How was it to be extricated? The gallant Irishman
seems to have waved aside the very idea of defeat. An assurance
was, it is reported, given to the leaders of the column that by
eleven o'clock next morning they would be relieved. So they would
if White had won his action. But -
The force chosen to operate independently consisted of four and a
half companies of the Gloucester regiment, six companies of the
Royal Irish Fusiliers, and No. 10 Mountain Battery of six
seven-pounder screw-guns. They were both old soldier regiments from
India, and the Fusiliers had shown only ten days before at Talana
Hill the stuff of which they were made. Colonel Carleton, of the
Fusiliers, to whose exertions much of the success of the retreat
from Dundee was due, commanded the column, with Major Adye as staff
officer. On the night of Sunday, October 29th, they tramped out of
Ladysmith, a thousand men, none better in the army. Little they
thought, as they exchanged a jest or two with the outlying pickets,
that they were seeing the last of their own armed countrymen for
many a weary month.
The road was irregular and the night was moonless. On either side
the black loom of the hills bulked vaguely through the darkness.
The column tramped stolidly along, the Fusiliers in front, the guns
and Gloucesters behind.
