday; on the battlefield, within the lines actually. Shells burst within a thousand yards of us. We saw the dead and wounded carried away till cart after cart was full to heartbreaking overflowing. The wonderful artillery practice and the roar and rattle of rifles, Hotchkiss, Maxims, and cannon, up to the great earth-rending lyddite death-dealers, kept us in a state of excited enthusiasm. X had nightmare, as you may imagine, that night, and details of the scenes we witnessed must have been sickening enough reading for you. If this was only a 'reconnaissance in force,' what must a battle be?... I often feel as if I were out of my mind, or in some dream or other state, for it is all bewildering and stupefying, and this intense heat in any case grievously affects me. No rain, no cessation of its suffocating fury night or day. How can the troops endure it?" [Illustration: HOSPITAL COOKS PREPARING BEEF-TEA.] [Illustration: IN A FIELD HOSPITAL ON THE TUGELA RIVER.]