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The same day the infantry or the leading division, Clery's, was in the hills north of Springfield. Lord Dundonald's force commanded the river at Potgieter's Drift, and the crossing there was thus assured. A pause of four days followed: a pause probably not of inaction, but of strenuous preparation in order to make the final advance vigorous.
A halt was called, for the ten days' supplies which had been taken with the troops were exhausted, and it was necessary to wait until the railway should be repaired. This gave time for Hildyard's 5th Division and Lyttelton's 4th Division to close up on Clery's 2nd Division, which with Dundonald's cavalry had formed our vanguard throughout.
Three of the most distinguished officers in the British service, Sir Thomas Hastings, Sir John Burgoyne, and Colonel Colquhoun, have felt it their duty, when officially reporting on the efficacy of Lord Dundonald's war plans, to give him the highest credit for having kept his secret "under peculiarly trying circumstances," and from pure love of his native country.
The night before, when the Ladysmith sentries had tried to halt Dundonald's troopers in the same way, and demanded a pass from them, there was not one in the squadron. We crossed the bridge soberly and entered Ladysmith at a walk. Even the ponies looked disconcerted and crestfallen.
Some escaped, some held out most gallantly in a kopje, but the final result was a surrender of twenty-four unwounded prisoners, and the finding of thirteen killed and wounded, including de Mentz, the field-cornet of Heilbron. Two killed and two wounded were the British losses in this well-managed affair. Dundonald's force then took its position upon the extreme left of Warren's advance.
Dundonald's Cavalry Brigade was to make a far wider detour and climb up the end of the ridge, thus making absolutely certain of finding the enemy's left flank at last. By daybreak all were moving, and as the Irregular Cavalry forded the Blue Krantz stream on their enveloping march we heard the boom of the first gun.
While the commando on the ridge was occupied with the infantry, it was suddenly surprised from the flank by Dundonald's men, and was driven out of the trenches.
General Lyttelton's Division had camped as far out as Elandslaagte with Burn Murdoch's cavalry, while Dundonald's brigade covered the space between Burn Murdoch's western outposts and the Drakensberg passes. Few Boers were seen, but it was known that the passes were held in some strength.
But neither Dundonald's weakly approval nor the gayety of the young men could lift the shadow that fell within and without, both in the gallery and in the courtyard of the castle, upon the marriage of Claverhouse and Jean Cochrane. News had come two days before that there had been a rising among the Covenanters, and Claverhouse was ordered to pursue them with his cavalry.
Meanwhile one of Lyttelton's battalions, which in ignorance of Dundonald's movement, had been sent to clear Cingolo of some Boers who were firing on the advance and checking it, found when it reached the ridge that it had been forestalled in the capture.
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