Over seventy miles of veld the gleam of the helio by day and the flash of the signal lamps at night marked the steady flow of the British tide.

Here and there the columns came in touch with the enemy and swept him before them.

French had a skirmish at Wilge River at the end of January, and Campbell another south of Middelburg, in which he had twenty casualties.

On February 4th Smith-Dorrien was at Lake Chrissie; French had passed through Bethel and the enemy was retiring on Amsterdam.

The hundred-mile ends of the drag net were already contracted to a third of that distance, and the game was still known to be within it.