“Never mind the buckles, but listen to me,” his chief struck in. “Your friend B— of the Mounted Rifles has got leave for you to be attached to his troop for to-day. Will you go with him?”
“Will a duck swi—I beg pardon, sir; I mean I’ll go like a shot,” cried Tom.
“To get shot!—eh, Tom?” laughed Frank Jamieson.
“But I say, sir,” continued Tom after a moment’s thought, “perhaps Frank would like to—”
“Frank’s all right, my boy,” interrupted Captain Jamieson; “he is to ride ‘galloper’ to Major Sutton. And now the sooner you’re off the better. The Rifles are parading.”
And Tom, thrusting the remains of his morning meal into his haversack, shook hands with the captain and Frank, jumped into the saddle, and galloped off to the Rifle lines, where he found Lieutenant B— awaiting him.
At a “council of war,” held at the Burns Hill mission station on the previous evening, Colonel Somerset and his brother-commanders had decided to form the division into three columns of attack; and it was in this order that the troops took the field on the morning of the 17th April.
The right column, which was composed entirely of infantry corps, commanded by Major Glencairn Campbell, 91st Foot, entered the Amatola Mountains at the gorge of the Amatola Basin, with Mount McDonald on the right and the Seven Kloof Mountain on the left.
The centre column, consisting of two squadrons of the Cape Mounted Riflemen and Sutton’s Kat River Burgher Horse, crossed the Keiskamma River and ascended one of the ridges of the Seven Kloof Mountain to its summit.
The left column, under Colonels Somerset and Richardson, consisting of the 7th Dragoon Guards (the “Old Black Horse,” as they loved to be styled) and the remaining troops of the Mounted Rifles, with a half-battery of artillery, advanced towards the Seven Kloof Mountain, and, passing along its base, marched in the direction of Chumie Hoek.