The rough country with its rocky flat-topped lines of hill is just suited for their method of warfare—­to lie behind stones and take careful shots at any one in range.  Besides, if they are to do anything, they know they must be quick.  The Basutos are chanting their war-song on the Free State frontier.  The British reinforcements are coming, and all irregulars have a tendency to melt away if you keep them waiting.  But on the other hand it is against Boer tradition to attack, especially entrenched positions.  Their artillery is probably far inferior to ours in training and skill, and they don’t like artillery in any case.  Nor do they like the thought of Lancers and Hussars sweeping down upon their flanks wherever a little bit of plain has to be crossed.  So the chances of attack seem about equally balanced, and only the days can answer that one question of ours:  Will they come on?

Yesterday it seemed as though they were coming.  The advance of two main columns from the passes in the north-west had been fairly steady; and last night our outposts of the Natal Carbineers were engaged, as the 5th Lancers had been the night before.  Heavy firing was reported at any distance short of fifteen miles.  There was no panic.  The few ladies who remain went riding or cycling along the dusty, blazing road which makes the town.  The Zulu women in blankets and beads walked in single file with the little black heads of babies peering out between their shoulder-blades, and roasting in the sun.  Huge waggon-loads of stores—­compressed forage, compressed beef, jam, water-proof sheets, ammunition, oil, blankets, sardines, and all the other necessaries of a soldier’s existence—­came lumbering up from the station behind the long files of oxen urged slowly forward by savage outcries and lashes of hide.  Orderlies were galloping in the joy of their hearts.  The band of the Gloucesters were practising scales in unison to slow time.  Suddenly a kind of feeling came into the air that something was happening.  I noticed the waggon stopped; the oxen at once lay down in the dust; the music ceased and was packed away.  I met the Gordons coming into town and asking for their ground.  Riding up the mile or two to camp, I found the whole dusty plateau astir.  Tents were melting away like snow.  Kits lay all naked and revealed upon the earth.  The men were falling in.  The waggons were going the wrong way round.  The very headquarters and staff were being cleared out.  The whole camp was, in fact, in motion.  It was coming down into the town.  In a few hours the familiar place was bare and deserted.  I went up this morning and stood on Signal Hill where the heliograph was working yesterday, just above the camp.  The whole plain was a wilderness.  Straw and paper possessed it merely, except that here and there a destitute Kaffir groped among the debris in hopes of finding a shiny tin pot for his furniture or some rag of old uniform to harmonise with his savage dress.  In one corner of the empty iron huts a few of the cavalry were still trying to carry off some remnants of forage.  It was a pitiful sight, and yet the rapidity of the change was impressive.  If the Boers came in, they would find those tin huts very luxurious after their accustomed bivouacs.  Is it possible that tin huts might be their Capua?