THE RELIEF OF LADYSMITH.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 6701, 19 May 1900, Page 4

THE RELIEF OF LADYSMITH.

The realisation of the long-expected wa3 so sudden, the suppressed excitement

so great, that we could not keep the

glasses steady without resting them oa a "X rock. It wf-s the great trek—not waggons only, but riaers—galloping, black- ; -'/""coated horsemen moving forward in groups of 20, 50, 100, a continuous . living .stream of mora or less density coming into view round the corner of 7 End Hill, sweeping away in a long curve, ) and disappearing northward behind j Telegraph Hill, in the direction of their railway base. Down at the foot of the hill a little picket of the Highlanders sat in a stone fort all unconscious of the greit event beyond. We shouted and pointed, so they came up to us, and then —well, there were strahspeys upon the hilit p. "Look yonder; look yonder, mon; aia't they runnin'. Ase, it's a pity we canna get at them," That was the general feeling. They had locked U3 in, mocked us, starved us, bvtered u-* for months, and instead of chanking God for our deliveranse, we were eager only to get at them. It was the opportunity of a campaign. Could we but have rushed out our field batteries and mounted troops we could have decimated their transport trains, but our field batteries—the darlings of the^R.A.—had become slow going siege trains, cur cavalry and mounted infantry were unhorsed. We had eaten them imo im mobility. The sight was exasperating, maddening. Our gunners on the top of Ctesar's Hill were screly ;ried. Th«y swung round cheir long-range naval 12----pounder3, and a shell pifched at the greatest passible elevation went screaming high over our head. It was short, miserably short. They tried again and again, but the nearest shell wa9 still hundreds of yards on this side j I had ju3t got a change of clothes, and | we were sitting down to our last dinner j of horseflesh, when there was a rush of feet, a shouting in the streets outside, and through the tumult came the one clear cry, " Uullor's cayalry are in sight; they are coming across the flats." Waiting neither for horses nor horserne^t we ran. joining the stream of excited people who were making for the nearest river drif in quick intuition that there the incoming jolurun m,U9t cro^s. There a little flat beyond the river, further on a little ridge, and down the side of this catne a brown column of trotting horsemen, j The Zulus and Kaffirs were delirious. They leaped in the air and sang and shouted, their white teeth and white eye balls gleaming The hospitals had poured their sick and wounded ; all rushed '■•' *i*io"j6in in the pasan of welcome. There were soldiers with white and shrunken faces; men wounded in the legs, who shuffled ."lowly down the road. One poor young infantry officer had stopped at a deep street channel—he had no strength to step over id. I lifted him to the other side, but thore was no trouble in it, he was iight, almost as a child. Two other officers drove down in a pony trap, and the gha3t!ines3 of their faces impressed one, even in that time of wild excitement. They were, in plain and painful truth, livicg skeletons. Dundonald <md hi 3 riders c^me down the slopes to the river, and the horsemen from the town had already gathered about them. The men of the relief column emptied iheh* pockets and haver-" sacks, and every man of ours who rode fceside them smoked a cigarette or a cig;ir. They had pushed on and on when they found the Dutch had left the laat of the*ir trenches, had got in touch with the enemy in many places, had fired'upon theoJ. and got not a single shot m/seply. Wbyinot go right in ? ;' Men were no longer ashamed of, their