As the sun came through the mist, bringing the certainty of a fiercely hot day, the British garrison could at last perceive the real situation. The summit of Spion Kop had been but half occupied; the northern end was in the hands of the Boers, who held a trench upon it. Moreover, the table-land on the summit sloped down to the north, and lay open to the enemy's fire from kopjes, rising from the long mountain ridge, which surrounded it on three sides. The ridge forked at Spion Kop, whose summit thus formed a projecting natural bastion; one line of heights ran up to the north-west in the direction of Acton Homes--the line of heights which Sir Charles Warren's infantry had assailed day after day--another ran due eastward, prolonging the Boer positions in front of Potgieter's Drift. The British force on Spion Kop was thus most critically placed. It had no guns, yet it was exposed in the closest of formations to gun fire; reinforcements could only reach it by a long and arduous climb, whereas the Boers, by pushing their men along the ridges which they held, could arrive comparatively fresh; it could be attacked from every side except the south by a converging and enfilading fire; its cover was all but useless, for it was now seen that the trenches faced in the wrong direction. Added to this there was the curious want of attention to detail which had neglected the laying of a field telegraph so as to connect the summit with headquarters; a want of oil for signal lamps; and a paucity in the numbers of heliograph-operators and flag-signallers with the forlorn hope. This neglect of the means of communication disastrously affected the operations at every turn. Generals Warren and Buller did not know what was happening on the summit, and never went there to see. The British artillery, if report can be believed, fired repeatedly on the British troops, through inadvertence and ignorance of the precise positions occupied. Finally, when uncertainty as to who was in command on the mountain arose, it could not be immediately solved by an appeal to headquarters. [Illustration: _F. J. Waugh._] THE FIGHT ON SPION KOP. This drawing is based on a Boer photograph taken on the spot immediately after the battle. The concentrated fire of the enemy was so terribly effective that our men were compelled to shelter themselves behind the dead bodies of their comrades.] [Sidenote: The Boers bombard the British position.]