afternoon. But
somehow he seemed to have lost form. He was not the Puffing Billy whom
we knew. We greeted him as one greets an enemy who has come down in the
world--with considerate indulgence. The sailors think that his carriage
is strained.

A British heliograph began flashing to us from Schwarz Kop, a hill only
one and a half miles over Potgieter's or Springfield Drift on the
Tugela. It is that way we have always expected Buller's main advance.
Can this be the herald of it? Most of us have agreed never to mention
the word "Buller," but it is hard to keep that pledge.

In the afternoon I was able to accompany Colonel Stoneman (A.S.C.) over
the scene of battle on Caesar's Camp. His duties in organising the food
supply keep him so tied to his office--one of the best shelled places in
the town--that he has never been up there before. All was quiet--the
mountains silent in the sunset. The Boers had been moving steadily
westward and south. They had taken some of their guns on carts covered
with brushwood. We had not more than half a dozen shots fired at us all
round that ridge which had blazed with death a week ago. In his tent on
the summit we found General Ian Hamilton. It was to his energy and
personal knowledge of his men that last Saturday's success was
ultimately due. Not a day passes but he visits every point in his
brigade's defences.

All in camp were saddened by the condition of Mr. Steevens, of the
_Daily Mail_. Yesterday he was convalescent. To-day his life hangs by a
thread. That is the way of enteric.

_Sunday, January 14, 1900._

Absolute silence still from the Tugela. On a low black hill beyond its
banks I could see the British heliograph flashing. On a spur beside it
I was told a British outpost was stationed. In the afternoon we thought
we heard guns again, but it was only thunder. With a telescope on
Observation Hill I saw the Boers riding about their camps. On the Great
Plain they were digging long trenches and stretching barbed wire
entanglements. To-day all was peaceful. The sun set amid crimson
thunder-clouds behind the Drakensberg; there was no sign of war save the
whistle of a persistent sniper's bullet over my head. Our weather-beaten
soldiers were trying to make themselves comfortable for the night in
their little heaps of stones.

_January 15, 1900._

This is the day I had fixed upon long ago for our relief. There were
rumours of fighting by the Tugela, and some said they