At daylight on February 18, the movement was resumed, the immediate objective being the capture of Monte Cristo and Green Hill.  One brigade was sent through the Nek on to the eastward slopes of Monte Cristo, while the other attacked the hill from the south.  With the help of the ever-ready Dundonald the IInd Division established itself on the main hill of the ridge early in the afternoon.  The Fusilier Brigade of the Vth Division was meanwhile acting in support; and advancing as soon as Monte Cristo was seen to be occupied, easily took hold of Green Hill.  The enemy was now expelled from all the positions commanding the proposed line of advance over the Nek, and was retreating westward towards the positions near the right bank of the Tugela, but no attempt was made to pursue him.  The motto of Buller’s Army was festina lente and its track towards Ladysmith was in zigzag.

On the following day Hlangwhane was occupied by the British troops, and before noon on February 20, all the Boers had withdrawn to the left bank of the Tugela, and Buller was favourably placed for the advance by way of the Klip River on Bulwana.  A reconnaissance, however, caused him to change his mind and to resume the movement at an acute angle by doubling back towards Hlangwhane and crossing the river by a pontoon bridge west of the hill.

His new plan was to capture a position between the Onderbroek and Langewacht Spruits, which appeared from a distance to be one hill, but which in reality was two, Wynne’s Hill and Horseshoe Hill, which were separated by a donga.  On the morning of February 21 he signalled his intentions to White, saying that he thought he had “only a rearguard before him"[29] and that he hoped to be in Ladysmith next day.

After the capture of Monte Cristo and the Hlangwhane position, some of the commandos seem to have trekked away towards the north, and even Botha for a time appears to have lost heart and to have suggested to Joubert that the siege of Ladysmith should be raised.  The Boer leaders had already, like King Arthur,

  Heard the steps of Modred in the west,

and their army in Natal had been weakened, before Buller’s final advance, by the departure of commandos going to succour their brethren not only on the Modder, but also in the Cape Colony.

The situation on the Tugela was reported to Pretoria almost simultaneously with the news that Cronje was hemmed in at Paardeberg.  But owing it may be to the distance which intervened between Kruger and the scene of action, the dour old voortrekker of Colesberg would not hear of any voluntary retirement before the enemy who had driven him out of the Cape Colony sixty years before.  He sent an appeal to the Boers of the Tugela which, in an intense human document, displayed his steadfast and touching faith, and which might have been addressed by his prototype Cromwell to the Ironsides.