The essential thing in the movements had been speed—­to reach each point before the enemy could concentrate to oppose them.  Upon this it depended whether they would find five hundred or five thousand waiting on the further bank.  It must have been with anxious eyes that French watched his first regiment ride down to Klip Drift.  If the Boers should have had notice of his coming and have transferred some of their 40-pounders, he might lose heavily before he forced the stream.  But this time, at last, he had completely outmanoeuvred them.  He came with the news of his coming, and Broadwood with the 12th Lancers rushed the drift.  The small Boer force saved itself by flight, and the camp, the wagons, and the supplies remained with the victors.  On the night of the 13th he had secured the passage of the Modder, and up to the early morning the horses and the guns were splashing through its coffee-coloured waters.

French’s force had now come level to the main position of the Boers, but had struck it upon the extreme left wing.  The extreme right wing, thanks to the Koodoosdrift demonstration, was fifty miles off, and this line was naturally very thinly held, save only at the central position of Magersfontein.  Cronje could not denude this central position, for he saw Methuen still waiting in front of him, and in any case Klip Drift is twenty-five miles from Magersfontein.  But the Boer left wing, though scattered, gathered into some sort of cohesion on Wednesday (February 14th), and made an effort to check the victorious progress of the cavalry.  It was necessary on this day to rest at Klip Drift, until Kelly-Kenny should come up with the infantry to hold what had been gained.  All day the small bodies of Boers came riding in and taking up positions between the column and its objective.

Next morning the advance was resumed, the column being still forty miles from Kimberley with the enemy in unknown force between.  Some four miles out French came upon their position, two hills with a long low nek between, from which came a brisk rifle fire supported by artillery.  But French was not only not to be stopped, but could not even be retarded.  Disregarding the Boer fire completely the cavalry swept in wave after wave over the low nek, and so round the base of the hills.  The Boer riflemen upon the kopjes must have seen a magnificent military spectacle as regiment after regiment, the 9th Lancers leading, all in very open order, swept across the plain at a gallop, and so passed over the nek.  A few score horses and half as many men were left behind them, but forty or fifty Boers were cut down in the pursuit.  It appears to have been one of the very few occasions during the campaign when that obsolete and absurd weapon the sword was anything but a dead weight to its bearer.