THE RUSH ON THE HILL.

Evening Post, Volume LXIII, Issue 87, 12 April 1902, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE RUSH ON THE HILL.

" Next day ho came ; running up from tlio Tugela Gorge silently and straight, hundreds v of him, 'right into the open .below this trench and the others beneath 'st. Down th«re, just where the slope dips to a precipice iff 1 a line of scrubby • thornbush, you may imagine how he looked from here, and how the Dutchmen must have gasped at its folly. Up and up he came ; the . lower sangars blasted him off ttoo face of the earth ; bub his friends ruahed them \rith tremendous loss, and twept on upwards towards this frowning •wall. Tho - broadside » howled and roared over them, and the wall grew troubled and shaky, falling in and falling out; dimly seen amid the curtain of i smoke and flame whirling about the , leaping stones. But steady eyes were glaring where they could through the dun clouds and tho sheets of fire, and steady fingeri were pulling trigger rapidly and incessantly. Th« crackle same unbroken and clearly heard from the very midst of the uproar thundering up at tho trench, as if the; great shells were bursting into a million rattling fragments, and down tho slope the yellow figures were tumbling fasfc, one^ under that tree, three in front of that stone, a dozen on , that naked flat,, until time were no more to shoot — tho attack had been wiped out*' The broadside roared in anger and anguish, but the steady eyes, after a steady look for more yellow figures, turned steadily away, and their owners leant the smoking rifles against the wall, and sat down to wait. Think how you would flinch if, l were to hurl a stone with a sudden shout at you as you stand there dreaming, multiply tho stone and the shout by twenty million, and firo and smoke and filthy ochreous vapours, and imagine the ground quaking and tho air iull of whirlwinds— oven then you will not picture to yourself the terror of that artillery assault, and tho stupendous gallantry and calm of the dingy 'farmers who stood up straight and shot true from the very midst of it. "And what of the tumbling yellow figures below? We stumbled and panted during the climb, though we lounged and loitered and stopped to admire tho view oftjgn enough, carrying nothing but useful sticks, and full of contentment and breakfast. Consider how it must have been for men heavily accoutred, driven at full speed by their own impetuous I heroism against a ntinging drift of bul-

lots, as the mail train sweeps through a hailstorm, with, failing breath ami' terribly failing numbers, blinded with sweat and smoke and the sun's red glare on tho mountain-side, short of sleop and short of food. Dream us you will, sitting there with, your back comfortably against a stone, you can never think how thoy fell into tho long dream of death, headforemost, sideways, with waving -arms, and the splendid Irish shout in their mouths suddenly choked with blood, ' whilst the rifles spun, in the air and fell clattering and dented across the stones, as if they too were struck dead. No good! no good! Once miore the forefront of a British battle is a heap of . Irish dead — more power to their gallant souls, where they have flown 1 . . . The Irish Party ! It is, and has always been, the soldiers Irom Gahmy and Inniskilling who have stormed their way into tie hearts of all iwho love devotion and pluck, and done more for Ireland than all the untidy windbags igho ever spluttered*!