An assurance was, it is reported, given to the leaders of the column that by eleven o'clock next morning they would be relieved.

So they would if White had won his action.

But-- The force chosen to operate independently consisted of four and a half companies of the Gloucester regiment, six companies of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, and No.

10 Mountain Battery of six seven-pounder screw-guns.
They were both old soldier regiments from India, and the Fusiliers had shown only ten days before at Talana Hill the stuff of which they were made.

Colonel Carleton, of the Fusiliers, to whose exertions much of the success of the retreat from Dundee was due, commanded the column, with Major Adye as staff officer.