Between the 24th and the 26th both columns--that is to say, the headquarters and Wood's--advanced but six miles, but Buller was not more idle than Wood, as, while the latter was building a fort to hold a couple of hundred men in the heart almost of a formidable enemy's country, the former had patrolled in almost every direction to the front, rear, and both flanks. On the 25th Buller and his "merry men" were in the saddle and away more than nine miles to the front, and by noon there came an orderly, "bloody with sparring, fiery red with haste," who brought news that "Redvers," with his usual good fortune, had pounced upon about seventy or eighty Zulus busily engaged in grass-burning, to bother the advance in regard to grass for the horses and oxen. Buller made extremely short work of these fellows, whose surprise was so complete that the whole lot might have been annihilated if humanitarian principles had not interposed. As soon as the grass was effectually saved, Buller proceeded on a few miles, and, although watched here and there, suffered not the slightest molestation. The same evening (25th) Buller came back from his own camp to the headquarter camp with full information in regard to the five kraals that had been observed on the 24th in the district of Usipexi, which he reported were guarded by a tolerably formidable Zulu impi. A small and select council of war was at once held in General Newdigate's tent, under the presidency of the Commander-in-chief. After a very short conference, in which Lord Chelmsford, Generals Newdigate and Marshall, and Colonels Drury-Lowe and Buller were the principal speakers, it was finally decided that an attack in force should be made upon the five kraals, and any others that could be discovered at an early hour on the following day. At daybreak accordingly the force was drawn up in line for Lord Chelmsford's inspection, which, as was usual with him, was, though rapid, most carefully minute. On the right were two guns and fifty men of Le Grice's admirable battery, and next came two of Drury-Lowe's splendid blue-and-white squadrons. These fellows would have won the heart of any light cavalry colonel or adjutant, and it seemed almost a pity that such glittering panoply of crest and spear and plume should have to abide the thrust of a hidden assegai from behind a rock or bush. Four hundred and fifty of Buller's best men, though not so smart nor so well mounted as Drury-Lowe's gallant fellows, were not despised or looked down upon by those who were present, and the more brilliantly decked trooper, with his uniform and glittering _apanage_, felt proud to ride with the men who had fought so well at Zlobani and conquered so grandly at Kambula. Two companies of natives made up the force, which perhaps was the largest patrol ever furnished in this war for such a duty as the burning of kraals. The guns and part of the cavalry were sent by a circuitous path which led to an eminence near the largest