With slow steps and bated breath, the open line of skirmishers stole across it.  Was it possible that it had been entirely abandoned?  Suddenly a raucous shout of ‘Wie da?’ came out of the darkness, then a shot, then a splutter of musketry and a yell, as the Fusiliers sprang onwards with their bayonets.  The Boer post of Vryheid burghers clattered and scrambled away into the darkness, and a cheer that roused both the sleeping armies told that the surprise had been complete and the position won.

In the grey light of the breaking day the men advanced along the narrow undulating ridge, the prominent end of which they had captured.  Another trench faced them, but it was weakly held and abandoned.  Then the men, uncertain what remained beyond, halted and waited for full light to see where they were, and what the work was which lay before them—­a fatal halt, as the result proved, and yet one so natural that it is hard to blame the officer who ordered it.  Indeed, he might have seemed more culpable had he pushed blindly on, and so lost the advantage which had been already gained.

About eight o’clock, with the clearing of the mist, General Woodgate saw how matters stood.  The ridge, one end of which he held, extended away, rising and falling for some miles.  Had he the whole of the end plateau, and had he guns, he might hope to command the rest of the position.  But he held only half the plateau, and at the further end of it the Boers were strongly entrenched.  The Spion Kop mountain was really the salient or sharp angle of the Boer position, so that the British were exposed to a cross fire both from the left and right.  Beyond were other eminences which sheltered strings of riflemen and several guns.  The plateau which the British held was very much narrower than was usually represented in the press.  In many places the possible front was not much more than a hundred yards wide, and the troops were compelled to bunch together, as there was not room for a single company to take an extended formation.  The cover upon this plateau was scanty, far too scanty for the force upon it, and the shell fire—­especially the fire of the pom-poms—­soon became very murderous.  To mass the troops under the cover of the edge of the plateau might naturally suggest itself, but with great tactical skill the Boer advanced line from Commandant Prinsloo’s Heidelberg and Carolina commandos kept so aggressive an attitude that the British could not weaken the lines opposed to them.  Their skirmishers were creeping round too in such a way that the fire was really coming from three separate points, left, centre, and. right, and every corner of the position was searched by their bullets.  Early in the action the gallant Woodgate and many of his Lancashire men were shot down.  The others spread out and held on, firing occasionally at the whisk of a rifle-barrel or the glimpse of a broad-brimmed hat.

From morning to midday, the shell, Maxim, and rifle fire swept across the kop in a continual driving shower.  The British guns in the plain below failed to localise the position of the enemy’s, and they were able to vent their concentrated spite upon the exposed infantry.  No blame attaches to the gunners for this, as a hill intervened to screen the Boer artillery, which consisted of five big guns and two pom-poms.