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. Nothing happened during the day except the capture of the ferry, which daring enterprise was carried out by volunteers from the South African Light Horse. Six swimmers, protected by a covering party of twenty men, swam the flooded Tugela and began to haul the punt back, whereat the Boers concealed in the kopjes opened a brisk fire at long range on the naked figures, but did not hit anyone nor prevent them all from bringing the punt safely to our side: a dashing exploit, of which their regiment--the 'Cockyolibirds,' as the army, with its customary irreverence, calls us on account of the cock's feather cockades we wear in our hats (miserable jealousy!)--are immensely proud.