At half-past twelve on the 23rd General Hart ordered his brigade to advance.  The battalions, which were sheltering among stone walls and other hastily constructed cover on the reverse slope of the kopje immediately in front of that on which we stood, rose up one by one and formed in rank.  They then moved off in single file along the railroad, the Inniskilling Fusiliers leading, the Connaught Rangers, Dublin Fusiliers, and the Imperial Light Infantry following in succession.  At the same time the Durham Light Infantry and the 2nd Rifle Brigade began to march to take the place of the assaulting brigade on the advanced kopje.  Wishing to have a nearer view of the attack, I descended the wooded hill, cantered along the railway—­down which the procession of laden stretchers, now hardly interrupted for three days, was still moving—­and, dismounting, climbed the rocky sides of the advanced kopje.  On the top, in a little half-circle of stones, I found General Lyttelton, who received me kindly, and together we watched the development of the operation.  Nearly a mile of the railway line was visible, and along it the stream of Infantry flowed steadily.  The telescope showed the soldiers walking quite slowly, with their rifles at the slope.  Thus far, at least, they were not under fire.  The low kopjes which were held by the other brigades shielded the movement.  A mile away the river and railway turned sharply to the right; the river plunged into a steep gorge, and the railway was lost in a cutting.  There was certainly plenty of cover; but just before the cutting was reached the iron bridge across the Onderbrook Spruit had to be crossed, and this was evidently commanded by the enemy’s riflemen.  Beyond the railway and the moving trickle of men the brown dark face of Inniskilling Hill, crowned with sangars and entrenchments, rose up gloomy and, as yet, silent.

The patter of musketry along the left of the army, which reached back from the advanced kopjes to Colenso village, the boom of the heavy guns across the river, and the ceaseless thudding of the Field Artillery making a leisurely preparation, were an almost unnoticed accompaniment to the scene.  Before us the Infantry were moving steadily nearer to the hill and the open ground by the railway bridge, and we listened amid the comparatively peaceful din for the impending fire storm.

The head of the column reached the exposed ground, and the soldiers began to walk across it.  Then at once above the average fusillade and cannonade rose the extraordinary rattling roll of Mauser musketry in great volume.  If the reader wishes to know exactly what this is like he must drum the fingers of both his hands on a wooden table, one after the other as quickly and as hard as he can.  I turned my telescope on the Dutch defences.  They were no longer deserted.  All along the rim of the trenches, clear cut and jet black, against the sky stood a crowded line of slouch-hatted men, visible as far as their shoulders, and wielding what looked like thin sticks.