side almost to our feet.  A thousand yards from the tip of this tongue rose a line of low kopjes crowned with reddish stones.  The whole tongue was virtually ours.  Our guns on the heights or on the bank could sweep it from flank to flank, enfilade and cross fire.  Therefore the passage of the river was assured.  We had obtained what amounted to a practical bridgehead, and could cross whenever we thought fit.  But the explanation of many things lay beyond.  At the base of the tongue, where it sprang from the Boer side of the valley, the ground rose in a series of gentle grassy slopes to a long horseshoe of hills, and along this, both flanks resting securely on unfordable reaches of the river, out of range from our heights of any but the heaviest guns, approachable by a smooth grass glacis, which was exposed to two or three tiers of cross-fire and converging fire, ran the enemy’s position.  Please look at the sketch on p. 261, which shows nothing but what it is meant to.

[Illustration:  Plan of Potgieter’s Ferry.]

It will be seen that there is no difficulty in shelling the Boers out of the little kopjes, of fortifying them, and of passing the army on to the tip of the tongue; but to get off the tongue on to the smooth plateau that runs to Ladysmith it was necessary to force the tremendous Boer position enclosing the tongue.  In technical language the possession of the heights virtually gave us a bridgehead on the Tugela, but the debouches from that bridgehead were barred by an exterior line of hills fortified and occupied by the enemy.

What will Sir Redvers Buller do?  In a few hours we shall know.  To cross and deliver a frontal attack will cost at least three thousand men.  Is a flank attack possible?  Can the position be turned?  Fords few and far between, steep banks, mighty positions on the further banks:  such are some of the difficulties.  But everyone has confidence in the general.  An officer who had been serving on the Kimberley side came here.  ’I don’t understand,’ he said, ’how it is you are all so cheerful here after Colenso.  You should hear the troops at Modeler River.’  But it is a poor army that cannot take a repulse and come up smiling, and when the private soldiers put their faith in any man they are very constant.  Besides, Buller’s personality impresses everyone with the idea of some great reserve of force.  Certainly he has something up his sleeve.  The move to Potgieter’s has been talked of for a month and executed with the greatest ostentation and deliberation.  Surely something lies behind it all.  So at least we all believe, and in the meanwhile trust wholeheartedly.

But some part of the army will certainly cross at Potgieter’s; and as I looked down on the smooth smiling landscape it seemed very strange to think that in a few days it would blaze into a veritable hell.  Yet the dark lines of shelter trenches, the redoubts crowning the hills, the bristle of tiny black figures busily entrenching against the sky line, hundreds of horses grazing in the plain, all promised a fierce and stubborn defence.  I turned about.  The country to the southward was also visible.  What looked to the naked eye like an endless thin rope lay streaked across the spacious veldt, and when I looked through the glass I saw that it was ten or twelve miles of marching men and baggage.  The armies were approaching.  The collision impended.