Only Now Must It Have Been Clear To Clements That He Was Not
Dealing Merely With Some Spasmodic Attack From
His old enemy De la
Rey, but that this was a largely conceived movement, in which a
force at least
Double the strength of his own had suddenly been
concentrated upon him. His camp was still menaced by the men whom
he had repulsed, and he could not weaken it by sending
reinforcements up the hill. But the roar of the musketry was rising
louder and louder. It was becoming clearer that there was the main
attack. It was a Majuba Hill action up yonder, a thick swarm of
skirmishers closing in from many sides upon a central band of
soldiers. But the fusiliers were hopelessly outnumbered, and this
rock fighting is that above all others in which the Boer has an
advantage over the regular. A helio on the hill cried for help. The
losses were heavy, it said, and the assailants numerous. The Boers
closed swiftly in upon the flanks, and the fusiliers were no match
for their assailants. Till the very climax the helio still cried
that they were being overpowered, and it is said that even while
working it the soldier in charge was hurled over the cliff by the
onrush of the victorious Boers.
The fight of the mounted infantry men had been at half-past four.
At six the attack upon the hill had developed, and Clements in
response to those frantic flashes of light had sent up a hundred
men of the yeomanry, from the Fife and Devon squadrons, as a
reinforcement. To climb a precipitous thousand feet with rifle,
bandolier, and spurs, is no easy feat, yet that roar of battle
above them heartened them upon their way. But in spite of all their
efforts they were only in time to share the general disaster. The
head of the line of hard-breathing yeomen reached the plateau just
as the Boers, sweeping over the remnants of the Northumberland
Fusiliers, reached the brink of the cliff. One by one the yeomen
darted over the edge, and endeavoured to find some cover in the
face of an infernal point-blank fire. Captain Mudie of the staff,
who went first, was shot down. So was Purvis of the Fifes, who
followed him. The others, springing over their bodies, rushed for a
small trench, and tried to restore the fight. Lieutenant Campbell,
a gallant young fellow, was shot dead as he rallied his men. Of
twenty-seven of the Fifeshires upon the hill six were killed and
eleven wounded. The statistics of the Devons are equally heroic.
Those yeomen who had not yet reached the crest were in a perfectly
impossible position, as the Boers were firing from complete cover
right down upon them. There was no alternative for them but
surrender. By seven o'clock every British soldier upon the hill,
yeoman or fusilier, had been killed, wounded, or taken. It is not
true that the supply of cartridges ran out, and the fusiliers, with
the ill-luck which has pursued the 2nd battalion, were outnumbered
and outfought by better skirmishers than themselves.
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