A captain of the Irish Brigade told me that his company consisted of seventy-eight men, completed by yeomanry, and he called his adjutant to verify the figures he had given me.
At 11.20 a battery of the Royal Field Artillery went off in the same direction at a trot. A fraction of about fifty returned at a walk.
About 100 metres from my point of observation--an old waggon--the Irish Brigade and the Borderers stood at ease. At 11.30 a battalion was moved forward. Five minutes later a second battery, a great naval 10-centimetre gun, drawn by twenty oxen, joined the fighting line with the rest of the Irish.
Everything had been done very rapidly. One could see that the men had been trained to sudden alarms by six months of warfare. Thirty-five minutes before the men were busy in camp, and the beasts were grazing. Now more than half the men were engaged, and all were ready awaiting orders to advance.
The skirmishers came back at a gallop, and a man arrived to hasten the advance of the naval gun, the oxen of which were almost trotting already.
At 11.55 two other naval guns, also drawn by twenty oxen each, went forward to join the others. A large ambulance-waggon followed.
In the camp a dog was howling dismally. The cannonade slackened a little.
At noon an ammunition-waggon, drawn by ten mules, went off to supply the line of combatants.
It is lamentable that the Burghers, clinging obstinately to their defensive tactics, know nothing of rear or flank movements.
There are no sentries either right or left. All the troops have gone off in the direction of the cannon--that is to say, towards the east--and in that immense camp, containing some hundreds of waggons, there are only a platoon of Mounted Rifles and a half-battalion of infantry. A handful of men could carry the camp and sack it.