The outbreak of war was upon October 11th.  On the 12th the Boer forces crossed the frontier both on the north and on the west.  On the 13th they occupied Charlestown at the top angle of Natal.  On the 15th they had reached Newcastle, a larger town some fifteen miles inside the border.  Watchers from the houses saw six miles of canvas-tilted bullock wagons winding down the passes, and learned that this was not a raid but an invasion.  At the same date news reached the British headquarters of an advance from the western passes, and of a movement from the Buffalo River on the east.  On the 13th Sir George White had made a reconnaissance in force, but had not come in touch with the enemy.  On the 15th six of the Natal Police were surrounded and captured at one of the drifts of the Buffalo River.  On the 18th our cavalry patrols came into touch with the Boer scouts at Acton Homes and Besters Station, these being the voortrekkers of the Orange Free State force.  On the 18th also a detachment was reported from Hadders Spruit, seven miles north of Glencoe Camp.  The cloud was drifting up, and it could not be long before it would burst.

Two days later, on the early morning of October 20th, the forces came at last into collision.  At half-past three in the morning, well before daylight, the mounted infantry picket at the junction of the roads from Landmans and Vants Drifts was fired into by the Doornberg commando, and retired upon its supports.  Two companies of the Dublin Fusiliers were sent out, and at five o’clock on a fine but misty morning the whole of Symons’s force was under arms with the knowledge that the Boers were pushing boldly towards them.  The khaki-clad lines of fighting men stood in their long thin ranks staring up at the curves of the saddle-back hills to the north and east of them, and straining their eyes to catch a glimpse of the enemy.  Why these same saddle-back hills were not occupied by our own people is, it must be confessed, an insoluble mystery.  In a hollow on one flank were the 18th Hussars and the mounted infantry.  On the other were the eighteen motionless guns, limbered up and ready, the horses fidgeting and stamping in the raw morning air.

And then suddenly—­could that be they?  An officer with a telescope stared intently and pointed.  Another and another turned a steady field glass towards the same place.  And then the men could see also, and a little murmur of interest ran down the ranks.

A long sloping hill—­Talana Hill—­olive-green in hue, was stretching away in front of them.  At the summit it rose into a rounded crest.  The mist was clearing, and the curve was hard-outlined against the limpid blue of the morning sky.  On this, some two and a half miles or three miles off, a little group of black dots had appeared.  The clear edge of the skyline had become serrated with moving figures.  They clustered into a knot, then opened again, and then—­