The afternoon and evening of the 17th passed in inactivity so far as the infantry and artillery were concerned. Only a few shots were fired by the artillery to disconcert the Boers. There was much questioning in the British camp as to the reason for the long delay, since to the men rapid movement seemed essential for success against the enemy. The Boers could be seen everywhere, well out of range, at work upon the lines of defences on the hills and kopjes. The British army was sitting still and giving General Botha--who was now in command of the Boers at this point--ample time to concentrate his forces and make all his dispositions. The wait at Potgieter's was easy to explain, for that had not been the point chosen for the decisive attack. But the wait after crossing at Trichardt's Drift admitted of no such simple excuse. Everything depended upon celerity. The facts were that General Warren did not venture to leave his baggage in charge of a small rearguard and to push on along the Boer front, and that the crossing of such a river as the Tugela, with its high banks, awkward approaches, and difficult fords, was necessarily a slow and troublesome work, giving the enemy abundance of opportunity to gather men and oppose a determined resistance. [Sidenote: Spion Kop bombarded. Lyttelton's feigned attack.] [Sidenote: JAN. 18, 1900.] _A British Ambuscade._] On the 18th General Lyttelton's Brigade advanced in widely extended order from One Tree Hill--as the chief of the kopjes near Potgieter's Drift was named--towards the Boer lines, supported by the fire of the naval guns and howitzers. The shells searched the eastern face of Spion Kop, which had been assiduously bombarded on the previous day, causing the Boers, as they themselves admitted, heavy losses, and interrupting communication between their camps and laagers. Clouds, now yellow and green with the fumes of lyddite, now brown with the dust which its explosion threw up, flecked the slopes of the hills. But the enemy made no reply whatever. The great war balloon rose slowly into the air near One Tree Hill, and the officer in the car signalled that he could see the Boers lining their entrenchments, but could discover no guns. Thereupon the British infantry--the Scottish Rifles on the left, the 3rd King's Royal Rifles in the centre, and the 1st Rifle Brigade on the right--pushed forward in a convex line, making all possible use of cover. The object was to draw the enemy, to distract their attention from Sir Charles Warren, and to discover their positions. But they obstinately refused to be drawn; instinctively they had divined our purpose. Only from the hill on the British right front, known as Brakfontein, came a few shots which wounded two men. A second line of kopjes, one mile in advance of One Tree Hill, was reached and gained without incident, and there the brigade halted till night, and then under cover of darkness fell back. [Illustration: "THE OUTLOOK" OVER THE TUGELA.