ground that could bear upon the foe was lined with
British troops. Every available point, front or flank, where a gun could be
placed to harass the foe was taken advantage of; nothing was left to
chance, nothing was rashly hurried. Carefully, methodically the work was
done. There was to be no carnival of death on our side, no trusting to the
"luck of the British Army," no headlong rush into the arms of destruction,
no waving line of bayonets. The Boer was to play a hand with the cards he
loves to deal. He was to be shelled and sniped. If he wanted straight-out
fighting, he had to come out into the open and get it. He was to have no
chance to sit in safety and slaughter the British soldiers like shambled
deer, as he had so often done before. As the sun went down our men
bivouacked where they stood, and nothing was heard through the long, cold
night except at intervals the grim growling of a gun, the sentinels' swift,
curt challenge, or the neighing of horses as steed spoke to steed across
the grass-grown veldt.

At the breaking of the dawn I was aroused from sleep by the simultaneous
crashing of several of our batteries. It was Britain's morning salutation
to the Boer. I hurried up to a spot on the kopje where a regiment of
Worcesters lay amongst the broken ground, and saw that the battle was just
about to commence in deadly earnest. It was a huge, flat-topped kopje where
I located myself. The outer edges of the hill rose higher than the centre,
a little rivulet ran across tiny indentations on the crown of that rampart,
and there was ample space for an army to lie concealed from the eyes of
enemies. If the Boers were strongly posted, so were the British. Away past
our right flank Wepener range was plainly visible in the clear morning
light, and just behind Wepener lay the Basuto border, with its fringe of
mountains. About two thousand yards away, directly facing our centre, a
white farmhouse stood in a cluster of trees. This farmhouse gave the
battlefield its name, Constantia Farm. The enemy could be seen by the aid
of glasses slipping from the kopjes down towards this farm and back again
at intervals. Cattle, horses, goats, and sheep went on grazing calmly, the
roaring of the guns doubtless seeming to them but as the tumult of a storm.

Turning my eyes towards the valley behind our position, I saw that we
intended to try to turn the enemy's left flank. Little squads of mounted
men, 95 in each group, swept along the vall