rs, supported from
Pepworth Hill by a company of the 1st Devonshire regiment,
turned aside when four miles out to watch the Free Staters
towards Bester's.]

[Sidenote: He asks for reinforcements and orders.]

It was now evident to General French that an action of great
importance could be fought or avoided before nightfall. At noon,
therefore, he communicated with Sir George White, and, after informing
him of his own and the enemy's situations, and the best line of
attack, stated that in his opinion the numbers required would be three
battalions of infantry, two batteries, and more cavalry than he had at
the moment. He would await instructions. They came with promptitude;
for Sir G. White had determined to ruin this commando, and sweep it
from Yule's communications, before it could separate. "The enemy must
be beaten, and driven off," he wrote to French. "Time of great
importance." Within a quarter of an hour of the receipt of the above
message, French had promulgated his orders; within half an hour, at
1.30 p.m., before the arrival of the reinforcements, the advance upon
the kopjes had begun.

[Sidenote: The ground held by Boers.]

Running south-east, with its northern extremity about a mile from the
station, the ground held by the enemy covered some 4,000 yards from
flank to flank, and consisted of four boulder-strewn kopjes. That
nearest the station was steep and rocky, its top 200 yards broad and
sloping rearwards; next and somewhat retired from the general line,
700 yards distant, on the far side of a deep cup scored with dongas,
arose one of those singular isosceles triangular eminences of which
South Africa almost alone possesses the mould. A Nek, carrying the
roadway to a farm behind, separated this from the main feature 500
yards away. This was a bluff and precipitous hill, thatched here and
there with long grasses on its northern face, on its eastern sloping
easily down to the veld which rolled in rounded waves towards
Ladysmith. Its summit was almost flat, a bouldered plateau, 400 yards
long by 200 wide, falling in rocky spurs to the river a mile and a
half in rear, and slanting at its southern extremity into a broad and
broken Nek. This climbed again 2,000 yards away up to the last kopje
of the position, whose top, also flat, swung first south, then sharply
west, to merge finally into the grassy rises which approached almost
to Modder Spruit. Though the general elevation was n