All these exertions were due to the fact that De Wet and Botha had secretly arranged a combined system of attack which would keep our troops on tenterhooks while the Boers gathered together recruits, arms, and ammunition. Hertzog was to skirmish his way down the Colony, fan the smouldering disloyalty of Africanders, and gradually steer his course to the coast. De Wet, with more men, was to join him, and together they were to fight their way to a point of St. Helena's Bay, where a vessel bearing a fresh consignment of arms and ammunition forwarded by sympathisers in Europe, or from their own party in Holland, would be awaiting them. While they were thus carrying out their movements, Botha was to assist them by creating a diversion, and invading Natal with all the commandos at his disposal. The most important and alarming scheme--the parent scheme as it were--was De Wet's. That needed to be strangled in its birth, and to this end various complicated military movements were set on foot; firstly, to prevent Hertzog from advancing farther into British territory; secondly, to frustrate his efforts to gain recruits either by intimidation or inflated promises of success; thirdly, and chiefly, to arrest the rush to his assistance of De Wet and the concentration of the scattered commandos at any given point. So much for the arrangements to meet the parent scheme. In regard to Botha's tactics, Lord Kitchener's plans for meeting them were of that complex nature which makes for simplicity. A crescent shaped rake of troops was to work eastwards towards the low country of Piet Retief, sweeping Botha's hordes--they numbered from five to eight thousand still--before it till the Boer chief should find himself wedged against the Swaziland border, and confronted with four equally uninviting alternatives. 1st. He might elect to fly into the arms of the loyal Swazis (who cherish an old-time hatred for their hereditary oppressors); 2nd, into those of the Zulus (who may be said to be equally antagonistic to Boer ways); 3rd, he might trek north-east into regions redolent of fever, and more deadly than the most bullet-laden battlefield; or, 4th, he might surrender and come to really easy terms with conquerors who were ready and anxious to hold out to him the hand of fellowship. But to return to Scheme No. 1. At Cape Town the City Guard was armed, and musketry practice went on apace. The enrolment of the Johannesburg Mine Guard continued, and other regiments, the Western Province Horse and the Prince of Wales' Horse, were moved to strong positions, while Colonel Owen Thomas took command of a growing corps of smartly mounted men to replace troops that had worn themselves out with repeated combats with the enemy. The Marquis of Tullibardine, in command of the first regiment of Scottish Horse, prepared to take up his quarters at Johannesburg, _viâ_ Natal.