In the evening, I am told, the General received a signal from Buller:  “Have taken hill.  Fight went well.”  No one thought or talked of anything but the prospect of near relief.  Yet (besides old Bulwan’s violent bombardment of the station) there was one other event in the day deserving record.  Hearing an unhappy case of an officer’s widow left destitute, Colonel Knox, commanding the Divisional Troops, has offered twelve bottles of whisky for auction to-morrow, and hopes to make L100 by the sale.  I think he will succeed, unless Buller shakes the market.

     January 25, 1900.

Before 6 a.m.  I was on Observation Hill again, watching.  One hopeful sign was at once obvious.  The Boer waggon-laagers were breaking up.  The two great lines of waggons between the plantations near Pinkney’s farm were gone.  By 6.30 they were all creeping away with their oxen up a road that runs north-west among the hills in the direction of Tintwa Pass.  It was the most hopeful movement we had yet seen, but one large laager was still left at the foot of Fos Kop, or Mount Moriah.

The early morning was bright, but a mist soon covered the sun.  Rain fell, and though the air afterwards was strangely clear, the heliograph could not be used till the afternoon.  We were left in uncertainty.  Shells were bursting along the ridge of Taba Nyama, on the double peaks and the Boer tents below.  Only on the highest point in the centre we could see no firing, and that in itself was hopeful.  About 8 a.m. the fire slackened and ceased.  We conjectured an armistice.  Through a telescope we could see little black specks on the centre of the hill; they appeared to be building sangars.  The Naval Cone Redoubt, having the best telescope, report that the walls are facing this way.  In that case the black specks were probably British, and yet not even in the morning sun did we get a word of certainty.  We hardly know what to think.

In the afternoon the situation was rather worse.  We saw the shelling begin again, but no progress seemed to be made.  About 4 p.m. we witnessed a miserable sight.  Along the main track which crosses the Great Plain and passes round the end of Telegraph Hill, almost within range of our guns, came a large party of men tramping through the dust.  They were in khaki uniforms, marched in fours, and kept step.  Undoubtedly they were British prisoners on their way to Pretoria.  Their numbers were estimated at fifty, ninety, and 150 by different look-out stations.  In front and rear trudged an unorganised gang of Boers, evidently acting as escort.  It was a miserable and depressing thing to see.

At last a cipher message began to come through on the heliograph.  There was immense excitement at the Signal Station.  The figures were taken down.  Colonel Duff buttoned the precious paper in his pocket.  Off he galloped to Headquarters.  Major De Courcy Hamilton was called to decipher the news.  It ran as follows:  “Kaffir deserter from Boer lines reports guns on Bulwan and Telegraph Hills removed!”