The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1900-01-18

They were led by a guide who was sup
posed to know everv inch of the country,
out into the darkness of an African night.
The brigade marched In line Of quarter
column, each man stepping cautiously and
slowly, for they knew that any sound
meant death. Every order was given in
hoarse whisper and in whispers it was
passed along the ranks from man to man;
nothing was heard as they moved towards
glomy, steel-fronted heights but the
brushing of their feet in the veldt grass
and the deep drawn breaths Of the march
ing men.
so onward until o'clock of the morn
ing of Monday. Then out of the darkness
a rifle rang sharp and clear, a herald of
disaster; soldier had tripped in the dark
over the hidden wires laid down by the
enemy. In a second. in the twinkling of
an eye, the searchlights of the Beers fell
broad and clear as the MONDAY sun on the
ranks Of the doomed Highlanders, though
it left the enemy concealed in the shadows
of the frowning mass or hills behind them.
For one brief moment the Scots seemed
paralyzed by the suddenness of their dis
covery. for they knew that they were
huddled together like sheep within fifty
yards of the trenches of the enemy.
''Then, clear above the confusion, rolled
the voice of the general, Steady. men,
steady and like an echo to the veterans
out came the crash of nearly thousand
rifles not fifty PAGES from them. The High
landers reeled before the deadly fire. The
best, their bravest, fell in that wild hail
of lead. General Wauchope was down,
riddled with bullets, yet, gasping, dying,
bleeding from every vein, the Highland
chieftain raised himself on his hands and
knees and cheered his men forward.
1900 DEAD AND WOUNDED.
"Men and officers fell in heaps together.
The Black Watch charged, and the Cor
dons, and the Seaforths, with yell that
stirred the British camp below. rushed on
ward-onward to death or disaster. The
accursed wires caught them round the legs
until they houndered like trapped wolves.
and all the time the rifles Of the foe sang
the song of death in their ears. Then they
fell back broken and beaten, leaving near
| ly thirteen hundred dead and wounded just
| where the broad breast of the grassy veldt
melts into the embrace of the rugged
| African hills, and an hour later the dawn
| ing came Of the dreariest day that Scot
| land has known for a generation past. OF
| her officers, the flower of her chivalry, the
pride of her breeding, but few remained to
| tell the tale, a sad tale truly, but one un-
| disgrace, for up those heights under sim
| liar circumstances even brigade Of devils
| could scarce have hoped to pass. All that
toI 10 H. Il
tried. they failed. they fell. and there is
| nothing left us now but to mourn for them
| and avenge them.
"All that fateful day our men lay close
to the Boer lines under blazing sun: over
| their heads the shots OF friends and foes
passed without ceasing. All day long the
battle ragged. Scarcely could we see the
foe-all that met our eyes was the rocky
heights that spoke. with tongue of flames
whenever our troops drew near. Once our
guards made brilliant dash at the
| trenches, and like a torrent their resist
! less valor bore all before them, and for a
few brief moments they got within hitting
distance of the foe. Well did they avenge
the slaughter of the Scots-the bayonets
like tongues of flame, passed above OF
4
| brisket and breastbone. Out of their
trenches the guardsmen tossed the Beers
| as men in English harvest fields toss the
hay when the reapers' scythes have whit.
| ened the corn fields-and the human
| streams were plentiful where the British
| guardsmen stood. Then they fell back
| for the fire from the heights above them
| fell thick as the spume of the surf on an
| Australian rock-ribbed coast. But the
| guards had proved to the Beers that. man
4 to man, the Briton was his master.
| DEATH SAT AT CRONJES ELBOW.
'In vain all that day Methuen tried by
| every rule he knew to draw the enemy
| vainly the Lancers rode recklessly to in.
duce these human rock-limpetssto come out
and cut them off. Cronje knew the mettlt
of our men, and an ironic laugh played
| around his iron mouth, and still he stayed
within his native Businesses; but death
sat ever at his elbow, for our gunner.
dropped the lyddite shells and the bowling
shrapnel all along his lines, until the
| trenches ran with blood and many of hi!
guns were silenced. In the valley behind
his outer line of hills his dead lay piled
in hundreds, and the slope Of the hill wa.
| a charnel-house, where the wounded al
writhed amid the masses of the dead-s
| CHASTITY tribute to British gunnery. When
| at 1:30 o'clock p. m, of Tuesday, we drew
off to Modder river to report, we left nearly
5000 dead and wounded Of grim old Cronje'.
men as a token that the lion of England
had barred his teeth in earnest
The last mails from the Cape brough
numerous accounts Of the Magersfonteii
fight, but none so vivid as this.
Julian Ralph. in the Daily Mall yer,
bluntly writes of the Highlanders afte
the first volley from the hidden trenches
'"They turned and ran. literally collidins
! and climbing over one another in thei
confusion. A chaplain forward In tn,
ranks was knocked down and trampled
| as brave a men as any, yet one who de
clared that there lived no man who woulc
have behaved differently. 1t had been al
| If the earth had opened, and from a clef
that ran so far as our men reached fir,
had belched and shot swept the veldt
The fever of fright lasted only while tn,
men ran 200 yards, and they regained som,
measure of order"
Says the Times correspondent of the sam,
that no Offering could stop. From poin
of vantage on the horse artillery hill on,
could see them swarming like bees owe
the veldt until they were almost out o
| range, and the guns were left out in th
open with no one to support them. 1t wa
| perhaps the most unpleasan sight tha