At 12 the advance was made on their second and main position, about two miles off, and lying some five miles north-east of Brandfort. The enemy offered little resistance, confining themselves chiefly to long-range artillery fire. When the position was practically taken the Mounted Infantry were sent away to the right flank to make a wide turning movement with a view to cutting off the retreat of ‘Long Tom,’ who, however, catching them on a wide open plain, forced them to dismount for the attack. The dismounted men advanced some two miles in his direction, but dusk setting in it became evident that it was impossible to reach that position with daylight, and we were ordered to rejoin our horses and return to camp. This we reached about 8 P.M., having been in the saddle fifteen hours and covered quite forty miles. There had been no time during the day to feed the horses, which consequently felt the work very much. Our casualties were nil; but ten horses died from exhaustion. To troopers in the ranks, however, it seemed a much more serious affair, as well it might, for on them fell the burden of an advance that tried their powers of endurance if it did not put a very severe strain on their nerves. One of them, writing rather for his own gratification than with the idea of helping to make history, gives a graphic picture of the movement out of camp in the darkest hour before dawn to join other troops, and then trot on through the ‘pitch blackness’ over ground on which stones seemed to have cropped up suddenly where no stones had been before, so that horses stumbled at every stride. Then, as it grew lighter, they saw that a whole army was with them, extending along a front that stretched for miles. Lumsden’s Horse halted under a hill near Ospruit, and British guns opened fire from its crest. At this point the trooper’s hasty notes become ruggedly picturesque as he describes the sequence of events: