At last the day came. It was Dec. 10th when Methuen and his big army came up and without delay began with their usual introduction, by turning six batteries upon the supposed position of the Boer force. For two days this formidable array of field and lyddite guns continued to roar and keep the very heavens filled with heavy steel shells that tore up the earth generally. No reply was sent back from any part of Cronje's lines, so Lord Methuen alone can lay claim to making all that deafening noise that so frightened birds and beasts during the 10th and 11th; but when you say noise, you have the sum total of the work accomplished by his vigorous display of fireworks. It was in the very early morning of the 12th, that Lord Methuen decided that the fearful Cronje and his "dirty" Boers were either demolished or so terribly demoralized that they had fled for safety miles to their rear, because he had not heard a murmur from them for two days. Any man with a little grain of sense would, at least at this early hour in the morning, have sent in advance a well extended line of skirmishers to find out if the enemy were near at hand or had actually fled. No; this way of doing business would never meet with the approval of an English lord who had, by the accident of birth, inherited the brains of all past generations in his family line; so he moved his lines forward in close order. When Methuen's lines arrived within about seventy-five yards of Cronje's trenches, the demolished or absconded "dirty" Boers sent a greeting in the form of a long, dazzling line of fire, which instantly died away, and with it General Wauchope and almost his entire Black Watch, the crack regiment of the English army. Never in all history was such a bloody and disastrous battle fought and won in such a short time. Methuen's men, one and all, regardless of orders or order, fled as fast as their legs could carry them, and the Boers did not fail to apply the whip and spur at every stride they made. Although the battle was now virtually over, yet some hard fighting took place during the day. Methuen could not reconcile himself to his most disastrous and disgraceful defeat at the hands of such a small force of Boers, so spent the greater part of the day in losing more before he finely concluded that he would have to return to his old camp on Modder River.