A breathless moment. moved, the Boer gun opened again-Lord, but the German gunners knew their business!punctuating the intervals and distances of the pieces with scattering destruction. The third or fourth shell pitched clean into a laboring wagon with its double team of eight horses. It was full of shells. We held our breath for an explosion. But, when the smoke cleared, only the near wheeler was on his side, and the wagon had a wheel in the air. The batteries unlimbered and bayed again, and again the Boer guns were silent. Now for the attack. The attack was to be made on their front and their left flank-along the hog-back of the big kopje. The Devons on our left formed for the front attack; the Manchesters went on the right, the Gordons edged out to the extreme rightward base, with the long, long bowlder-freckled face above them. The guns flung shrapnel across the valley; the watchful cavalry were in leash, straining toward the enemy's flanks. It was about a quarter to five, and it seemed curiously dark for the time of rible rain. day. The ter No wonder-for, as the men moved forward before the enemy, the heavens were opened. From the eastern sky swept a sheer sheet of rain. With the first stabbing drops horses turned their heads away, trembling, and no whip or spur could bring them up to it. It drove through mackintoshes as if they were blotting paper. The air was filled with hissing; underfoot you could see solid earth melting into mud; and mud flowing away in water. It blotted out hill and dale and enemy in one gray curtain of swooping water. You would have said that the heavens had opened to drown the wrath of men. And through it the guns still thundered and the khaki columns pushed doggedly on. of death. The infantry came among the bowlders and began to open out. The supports and reserves followed up. And then, in a twinkling, on the stone-pitted hill-face burst loose that other storm-the storm of lead, of blood, of death. The storm In a twinkling the first line were down behind rocks firing fast, and the bullets came flicking round them. Men stopped and started, staggered and dropped limply as if the string were cut that held them upright. The line pushed on; the supports and reserves followed up. A colonel fell, shot in the arm; the regiment pushed on. The charge They came to a rocky ridge about twenty feet high. They clung to cover, firing, then up the hill. rose, and were among the shrill bullets again. A major was left at the bottom of that ridge, with his pipe in his mouth and a Mauser bullet through his leg; his company pushed on. Down again, fire again, up again, and on! Another ridge won and passed-and only a more hellish hail of bullets beyond it. More men down, more men pushed into the firingline-more death-piping bullets than ever. The air was a sieve of them; they beat on the bowlders like a million hammers; they tore the turf like a harrow. Another ridge crowned, another welcoming, whistling gust of perdition, more men down, more pushed into the firing-line. Half the officers were down; the men puffed and The ridges stumbled on. Another ridge-God! Would this cursed hill never end? It was sown with bleeding and dead behind; it was edged with stinging fire before. God! Would it never end? On, and get to the end of it! And now it was surely the end. The merry bugles rang out like cock-crow on a fine morning. The pipes shrieked blood and the lust of glorious death. Fix bayonets! Staff officers rushed shouting from the rear, imploring, cajoling, cursing, slamming every man who could move into the line. Line-but it was a line no longer. It was a surging wave of menDevons and Gordons, Manchester and Light Horse, all mixed, inextricably; subalterns commanding regiments, soldiers yelling advice, officers firing carbines, stumbling, leaping, killing, falling, all drunk with battle, shoving through hell to the throat of the enemy. And there beneath our feet was the Boer camp, and the last Boers galloping out of it. There also thank Heaven, thank Heaven!were squadrons of Lancers and Dragoon Guards storming in among them, shouting, spearing, stamping them into the ground. Cease fire! It was over-twelve hours of march, of reconnaissance, of waiting, of preparation, and half an hour of attack. But half an hour crammed with the life of half a lifetime. Success at last. TELEGRAPHY WITHOUT WIRES No new SILVANUS P. THOMPSON communicate messages by telegraph between two places unconnected by any wire wherewith to convey the electric current sounds almost a mythical achievement. Yet this has been possible, over short distelegraphy. tances, for some years. There is no "new telegraphy," as some journalists would have us believe. The only telegraphy in the matter is the old telegraphy of dots and dashes. Neither is there anything new in the circumstance of dispensing with the metallic communication afforded by a line-wire. This only is new:-that by improvements in the details of known apparatus it is now possible thus to communicate over distances of miles where formerly the limit of range was to be measured only in as many bow-shots. Nor is this all that may yet be accomplished. The recently announced feat of telegraphing without wires across the Bristol Channel-a distance of nearly nine miles-seems a small affair when compared with some of the unre |