l to success, baffled the enemy almost as much as it
mystified the troops. However, the event is not yet decided.

After about two, hours' easy marching the cavalry reached the point of
rendezvous among the hills opposite Trichardt's Drift, and here we
halted and awaited developments in the blackness. An hour passed. Then
there arrived Sir Charles Warren and staff. 'Move the cavalry out of the
way--fifteen thousand men marching along this road to-night.' So we
moved accordingly and waited again. Presently the army began to come. I
remember that it poured with rain, and there was very little to look at
in the gloom, but, nevertheless, it was not possible to stand unmoved
and watch the ceaseless living stream--miles of stern-looking men
marching in fours so quickly that they often had to run to keep up, of
artillery, ammunition columns, supply columns, baggage, slaughter
cattle, thirty great pontoons, white-hooded, red-crossed ambulance
waggons, all the accessories of an army hurrying forward under the cover
of night--and before them a guiding star, the red gleam of war.

We all made quite sure that the bridges would be built during the
night, so that with the dawn the infantry could begin to cross and make
an immediate onfall. But when morning broke the whole force was revealed
spread about the hills overlooking the drift and no sound of artillery
proclaimed the beginning of an action. Of course, since a lightning blow
had been expected, we all wondered what was the cause of the delay. Some
said folly, others incapacity, others even actual laziness. But so far
as the operations have proceeded I am not inclined to think that we have
lost anything by not hurrying on this occasion. As I write all is going
well, and it would have been a terrible demand to make of infantry that
they should attack, after a long night march, such a position as lay and
still lies in part before us. In fact it was utterly impossible to do
anything worth doing that day beyond the transportation; so that, though
the Boers were preparing redoubts and entrenchments with frantic energy,
we might just as well take our time. At about eight o'clock a patrol of
the Imperial Light Horse, under Captain Bridges, having ascertained that
only a few Dutch scouts were moving within range on the further bank,
the passage of the river began. Two battalions of Hildyard's Brigade,
the West Yorkshires and the Devons, moved towards the drift in the usual
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