About midday the infantry began to stream across the bridge, which had been most gallantly and efficiently constructed under a warm fire, by a party of sappers, under the command of Major Irvine.  The attack was led by the Durham Light Infantry of Lyttelton’s Brigade, followed by the 1st Rifle Brigade, with the Scottish and 3rd Rifles in support.  Never did the old Light Division of Peninsular fame go up a Spanish hillside with greater spirit and dash than these, their descendants, facing the slope of Vaalkranz.  In open order they moved across the plain, with a superb disregard of the crash and patter of the shrapnel, and then up they went, the flitting figures, springing from cover to cover, stooping, darting, crouching, running, until with their glasses the spectators on Swartz Kop could see the gleam of the bayonets and the strain of furious rushing men upon the summit, as the last Boers were driven from their trenches.  The position was gained, but little else.  Seven officers and seventy men were lying killed and wounded among the boulders.  A few stricken Boers, five unwounded prisoners, and a string of Basuto ponies were the poor fruits of victory—­those and the arid hill from which so much had been hoped, and so little was to be gained.

It was during this advance that an incident occurred of a more picturesque character than is usual in modern warfare.  The invisibility of combatants and guns, and the absorption of the individual in the mass, have robbed the battle-field of those episodes which adorned, if they did not justify it.  On this occasion, a Boer gun, cut off by the British advance, flew out suddenly from behind its cover, like a hare from its tussock, and raced for safety across the plain.  Here and there it wound, the horses stretched to their utmost, the drivers stooping and lashing, the little gun bounding behind.  To right to left, behind and before, the British shells burst, lyddite and shrapnel, crashing and riving.  Over the lip of a hollow, the gallant gun vanished, and within a few minutes was banging away once more at the British advance.  With cheers and shouts and laughter, the British infantrymen watched the race for shelter, their sporting spirit rising high above all racial hatred, and hailing with a ’gone to ground’ whoop the final disappearance of the gun.

The Durhams had cleared the path, but the other regiments of Lyttelton’s Brigade followed hard at their heels, and before night they had firmly established themselves upon the hill.  But the fatal slowness which had marred General Buller’s previous operations again prevented him from completing his success.  Twice at least in the course of these operations there is evidence of sudden impulse to drop his tools in the midst of his task and to do no more for the day.  So it was at Colenso, where an order was given at an early hour for the whole force to retire, and the guns which might have been covered by infantry fire and withdrawn after nightfall were abandoned.