Meanwhile De Wet at Brandfort was watching his opportunity of working at the task assigned to him under the Krijgsraad scheme, of attacking the British lines of communication.  His anticipation that the burghers would return with renewed vigour from the furlough which they had granted to themselves proved to be accurate.  While Smuts was standing up to Tucker and French at Karee Siding, 1,600 men with five field guns under C. De Wet, whose second in command was his brother Piet, were circling to the Waterworks.  The initial direction of the march was N.E., in order to conceal the real objective of the raid even from his own men.  His intention was to seize Amphlett at the Waterworks, and there lie in wait for Broadwood’s convoy.  Before reaching his destination he handed over two-thirds of his force to his brother, who early in the morning took up a position on the right bank of the Modder east and north of the Waterworks, while he himself went to the Wagon Drift on the Korn Spruit, where the bed is deep enough to afford perfect concealment to a large body of men in ambush.  He occupied it at 4 a.m. on March 31.

A farmer, brought in by a patrol from Amphlett’s post, reported to the officer in command of the connecting post at Boesman’s Kop that the enemy had been seen; but the officer did not pay much attention to the report, though he communicated it to the connecting post at Springfield in the direction of Bloemfontein; at the same time sending back the patrol to Amphlett at the Waterworks with a reinforcement of his own men.  The patrol was fired on while attempting to return to the Waterworks, and retired to Boesman’s Kop.

[Illustration:  Map.]

Broadwood, whose column had already been in bivouac near the Waterworks for some hours with the convoy which had preceded it, was at sunrise shelled by Piet De Wet, of whose presence on the right bank of the Modder he had only a few minutes previously been made aware, and in the belief that his front was clear, he at once determined to take up a position on Boesman’s Kop.

Rarely had two leaders about to meet in battle been more strangely deceived by the Fog of War.  C. De Wet, although cut off from his guns and the main body of his command by an unfordable river, was confident in his lurking place in the Korn Spruit that he could easily repeat his exploit of February 15 and annex another British convoy; yet he suddenly discovered that he had to deal not with a mere escort, but with a strong mounted force and two batteries of Horse Artillery, and he was equal to the occasion.

Broadwood, equally confident that the whole force of the enemy was on his flank on the right bank of the Modder, marched heedlessly into the ambush which De Wet had laid for him in the Korn Spruit, on the direct line between two adjacent British posts, and which neither of them had discovered, although the usual patrols had been sent out.  When the patrol from the Waterworks to Boesman’s Kop did not return in due course on the morning of March 31, its absence seems to have caused no anxiety to Amphlett.