Not Only Was There A
Most Deadly Rifle Fire, Partly From The Lines In Front And Partly
From The Village
Of Colenso upon their left flank, but the Boer
automatic quick-firers found the range to a nicety, and the
Little
shells were crackling and banging continually over the batteries.
Already every gun had its litter of dead around it, but each was
still fringed by its own group of furious officers and sweating
desperate gunners. Poor Long was down, with a bullet through his
arm and another through his liver. 'Abandon be damned! We don't
abandon guns!' was his last cry as they dragged him into the
shelter of a little donga hard by. Captain Goldie dropped dead. So
did Lieutenant Schreiber. Colonel Hunt fell, shot in two places.
Officers and men were falling fast. The guns could not be worked,
and yet they could not be removed, for every effort to bring up
teams from the shelter where the limbers lay ended in the death of
the horses. The survivors took refuge from the murderous fire in
that small hollow to which Long had been carried, a hundred yards
or so from the line of bullet-splashed cannon. One gun on the right
was still served by four men who refused to leave it. They seemed
to bear charmed lives, these four, as they strained and wrestled
with their beloved 15-pounder, amid the spurting sand and the blue
wreaths of the bursting shells. Then one gasped and fell against
the trail, and his comrade sank beside the wheel with his chin upon
his breast.
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