All through the night of January 16-17 General Lyttelton's Brigade was crossing the Tugela at Potgieter's Drift, fording the river or ferrying over in the pontoons and ferry-boat. Before dawn the six 5-inch howitzers had followed the infantry and taken their post in the line of kopjes, at One Tree Hill, the foremost point which the British advance had reached. Meantime, General Hildyard with the Second Brigade, to impress the Boers with the belief that the main attack would be delivered from the east, and to divert attention from the west, had deployed his men and made as if to cross at Skiet's Drift. But, as night wore on, he too, had stolen off towards Trichardt's Drift, ten miles to the west, whither in eager haste all Sir Charles Warren's force was marching. Three brigades of infantry, six batteries of artillery, and almost all the cavalry and mounted infantry were concentrating upon this point. Rain fell in torrents, hampering the movement and delaying the transport; yet before dawn the combatants were in place and ready to begin. "It was not possible," says Mr. Churchill, "to stand unmoved and watch the ceaseless living stream--miles of stern-looking men, marching in fours so quickly that they often had to run to keep up, of artillery, ammunition columns, supply columns, baggage, slaughter-cattle, thirty great pontoons, white-hooded, red-crossed ambulance waggons, all the accessories of an army hurrying forward under cover of night--and before them a guiding star, the red gleam of war." The march through the mud, however, had wearied the men; still more so the alternations of running and halting, which showed that the staff, from unfamiliarity with the work of handling and moving large bodies of troops, had made faulty arrangements. And thus, when in the small hours of the early morning the column, anxious for action, looked down upon the river, and up across it at the solemn precipices of Spion Kop beyond, nothing happened. Perhaps the pontoons to bridge the stream had dropped behind on the muddy roads; perhaps the general thought it inexpedient to launch weary troops forthwith against the enemy. But to the men the delay seemed exasperating; they knew that they would pay dearly for it with their lives and that they had made haste in vain, since the Boers were to be allowed time to extend their lines yet further to the west, once more compelling a frontal attack. [Illustration: [_Photo by Middlebrook._ AMMUNITION COLUMN CROSSING THE TUGELA BY A PONTOON BRIDGE.] [Sidenote: The enemy entrenching.] [Sidenote: JAN. 17, 1900.] _Warren's Divisions Cross the Tugela._]