on was
crackling away beyond the river, and it looked as if the ground scarcely
admitted of our intervention. Indeed, we had hardly arrived when a
Staff Officer came up, and brought us orders to camp near Hlangwani
Hill, as we should not cross that day.

Presently I talked to the Staff Officer, who chanced to be a friend of
mine, and chanced, besides, to be a man with a capacity for sustained
thought, an eye for country, and some imagination. He said: 'I don't
like the situation; there are more of them than we expected. We have
come down off our high ground. We have taken all the big guns off the
big hills. We are getting ourselves cramped up among these kopjes in the
valley of the Tugela. It will be like being in the Coliseum and shot at
by every row of seats.'

Sir Redvers Buller, however, still believing he had only a rearguard in
front of him, was determined to persevere. It is, perhaps, his strongest
characteristic obstinately to pursue his plan in spite of all advice, in
spite, too, of his horror of bloodshed, until himself convinced that it
is impracticable. The moment he is satisfied that this is the case no
considerations of sentiment or effect prevent him from coming back and
starting afresh. No modern General ever cared less for what the world
might say. However unpalatable and humiliating a retreat might be, he
would make one so soon as he was persuaded that adverse chances lay
before him. 'To get there in the end,' was his guiding principle. Nor
would the General consent to imperil the ultimate success by asking his
soldiers to make a supreme effort to redress a false tactical move. It
was a principle which led us to much blood and bitter disappointment,
but in the end to victory.

Not yet convinced, General Buller, pressing forward, moved the whole of
his infantry, with the exception of Barton's Brigade, and nearly all the
artillery, heavy and field, across the river, and in the afternoon sent
two battalions from Norcott's Brigade and the Lancashire Brigade--to the
vacant command of which Colonel Kitchener had been appointed--forward
against the low kopjes. By nightfall a good deal of this low, rolling
ground was in our possession, though at some cost in men and officers.

At dusk the Boers made a fierce and furious counter-attack. I was
watching the operations from Hlangwani Hill through a powerful
telescope. As the light died my companions climbed down the rocks to the
Cavalry camp and left me alone