of a bluff; and then the colonel said to his men, "Men of the Gordon Highlanders, the General says that the position must be taken at all costs. The Gordon Highlanders will take it!"
That was quite enough. The Highlanders responded with a ringing cheer and fixed their bayonets; their pipers struck up the regimental march; the colonel led the way, waving his sword; and the whole battalion, by companies, rose from their cover as they had done from their ditch at Quatre Bras, and, with a wild shout, dashed into and across the open zone of fire. Many fell from the pelting, plunging hail of Afridi bullets, and most of the company pipers were struck down. Piper Findlater was shot through both ankles by an expanding bullet which simply pulverized his bones, and down he also fell. But, propping his back against a boulder, he thus calmly sat amid the bullet-rain and resumed his inspiriting march—the "Cock o' the North."
In this rush at Dargai the gallant Gordons lost many of their number—officers and men—in killed and wounded, but, undismayed, they stood the fatal, fiery test. They reached the shelter of the foot of the heights, then, followed by the Ghurkas and others, they scaled the hill, turning its holders' flank and toppling them over the other side; and soon thereafter they were clustering round their brave colonel, who had led them to the top, cheering him to the echo.
No wonder that both he and his heroic piper were recommended for the Victoria Cross; no wonder that, on again descending the hill, tenderly bearing their own wounded and dead, as well as those of the Ghurkas, they received a loud, admiring cheer from all the other regiments; no wonder that, a little later, General Lockhart publicly thanked the regiment on parade, saying, "Your records testify to many a gallant action, and you have added another to it which may worthily rank beside those which have gone before."
"Bravo, Gordon Highlanders!" ran a telegram from England; "on your return you will storm all London!"
I.
Who's for the Gathering, who's for the Fair?
(Gay goes the Gordon to a fight)
The bravest of the brave are at deadlock there,
(Highlanders! march! by the right!)
There are bullets by the hundred buzzing in the air,
There are bonny lads lying on the hillside bare;
But the Gordons know what the Gordons dare
When they hear the pipers playing!
II.
The happiest English heart to-day
(Gay goes the Gordon to a fight)
Is the heart of the Colonel, hide it as he may;
(Steady there! steady on the right!)
He sees his work and he sees the way,
He knows his time and the word to say,
And he's thinking of the tune that the Gordons play
When he sets the pipers playing!
III.
Rising, roaring, rushing like the tide,
(Gay goes the Gordon to a fight)
They're up through the fire-zone, not to be denied;
(Bayonets! and charge! by the right!)
Thirty bullets straight where the rest went wide,
And thirty lads are lying on the bare hillside;
But they passed in the hour of the Gordons' pride,
To the skirl of the pipers' playing.
