patrols—­everybody crept slowly, slowly, cautiously forward.  Then, about half-past two, we turned and beheld the columns coming up behind us.  The 21st Field Battery, the 5th Lancers, the Natal Mounted Volunteers on the road; the other half of the Devons and half the Gordon Highlanders on the trains—­total, with what we had, say something short of 3000 men and eighteen guns.  It was battle!

The trains drew up and vomited khaki into the meadow.  The mass separated and ordered itself.  A line of little dots began to draw across it; a thicker line of dots followed; a continuous line followed them, then other lines, then a mass of khaki topping a dark foundation—­the kilts of the Highlanders.  From our billow we could not see them move; but the green on the side of the line grew broader, and the green between them and the kopje grew narrower.  Now the first dots were at the base—­now hardly discernible on the brown hill flanks.  Presently the second line of dots was at the base.  Then the third line and the second were lost on the brown, and the third—­where?  There, bold on the sky-line.  Away on their right, round the hill, stole the black column of the Imperial Light Horse.  The hill was crowned, was turned—­but where were the Bo—­

A hop, a splutter, a rattle, and then a snarling roll of musketry broke on the question,—­not from the hill, but far on our left front, where the Dragoon Guards were scouting.  On that the thunder of galloping orderlies and hoarse yells of command—­advance!—­in line!—­waggon supply!—­and with rattle and thunder the batteries tore past, wheeled, unlimbered as if they broke in halves.  Then rattled and thundered the waggons, men gathered round the guns like the groups round a patient in an operation.  And the first gun barked death.  And then after all it was a false alarm.  At the first shell you could see through glasses mounted men scurrying up the slopes of the big opposite hill; by the third they were gone.  And then, as our guns still thudded—­thud came the answer.  Only where?  Away, away on the right, from the green kopje over the brown one where still struggled the reserves of our infantry.

Limbers!  From halves the guns were whole again, and wheeled away over ploughland to the railway.  Down went a length of wire-fencing, and gun after gun leaped ringing over the metals, scoring the soft pasture beyond.  We passed round the leftward edge of the brown hill and joined our infantry in a broad green valley.  The head of it was the second skyline we had seen; beyond was a dip, a swell of kopje, a deep valley, and beyond that a small sugar-loaf kopje to the left and a long hog-backed one on the right—­a saw of small ridges above, a harsh face below, freckled with innumerable boulders.  Below the small kopje were tents and waggons; from the leftward shoulder of the big one flashed once more the Boer guns.