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BULLER'S FINAL ADVANCE.
The heroic moment of the siege of Ladysmith was that which witnessed the repulse of the great attack.

The epic should have ended at that dramatic instant.

But instead of doing so the story falls back to an anticlimax of crowded hospitals, slaughtered horses, and sporadic shell fire.
For another six weeks of inactivity the brave garrison endured all the sordid evils which had steadily grown from inconvenience to misfortune and from misfortune to misery.

Away in the south they heard the thunder of Buller's guns, and from the hills round the town they watched with pale faces and bated breath the tragedy of Spion Kop, preserving a firm conviction that a very little more would have transformed it into their salvation.