s and
watched. At my side the Gordons on picket duty were playing with two
little white kids. On the plain in front no one was to be seen but one
lone and dirty soldier, who was steadily marching in across it, no one
knew from where. He must have lost his way in the night, and now was
making for the nearest British lines, hanging his rifle unconcernedly
over his shoulder, butt behind.

So we watched and waited. At one moment Dr. Jameson came up to get a
look at his old enemy. Then we heard heavy rifle fire far away on our
left, where the Gloucesters and Royal Irish Fusiliers had been sent out
the night before, and were now on the verge of that terrible disaster
which has kept us all anxious and uncertain to-day. The rumour goes that
both battalions have disappeared, and what survives of them will next be
found in Pretoria. At eight o'clock I saw a new force of Boers coming
down a gully in a great mountain behind Pepworth Hill. But for my glass,
I should have taken them for a black stream marked with white rocks. But
they were horses and men, and the white rocks were horses too. Heavy
firing began far away on our right. At nine the Manchesters were called
off to reinforce. At half-past nine the Gordons followed, and I went
with them. About a mile and a half from the centre we were halted again
on the top of another rocky kopje covered with low bush and trees, out
of which we frightened several little brown deer and some strange birds.

From the top I could see the whole position of the right flank fairly
well, but it puzzled me at first. The guns shelling Pepworth
Hill--there were two batteries of them now--were still at their work,
just in front of our left now and about half a mile away. Away to our
right and further advanced, but quite exposed in the open, were two
other batteries, shelling some distant kopjes on our right at the foot
of the great mountain lump of Lombard's Kop. I heard afterwards they
were shelling an empty and deserted kopje for hours, but I know that
only from hearsay. Between the batteries and far away to the right the
infantry was lying down or advancing in line, chiefly across the open,
against the enemy's position. But what was that position? Take Ladysmith
as centre and a radius of five miles, the Boers' position extended round
a semicircle or more, from Lombard's Kop on the east to Walker's Hoek on
the west, with Pepworth Hill as the centre of the arc on the north. I
believe myself that the