It was about eight o’clock on a bright summer morning that the small force came in contact with a few scattered Boer outposts, who retired, firing, before the advance of the Imperial Light Horse.  As they fell back the green and white tents of the invaders came into view upon the russet-coloured hillside of Elandslaagte.  Down at the red brick railway station the Boers could be seen swarming out of the buildings in which they had spent the night.  The little Natal guns, firing with obsolete black powder, threw a few shells into the station, one of which, it is said, penetrated a Boer ambulance which could not be seen by the gunners.  The accident was to be regretted, but as no patients could have been in the ambulance the mischance was not a serious one.

But the busy, smoky little seven-pounder guns were soon to meet their master.  Away up on the distant hillside, a long thousand yards beyond their own furthest range, there was a sudden bright flash.  No smoke, only the throb of flame, and then the long sibilant scream of the shell, and the thud as it buried itself in the ground under a limber.  Such judgment of range would have delighted the most martinet of inspectors at Okehampton.  Bang came another, and another, and another, right into the heart of the battery.  The six little guns lay back at their extremest angle, and all barked together in impotent fury.  Another shell pitched over them, and the officer in command lowered his field-glass in despair as he saw his own shells bursting far short upon the hillside.  Jameson’s defeat does not seem to have been due to any defect in his artillery.  French, peering and pondering, soon came to the conclusion that there were too many Boers for him, and that if those fifteen-pounders desired target practice they should find some other mark than the Natal Field Artillery.  A few curt orders, and his whole force was making its way to the rear.  There, out of range of those perilous guns, they halted, the telegraph wire was cut, a telephone attachment was made, and French whispered his troubles into the sympathetic ear of Ladysmith.  He did not whisper in vain.  What he had to say was that where he had expected a few hundred riflemen he found something like two thousand, and that where he expected no guns he found two very excellent ones.  The reply was that by road and by rail as many men as could be spared were on their way to join him.

Soon they began to drop in, those useful reinforcements—­first the Devons, quiet, business-like, reliable; then the Gordons, dashing, fiery, brilliant.  Two squadrons of the 5th Lancers, the 42nd R.F.A., the 21st R.F.A., another squadron of Lancers, a squadron of the 5th Dragoon Guards—­French began to feel that he was strong enough for the task in front of him.  He had a decided superiority of numbers and of guns.  But the others were on their favourite defensive on a hill.  It would be a fair fight and a deadly one.