It is
due to the brave unshaken face which the Guards presented to the
enemy that our repulse did not deepen into something still more
serious.
The Gordons and the Scots Guards were still in attendance upon the
guns, but they had been advanced very close to the enemy's
trenches, and there were no other troops in support. Under these
circumstances it was imperative that the Highlanders should rally,
and Major Ewart with other surviving officers rushed among the
scattered ranks and strove hard to gather and to stiffen them. The
men were dazed by what they had undergone, and Nature shrank back
from that deadly zone where the bullets fell so thickly. But the
pipes blew, and the bugles sang, and the poor tired fellows, the
backs of their legs so flayed and blistered by lying in the sun
that they could hardly bend them, hobbled back to their duty. They
worked up to the guns once more, and the moment of danger passed.
But as the evening wore on it became evident that no attack could
succeed, and that therefore there was no use in holding the men in
front of the enemy's position. The dark Cronje, lurking among his
ditches and his barbed wire, was not to be approached, far less
defeated.
