“10 A.M.—­There is a wide plain in front of me, four miles across, flat as the sea, and all along the farther side a line of kopjes and hills rising like reefs and detached islands out of it.  You might think the plain was empty at first glance, but, if you look hard, you will see it crawling with little khaki-clad figures, dotted all over it; not packed anywhere, but sprinkled over the whole surface.  They are steadily but very leisurely converging on the largest end hill of the opposite range.  Meantime, from three or four spots along the sides of those hills, locks and puffs of white smoke float out, followed at long intervals by deep, sonorous reports; and if you look to the left a bit, where our naval guns are at work, you will see the Boer shells bursting close to or over them.  The artillery duet goes on between the two, while still the infantry, unmolested as yet, crawls and crawls towards those hills.”

This is our first sight of an infantry attack, and it doesn’t impress me at first at all.  Its cold-bloodedness, the absence of all excitement, make it so different from one’s usual notions of a battle.  It is really difficult to believe that those little, sauntering figures are “delivering an attack.”  They don’t look a bit as if they were going to fight.  The fact is, they have a long distance to cover before reaching the hills, and must go fairly slow.  Accordingly, you see them strolling leisurely along as if nothing particular were happening; while the hills themselves, except for the occasional puffs of smoke, look; quite bare and empty; ridges of stone and rock, interspersed with grass tussocks, heaped up against the hot, blue sky.

But now, as they advance farther across the plain, the muffled, significant sound of the Mauser fire begins.  The front of the attack is already so far across that it is impossible to see how they are faring from here; but it is evident that our shell fire, heavy though it has been, for all our guns have been in action some time now, has not turned the Boers out of their position.  The big chunks of rock are an excellent defence against shrapnel, and behind them they lie, or down in the hollow of the hills, as we saw them earlier in the day, to be called up when the attack approached; and now, gathering along the crest, their fire quickens gradually from single shots to a roar.  But it has no effect on that fatal sauntering!  Of the men who leave this side nigh on two hundred will drop before they reach the other, but still, neither hurrying nor pausing, on they quietly stroll, giving one, in their uniform motion over that wide plain, a sense as of the force and implacability of some tidal movement.  And, as you watch, the significance of it all grows on you, and you see that it is just its very cold-bloodedness and the absence of any dash and fury that makes the modern infantry attack such a supreme test of courage.