When the trains had gone, Captain Lambton, of the Powerful, showed me the new protection which his men and the sappers had built round the great 4.7 in. gun, which is always kept trained on "Long Tom." The sailors call the gun "Lady Anne," in compliment to Captain Lambton's sister, but the soldiers have named it "Weary Willie"—I don't know why. The fellow gun on Cove Hill is called "Bloody Mary"—which is no compliment to anybody. The earthwork running round the "Lady Anne" is eighteen feet deep at the base. Had it been as deep the first day she came, Lieutenant Egerton would still be at her side.

November 6, 1899.

When the melodrama doesn't come off, an indignant Briton demands his money back. Our melodrama has not come off. We were quite ready to give it a favourable reception. The shops were shut, business abandoned. Many had taken secure places the night before, so as to be in plenty of time. Nearly all were seated expectant long before dawn. The rising sun was to ring the curtain up. It rose. The curtain never stirred. From whom shall we indignant Britons demand our money back?

With the first glimmer of light between the stars over Bulwan, those few who had stayed the night under roofs began creeping away to the holes in the river bank or the rough, scrubby ground at the foot of the hills south-west of the town, where the Manchesters guard the ridge. Then we all waited, silent with expectation. The clouds turned crimson. At five the sun marched up in silence. Not a gun was heard. "They will begin at six," we said. Not a sound. "They are having a good breakfast," we thought. Eight came, and we began to move about uneasily. Two miserable shells whizzed over my head, obviously aimed only at the balloon which was just coming down. "Call that a performance?" we grumbled. We left our seats. We went on to the stage of the town. What was the matter? Was "Long Tom" ill? Had the Basutos overrun the Free State? Had Buller really advanced? Lieutenant Hooper, of the 5th Lancers, had walked through from Maritzburg, passing the Royal Irish sentries at 2 a.m. He brought news of a division coming to our rescue. Was that the reason of the day's failure? So speculation chattered. The one thing certain was that the performance did not come off, and there was no one to give us our money back.



So we spent the day wandering round the outposts, washing ourselves and our rags in the yellow river, trying to get the horses to drink the water afterwards, contemplating the picturesque, and pretending to cook. Perhaps the greatest interest was the work upon a series of caves in the river-bank, behind the Intelligence Office. They are square-topped, with straight sides, cut clean into the hard, sandy cliff. The Light Horse have made them for themselves and their ammunition. On the opposite side the Archdeacon has hollowed out a noble, ecclesiastical burrow. On the hills the soldiers are still at work completing their shelter-trenches and walls. I think the Rifle Brigade on King's Post (the signal hill of a month ago) have built the finest series of defences, for they have made covered pits against shrapnel. But perhaps they are more exposed than all the others except the Devons, who lie along a low ridge beside the Helpmakaar road, open to shell from two points, and perhaps to rifle-fire also. The Irish Fusiliers, under Major Churchill, have a very ingenious series of walls and covers. The main Manchesters' defences are circular like forts; so are the Gordons' and the K.R.R.'s. All are provisioned for fourteen days.

I spent the afternoon searching for a runner, a Kaffir the colour of night, who would steal through the Boer lines in the dark with a telegram. In my search I lost two hours through the conscientiousness of the 5th Lancers, who arrested me and sent me from pillar to post, just as if I was seeking information at the War Office. At last they took me—the Colonel himself, three privates with rifles and a mounted orderly with a lance—took me to the General Staff, and there the absurdity ended. But seriously, what is the good of having the very highest and most authoritative passes possible—one from the War Office and one from the head of the Intelligence Department here—if any conscientious colonel can refuse to acknowledge them, and drag a correspondent about amid the derision of Kaffirs and coolies, and of Dutchmen who are known perfectly well to send every scrap of intelligence to their friends outside? I lost two hours; probably I lost my chance of getting a runner through. I had complied with the regulations in every possible respect. My pass was in my hand; and what was the good of it?

But after all we are in the midst of a tragedy. Let us not be too serious. Dishevelled women are peering out of their dens in the rocks and holes in the sand. They crawl into the evening light, shaking the dirt from their petticoats and the sand from their back hair. They rub the children's faces round with the tails of their gowns. They tempt scraps of flame to take the chill off the yellow water for the children's tea. After sundown a steady Scotch drizzle settles down upon us.

November 7, 1899.

To-day the melodrama has begun in earnest. "Long Tom" and four or five smaller guns from Bulwan, and a nearer battery to the north-west, began hurling percussion shell and shrapnel upon the Naval batteries at half-past seven. Our "Lady Anne" answered, but after flinging shells into the immense earthworks for an hour or two without much effect, both sides got tired of that game. But the Boer fire was not quite without effect, for one of the smaller shells burst right inside the "Lady Anne's" private chamber and carried away part of the protecting gear, not killing any men. Then "Long Tom" was deliberately turned upon the town, especially upon the Convent, which stands high on the ridge, and is used as a hospital. His shells went crashing among the houses, but happily land is cheap in South Africa still, and the houses, as a rule, are built on separate plots, so that as often as not the shells fall in a garden bush or among the clothes-lines. Only two Indian bearers were wounded and a few horses and cattle killed. Things went pretty quietly through the morning, except that there was a good deal of firing—shell and rifle—on the high ridge south-west, where the Manchesters are. About two o'clock I started for that position, and being fond of short cuts, thought I would ford the river at a break in its steep banks instead of going round by the iron bridge. Mr. Melton Prior was with me, for I had promised to show him a quiet place for sketching the whole view of the town in peace. As we came to the river a shell pitched near us, but we did not take much notice of it. In the middle of the ford we took the opportunity of letting the horses drink, and they stood drinking like the orphan lamb. Suddenly there was something more than the usual bang, crash, scream of a big shell, and the water was splashed with lumps and shreds of iron, my hat was knocked off and lay wrecked in the stream, and the horses were dashing this way and that with terror. "Are you killed?" shouted Mr. Prior. "I don't think so," I said. "Are you?" And then I had to lash my horse back to the place lest my hat should sail down-stream and adorn a Queen's enemy. There is nothing like shell-fire for giving lessons in horsemanship.



The Manchesters had been having an uncomfortable time of it, and I found Sir George White and his staff up on their hill. As we walked about, the little puffs of dust kept rising at our feet. We were within rifle-fire, though at long range. Now and then a very peculiar little shell was thrown at us. One went straight through a tent, but we could not find it afterwards. It was a shell like a viper. I left the Manchesters putting up barbed-wire entanglements to increase their defence, and came back to try to find another runner. The shells were falling very thick in the town, and for the first time people were rather scared. As I write one bursts just over this little tin house. It is shrapnel, and the iron rain falls hammering on the roof, but it does not come through. Two windows only are broken. Probably it burst too high.

November 8, 1899.

Fairly quiet day. The great event was the appearance of a new "Long Tom" on the Bulwan. He is to be called "Puffing Billy," from the vast quantity of smoke he pours out. Nothing else of great importance happened. Major Grant, of the Intelligence, was slightly wounded while sketching on the Manchesters' ridge. Coolies wandered about the streets all day with tin boxes or Asiatic bundles on their heads. Joubert had sent them in as a present from Dundee. They were refugees from that unhappy town, and after a visit to Pretoria, they are now dumped down here to help devour our rations. Some Europeans have come, too—guards, signalmen and shopkeepers—who report immense reinforcements coming up for the Boers. Is there not something a little mediaeval in sending a crowd of hungry non-combatants into an invested town?



CHAPTER IX

INCIDENTS, ACCIDENTS, AND REALITIES

LADYSMITH, November 9, 1899.[1]

A day of furious and general attack. Just before five I was wakened by a shell blustering through the eucalyptus outside my window, and bursting in a gully beyond. "Lady Anne" answered at once, and soon all the Naval Brigade guns were in full cry. What should we have done without the Naval guns? We have nothing else but ordinary field artillery, quite unable to reply to the heavy guns which the Boers have now placed in position round the town. Yet they only came up at the last moment, and it was a mere piece of luck they got through at all. Standing behind them on the ridge above my tin house, I watched the firing till nine o'clock, dodging behind a loose wall to avoid the splinters which buzz through the air after each shot, and are sometimes strangely slow to fall. Once after "Long Tom" had fired I stood up, thinking all was over, when a big fragment hummed gently above my head, went through the roof and ceiling of a house a hundred yards behind, and settled on a shell-proof spring mattress in the best bedroom. One of the little boys running out from the family burrow in the rocks was delighted to find it there, and carried it off to add to his collection of moths and birds' eggs. The estimate of "Long Tom's" shell has risen from 40lbs. to 96lbs. and I believe that to be the true weight. One of them to-day dug a stupendous hole in the pavement just before one of the principal shops, and broke yards of shutter and plate glass to pieces. It was quite pleasant to see a shop open again.

So the bombardment went on with violence all the morning. The troglodytes in their burrows alone thought themselves safe, but, in fact, only five men were killed, and not all of those by shell. One was a fine sergeant of the Liverpools, who held the base of the Helpmakaar road where it leaves the town eastward. Sergeant Macdonald was his name, a man full of zeal, and always tempted into danger by curiosity, as most people are. Instead of keeping under shelter of the sangar when the guns on Bulwan were shelling the position, he must needs go outside "to have a look." The contents of a shell took him full in front. Any of his nine wounds would have been fatal. His head and face seemed shattered to bits; yet he did not lose consciousness, but said to his captain, "I'd better have stopped inside, sir." He died on the way to hospital.

A private of the Liverpools was killed too. About twenty-four in all were wounded, chiefly by rifle fire, Captain Lethbridge of the Rifle Brigade being severely injured in the spine. Lieutenant Fisher, of the Manchesters, had been shot through the shoulder earlier in the day, but did not even report himself as wounded until evening.

After all, the rifle, as Napoleon said, is the only thing that counts, and to-day we had a great deal of it at various points in our long line of defence. That line is like a horseshoe, ten to twelve miles round.

The chief attacks were directed against the Manchesters in Caesar's Camp (we are very historic in South Africa) and against a mixed force on Observation Hill, two companies of the Rifle Brigade, two of the King's Royal Rifles, and the 5th Lancers dismounted. The Manchesters suffered most. Since the investment began the enemy has never left them in peace. They are exposed to shells from three positions, and to continual sniping from the opposite hill. It is more than a week since even the officers washed or took their clothes off, and now the men have been obliged to strike their tents because the shells and rifles were spoiling the stuff.

The various companies get into their sangars at 3 a.m., and stay there till it is dark again. Two companies were to-day thrown out along the further edge of their hill in extended order as firing line, and soon after dawn the Boers began to creep down the opposite steep by two or three at a time into one of the many farms owned by Bester, a notorious traitor, now kept safe in Ladysmith. All morning the firing was very heavy, many of the bullets coming right over the hill and dropping near the town. Our men kept very still, only firing when they saw their mark. Three of them were killed, thirteen wounded. Before noon a field battery came up to support the battalion, and against that terrifying shrapnel of ours the Boers attempted no further advance. In the same way they came creeping up against Observation Hill (a barren rocky ridge on the north-west of the town), hiding by any tree or stone, but were completely checked by four companies of Rifles, with two guns and the dismounted Lancers. They say the Boer loss was very heavy at both places. It is hard to know.

In the afternoon things were fairly quiet, but in walking along the low ridge held by the Liverpools and Devons, I was sniped at every time my head showed against the sky. At 4 p.m. there was a peculiar forward movement of our cavalry and guns along the Helpmakaar road, which came to nothing being founded on false information, such as comes in hourly.

The great triumph of the day was certainly the Royal salute at noon in honour of the Prince of Wales. Twenty-one guns with shotted charge, and all fired slap upon "Long Tom"! It was the happiest moment in the Navy's life for many a year. One after another the shot flew. "Long Tom" was so bewildered he has not spoken since. The cheering in the camps was heard for miles. People thought the relief division was in sight. But we were only signifying that the Prince was a year older.

[Footnote 1: Despatched by runner on November 20, but returned to the writer on December 23, and despatched again on January 1.]

November 10, 1899.

Another morning of unusual quiet. People sicken of the monotony when shells are not flying. We don't know any reason for the calm, except that the Dutch are burying their dead of yesterday. But the peace is welcome, and in riding round our positions I found nearly all the men lying asleep in the sun. The wildest stories flew: General French had been seen in the street; his brigade was almost in sight; Methuen was at Colenso with overwhelming force. The townspeople took heart. One man who had spent his days in a stinking culvert since the siege began now crept into the sun. "They are arrant cowards, these Boers," he cried, stamping the echoing ground; "why don't they come on and fight us like men?" So the day wears. At four o'clock comes an African thunderstorm with a deluge of rain, filling the water tanks and slaking the dust, grateful to all but the men of both armies uncovered on the rocks.

November 11, 1899.

A soaking early morning with minute rain, hiding all the circle of the hills, for which reason there is no bombardment yet, and I have spent a quiet hour with Colonel Stoneman, arranging rations for my men and beasts, and taking a lesson how to organise supplies and yet keep an unruffled mind. The rest of the morning I sat with a company of the 60th (K.R.R.) on the top of Cove Hill (another of the many Aldershot names). The men had been lining the exposed edge of Observation Hill all night, without any shelter, whilst the thick cold rain fell upon them. It was raining still, and they lay about among the rocks and thorny mimosa bushes in rather miserable condition.

It would be a good thing if the Army could be marched through Regent Street as the men look this morning. It would teach people more about war than a hundred pictures of plumed horsemen and the dashing charge. The smudgy khaki uniforms soaked through and through, stained black and green and dingy red with wet and earth and grass; the draggled great-coats, heavy with rain and thick with mud; the heavy sopping boots, the blackened, battered helmets; the blackened, battered faces below them, unwashed and unshaved since the siege began; the eyes heavy and bloodshot with sun and rain and want of sleep; the peculiar smell—there is not much brass band and glory about us now.

At noon the mist lifted, and just before one the Boer guns opened fire nearly all round the horseshoe, except that the Manchesters were left in peace. I think only one new gun had been placed in position, but another had been cleverly checked. As a rule, it has been our polite way to let the Boers settle their guns comfortably in their places, and then to try in vain to blow them out. Yesterday the enemy were fortifying a gun on Star Hill, when one of our artillery captains splashed a shell right into the new wall. We could see the Boer gunners running out on both sides, and the fort has not been continued.

To-day "Long Tom's" shells were thrown pretty much at random about the town. One blew a mule's head off close to the bank, and disembowelled a second. One went into the "Scotch House" and cleared the shop. A third pitched close to the Anglican Church, and brought the Archdeacon out of burrow. But there was no real loss, except that one of the Naval Brigade got a splinter in the forehead. My little house had another dose of shrapnel, and on coming in I found a soldier digging up the bits in the garden; but the Scotch owner drove him away for "interfering with the mineral rights." At 3.30 the mist fell again, and there was very little firing after 4. Out on the flat beyond the racecourse our men were engaged in blowing up and burning some little farms and kraals which sheltered the Boer scouts. As I look towards the Bulwan I see the yellow blaze of their fires.

Sunday, November 12, 1899.

Amid all the estimable qualities of the Boer race there is none more laudable than their respect for the Sabbath day. It has been a calm and sunny day. Not a shot was fired—no sniping even. We feel like grouse on a pious Highland moor when Sunday comes, and even the laird dares not shoot. The cave dwellers left their holes and flaunted in the light of day. In the main street I saw a perambulator, stuffed with human young. Pickets and outposts stretched their limbs in the sun. Soldiers off duty scraped the clods off their boots and polished up their bayonets. Officers shaved and gloried over a leisurely breakfast. For myself, I washed my shirt and hung it on the line of fire to dry.

In the morning one of the Irish Brigade rode in through the Liverpools' picket. He was "fed up" with the business, as the soldiers say. He reported that only about seventy of the Brigade were left. He also said the Boer commandants were holding a great meeting to-day—whether for psalms or strategy I don't know; probably both. We heard the usual rumours that the Boers were going or had gone. Climbing to the Manchesters' post for the view, I could see three Boer trains waiting at Modder's Spruit station, about six miles up the Newcastle line. Did they bring reinforcements, or were they waiting to take "Long Tom" home by return ticket? We shall know to-morrow. Over the valley where we repulsed Thursday's attack, the vultures flew as thick as swifts upon the Severn at twilight. Those were the only signs of war—those and the little forts which hid the guns. Otherwise the enormous landscape lay at peace. I have never seen it so clear—the precipitous barrier of the Basuto mountains, lined with cloud, and still touched with snow: the great sculptured mountains that mark the Free State border: and then the scenes which have become so familiar to us all—Elands Laagte, Tinta Inyoni, Pepworth Hill, Lombard's Kop, and the great Bulwan. Turning to the south we looked across to the nearer hills, beyond which lie Colenso, Estcourt, and the road to Maritzburg and the sea. It is from beyond those hills that our help is coming.

The Boers have many estimable qualities. They are one of the few admirable races still surviving, and they conduct this siege with real consideration and gentlemanly feeling. They observe the Sabbath. They give us quiet nights. After a violent bombardment they generally give us at least one day to calm down. Their hours for slaughter are six to six, and they seldom overstep them. They knock off for meals—unfashionably early, it is true, but it would be petty to complain. Like good employers, they seldom expose our lives to danger for more than eight hours a day. They are a little capricious, perhaps, in the use of the white flag. At the beginning of the siege our "Lady Anne" killed or wounded some of "Long Tom's" gunners and damaged the gun. Whereupon the Boers hoisted the white flag over him till the place was cleared and he was put to rights again. Then they drew it down and went on firing. It was the sort of thing schoolboys might do. Captain Lambton complained that by the laws of war the gun was permanently out of action. But "Long Tom" goes on as before.

I think the best story of the siege comes from a Kaffir who walked in a few days ago. In the Boer camp behind Pepworth Hill he had seen the men being taught bayonet exercise with our Lee-Metfords, captured at Dundee. The Boer has no bayonet or steel of his own, and for an assault on the town he will need it. Instruction was being given by a prisoner—a sergeant of the Royal Irish Fusiliers—with a rope round his neck!

November 13, 1899.

The Boer method of siege is quite inexplicable. Perhaps it comes of inexperience. Perhaps they have been studying the sieges of ancient history and think they are doing quite the proper thing in sitting down round a garrison, putting in a few shells and waiting. But they forget that, though the sieges of ancient history lasted ten years, nowadays we really can't afford the time. The Boers, we hope, have scarcely ten days, yet they loiter along as though eternity was theirs.

To-day they began soon after five with the usual cannonade from "Long Tom," "Puffing Billy," and three or four smaller guns, commanding the Naval batteries. The answers of our "Lady Anne" and "Bloody Mary" shook me awake, and, seated on the hill, I watched the big guns pounding at each other for about three hours, when there came an interval for breakfast. As far as I could make out, neither side did the other the least harm. It was simply an unlucrative exchange of so much broken iron between two sensible and prudent nations. The moment "Tom" or "Billy" flashed, "Anne" or "Mary" flashed too. Our shells do the distance about two and a-half seconds quicker than theirs, so that we can see the result of our shot just before one has to duck behind the stones for the crash and whiz of the enormous shells which started first. To-day most of "Tom's" shells passed over the batteries, and plunged down the hill into the town beyond. It is supposed that he must be wearing out. He has been firing here pretty steadily for over a fortnight, to say nothing of his work at Dundee. But I think his fire upon the town is quite deliberate. He might pound away at "Lady Anne" for ever, but there is always a chance that 96lbs. of iron exploding in a town may, at all events, kill a mule.

So the bombardment went on cheerily through the early morning, till about 10.30 it slackened down in the inexplicable Boer fashion, and hardly one shot an hour was fired afterwards. The surmise goes that Joubert cannot get his men up to the attacking point. Their loss last Saturday was certainly heavy.

Yesterday the Boers, with fine simplicity, sent to our ambulance camp for some chlorodyne because they had run short of it, and were troubled with dysentery like ourselves. Being at heart a kindly people, we gave them what they wanted and a little brandy besides. The British soldier thereupon invents the satire that Joubert asked for some forage because his horses were hungry, and Sir George White replied: "I would very gladly accede to your request, but have only enough forage myself to last three years."

The day passed, and we did not lose a single man. Yet the enemy must have enjoyed one incident. I was riding up to spend an hour in the afternoon with Major Churcher and the 200 Royal Irish Fusiliers left at Range Post, when on an open space between me and their little camp I saw a squadron of the 18th Hussars circling and doubling about as though they were practising for the military tournament. Almost before I had time to think, bang came a huge shell from "Puffing Billy" just over my head, and pitched between me and them. Happily, it fell short, but it gave the Dutch gunners a wonderful display of our cavalry's excellence. Even before I could come up men and horses had vanished into air.

All day strange rumours have been afloat about the Division supposed to be coming to our relief. It was expected to-morrow. Now it is put off till Thursday. It is even whispered it will sit quiet at Estcourt, and not come to our relief at all. To-night is bitterly cold, and the men are chilled to the stomach on the bare hillsides.

November 14, 1899.

The siege is becoming very tedious, and we are losing heart. Depression was to-day increased by one of those futile sorties which only end in retirement. In the early morning a large Boer convoy of waggons was seen moving along the road beyond Bluebank towards the north, about eight miles away. Ninety waggons were reported. One man counted twenty-five, another thirteen. I myself saw two. At all events, waggons were there, and we thought of capturing them. But it was past ten before even the nucleus of a force reached Range Post, and the waggons were already far away. Out trotted the 18th and 19th Hussars, three batteries, and the Imperial Light Horse on to the undulating plain leading up to the ridge of Bluebank, where the Boers have one gun and plenty of rocks to hide behind. That gun opened fire at once, and was supported by "Faith," "Hope," and "Charity," three black-powder guns along Telegraph Hill, besides the two guns on Surprise Hill. In fact, all the Boer guns chimed in round the circle, and for two hours it was difficult to trace where each whizzing shell came from, familiar though we are with their peculiar notes.

Meantime our batteries kept sprinkling shrapnel over Bluebank with their usual steadiness and perfection of aim. The enemy's gun was soon either silenced or withdrawn. The rifle fire died down. Not a Boer was to be seen upon the ridge, but three galloped away over the plains behind as though they had enough of it. The Light Horse dismounted and advanced to Star Point. All looked well. We expected to see infantry called up to advance upon the ridge, while our cavalry swept round upon the fugitives in the rear. But nothing of the kind happened.

Suddenly the Light Horse walked back to their horses and retired. One by one the batteries retired at a walk. The cavalry followed. Before two o'clock the whole force was back again over Range Post. The enemy poured in all the shells and bullets they could, but our men just came back at a walk, and only four were wounded. I am told General Brocklehurst was under strict orders not to lose men.

The shells did more damage than usual in the town. Three houses were wrecked, one "Long Tom" shell falling into Captain Valentine's dining-room, and disturbing the breakfast things. Another came through two bedrooms in the hotel, and spoilt the look of the smoking-room. But I think the only man killed was a Carbineer, who had his throat cut by a splinter as he lay asleep in his tent.

Just after midnight a very unusual thing happened. Each of the Boer guns fired one shot. Apparently they were trained before sunset and fired at a given signal. The shells woke me up, whistling over the roof. Most of the townspeople rushed, lightly clad, to their holes and coverts. The troops stood to arms. But the rest of the night was quiet.' Apparently the Boers, contrary to their character, had only done it to annoy, because they knew it teased us.



CHAPTER X

ENNUI ENLIVENED BY SUDDEN DEATH

LADYSMITH, November 15, 1899.

This drama is getting too long for the modern stage, and so far the Dutch have obeyed none of the dramatic rules. To-day was one monotony of rain, and may be blotted out from the memory of all but the men who lay hour after hour miserably soaking upon the edges of the hills. After the early morning not a shell was fired. The mist was too thick to allow even of wild shots at the town.

I had another try at getting a Kaffir runner to carry a telegram through to Estcourt.

November 16, 1899.

The sun came back to cheer us up and warm our bones. At the Liverpools' picket, on the Newcastle road, the men at six o'clock were rejoicing in a glorious and soapy wash where the rain had left a pool in a quarry. The day passed very quietly, shells only falling on an average of one every half-hour. Unhappily a shrapnel scattered over the station, wounded three or four natives, and killed an excellent railway guard—a sharp fragment tearing through his liver and intestines. There was high debate whether the shell was thrown by "Silent Susan," or what other gun. Some even stuck out for "Long Tom" himself. But to the guard it makes no difference, and he was most concerned.

Relief was to have come to us to-day for certain, but we hear nothing of it beyond vague rumours of troops at Estcourt and Maritzburg. We are slowly becoming convinced that we are to be left to our fate while the main issue is settled elsewhere. Colonel Ward has organised the provisions of the town and troops to last for eighty days. He is also buying up all the beer and spirits, partly to cheer the soldiers' hearts on these dreary wet nights; partly to prevent the soldier cheering himself too much.

In the evening I sent off another runner with a telegram and quite a mail of letters from officers and men for their mothers', wives, and lovers over seas. He was a bony young Kaffir, with a melancholy face, black as sorrow. At six o'clock I saw him start, his apish feet padding through the crusted slush. One pocket bulged with biscuits, one with a tin of beef. Between his black chest and his rag of shirt he had tucked that neat packet which was to console so many a woman, white-skinned and delicately dressed. Fetching a wide compass, he stole away into the eastern twilight, where the great white moon was rising, shrouded in electric cloud.

November 17, 1899.

A few shells came in early, and by nine o'clock there was so much firing on the north-west that I rode out to the main position of the 60th (King's Royal Rifles) on Cove Hill. I found that our field battery there was being shelled from Surprise Hill and its neighbour, but nothing unusual was happening. The men were in a rather disconsolate condition. Even where they have built a large covered shelter underground the wet comes through the roof and trickles down upon them in liquid filth. But they bear it all with ironic indifference, consoling themselves especially with the thought that they killed one Boer for certain yesterday. "The captain saw him fall."

Crossing the open valley in front I came to the long ridge called Observation Hill. There the rifle fire hardly ever ceases. It is held by three companies of the K.R.R. and the 5th Lancers dismounted. It looks out over the long valley of Bell's Spruit; that scene of the great disaster where we lost our battalions, being less than three miles away at the foot of the rugged mountain beyond—Surprise Hill. Close in front is one of the two farms called Hyde's, and there the Boers find shelter at nights and in rain. The farm's orchard, its stone walls, the rocks, and all points of cover swarm with Boer sharpshooters, and whenever our men show themselves upon the ridge the bullets fly. An immense quantity of them are lost. In all the morning's firing only one Lancer had been wounded. As I came over the edge the bullets all passed over my head, but our men have to keep behind cover if they can, and only return the fire when they are sure of a mark. I found a detachment of Lancers, with a corporal, lying behind a low stone wall. It happened to be exactly the place I had wished to find, for at one end of the wall stood the Lancer dummy, whose fame has gone through the camp. There he stood, regarding the Dutch with a calm but defiant aspect, his head and shoulders projecting about three feet over the wall. His legs were only a sack stuffed with straw, but round his straw body a beautiful khaki tunic had been buttoned, and his straw head was protected by a regulation helmet, for which a slouch hat was sometimes substituted, to give variety and versimilitude. In his right hand he grasped a huge branch of a tree, either as rifle or lance. He was withdrawn occasionally, and stuck up again in a fresh attitude. To please me the corporal crept behind him and jogged him up and down in a life-like and scornful manner. The hope was that the Boers would send a bullet through that heart of straw. In the afternoon they did in fact pierce his hat, but at the time they were keeping their ammunition for something more definitely human, like myself. As I retired, after saluting the dummy for his courage, the bullets flew again, but the sights were still too high.



On my return to the old Scot's house, I found an excited little crowd in the back garden. They were digging out an enormous shell which had plumped into the grass, taking off the Scot's hat and knocking him down with the shock as it fell. The thing had burst in the ground, and it was as good as a Chinese puzzle to fit the great chunks of iron together. At first we could not find the solid base, but we dug it out with a pick from the stiff, black clay. It had sunk 3 ft. 8 in. down from the surface, and had run 7 ft. 6 in. from the point of contact. It was a 45-pounder, thrown by a 4.7 in. gun—probably one of the four howitzers which the Boers possess, standing half-way down Lombard's Kop, about four miles away, and is identical with "Silent Susan." But with smokeless powder it is almost impossible to say where a shot comes from. "Long Tom" and "Puffing Billy," with their huge volumes of smoke, are much more satisfactory.

Rain fell heavily for the rest of the day, and the bombardment ended, but it was bitter cold.

November 18, 1899.

The bombardment was continued without much energy. The balloon reported that the Boers were occupied in putting up more guns on Bulwan. Rumour says there will be thirteen in all, a goodly number for a position which completely commands the town from end to end. All day the shells had a note of extra spite in them as they came plunging among the defenceless houses. But they did no great harm till evening. As a rule the Boers cease fire about half-past six, and some twenty of us then settled down to dinner at the hotel—one or two officers, some doctors, and most of the correspondents. We had hardly begun to-night when a shell from "Silent Susan" whistled just over the roof and burst in the yard. Within five minutes came the louder scream of another. It crashed over us, breaking its way through the hotel from roof to floor. We all got up and crowded to the main entrance on the street. The shell had struck a sidewall in the bar, and glanced off through the doorway without exploding. Dr. Stark, of Torquay, was standing at the door, waiting for a place at dinner, and talking to Mr. Machugh, of the Daily Telegraph. The shell struck him full in the thigh, leaving his left leg hanging only by a piece of flesh, and shattering the right just at the knee. "Hold me up," he said, and did not lose consciousness. We moved him to the hospital, but he died within an hour. I have little doubt that the shells were aimed at the hotel, because the Boers know that Dr. Jameson and Colonel Rhodes are in the town. But the man killed was Dr. Stark, a strong opponent of the Chamberlain policy, and a vigorous denouncer of the war's injustice.

The havoc of the siege is gradually increasing, and the prospect of relief grows more and more distant. Just after midnight the Boers again aroused us by discharging all their guns into the forts or the town, and again the people hurried away to their caves and culverts for protection. The long Naval guns replied, and then all was quiet.

Sunday, November 19, 1899.

Another day of rest, for which we thank the Fourth Commandment. After the Sabbath wash, I went up to Caesar's Camp for the view. On the way I called in upon the balloon, which now dwells in a sheltered leafy glade at the foot of the Gordons' hill, when it is not in the sky, surrounded by astonished vultures. The weak points of ballooning appear to be that it is hard to be sure of detail as distinguished from mass, and even on a clear day the light is often insufficient or puzzling. It is seldom, for instance, that the balloonist gets a definite view towards Colenso, which to us is the point of greatest interest. I found that the second balloon was only used as a blind to the enemy, like a paper kite flown over birds to keep them quiet. Going up to the Manchesters' position on the top of Caesar's Camp, I had a view of the whole country almost as good as any balloon's. The Boer laagers have increased in size, and are not so carefully hidden.

Beside the railway at the foot of "Long Tom's" hill near Modder Spruit, there was quite a large camp of Boer tents and three trains as usual. They say the Boers have put their prisoners from the Royal Irish Fusiliers here, but it is unlikely they should bring them back from Pretoria. The tents of another large camp showed among the bushes on Lombard's Nek, where the Helpmakaar road passes between Lombard's Kop and Bulwan, and many waggon laagers were in sight beyond. At the foot of the flat-topped Middle Hill on the south-west, the Boers have placed two more guns to trouble the Manchesters further. But our defences along the whole ridge are now very strong.

In the afternoon they buried Dr. Stark in the cemetery between the river and the Helpmakaar road. I don't know what has become of a kitten which he used to carry about with him in a basket when he went to spend the day under the shelter of the river bank.

November 20, 1899.

"Gentlemen," said Sir George White to his Staff, "we have two things to do—to kill time and to kill Boers—both equally difficult." The siege is becoming intolerably tedious. It is three weeks to-day since "Black Monday," when the great disaster befell us, and we seem no nearer the end than we were at first. We console ourselves with the thought that we are but a pawn on a great chessboard. We hope we are doing service by keeping the main Boer army here. We hope we are not handed over for nothing to ennui enlivened by sudden death. But the suspicion will recur that perhaps the army hedging us in is not large after all. It is a bad look-out if, as Captain Lambton put it, we are being "stuck up by a man and a boy."

Nothing is so difficult to estimate as Boer numbers, and we never take enough account of the enemy's mobility. They can concentrate rapidly at any given point and gain the appearance of numbers which they don't possess. However, the balloon reports the presence of laagers of ten commandoes in sight. We may therefore assume about as many out of sight, and consider that we are probably doing our duty as a pawn.

This morning the Boers hardly gave a sign of life, except that just before noon "Puffing Billy" shelled a platelayer's house on the flat beyond the racecourse, in the attempt to drive out our scouts who were making a defended position of it.

In the afternoon I rode up to the Rifle Brigade at King's Post, above the old camp, and met Captain Paley, whom I last saw administering a province in Crete. Suddenly the Boer guns began firing from Surprise Hill and Thornhill's Kop, just north of us, and the shells passing over our heads, crashed right into the 18th Hussar camp beside a little bridge over the river below. Surprise Hill alone dropped five shells in succession among the crowded tents, horses, and men. The men began hurrying about like ants. Tents were struck at once, horses saddled, everything possible taken up, and the whole regiment sought cover in a little defile close by. Within half an hour of the first shell the place was deserted. The same guns compelled the Naval Brigade to shift their position last night. We have not much to teach the Boer gunners, except the superiority of our shells.

The bombardment then became general; only three Gordons were wounded, but the town suffered a good deal. Three of "Long Tom's" shells pitched in the main street, one close in front of a little girl, who escaped unhurt. Another carried away the heavy stone porch of the Anglican Church, and, at dinner-time, "Silent Susan" made a mark on the hotel, but it was empty. Just before midnight the guns began again. I watched them flashing from Bulwan and the other hills, but could not mark what harm they did. It was a still, hot night, with a large waning moon. In the north-west the Boers were flashing an electric searchlight, apparently from a railway truck on the Harrismith line. The nation of farmers is not much behind the age. They will be sending up a balloon next.

November 21, 1899.

The desultory bombardment went on as usual, except that "Long Tom" did not fire. The Staff is said to have lost heliographic communication with the south. To-day they sent off two passenger pigeons for Maritzburg. The rumour also went that the wounded Dublins, taken to Intombi Spruit, from the unfortunate armoured train, had heard an official report of Buller's arrival at Bloemfontein after heavy losses. Another rumour told that many Boer wives and daughters were arriving in the laagers. They were seen, especially on Sunday, parading quite prettily in white frocks. This report has roused the liveliest indignation, which I can only attribute to envy. In our own vulgar land, companies would be running cheap excursions to witness the siege of Ladysmith—one shilling extra to see "Long Tom" in action.

In the morning they buried a Hindoo bearer who had died of pneumonia. The grave was dug among the unmarked heaps of the native graveyard on the river bank. It took five hours to make it deep enough, and meantime the dead man lay on a stretcher, wrapped in a clean white sheet. His friends, about twenty of them, squatted round, almost motionless, and quite indifferent to time and space. In their midst a thin grey smoke rose from a brazen jar, in which smouldered scented wood, spices, lavender, and the fresh blossom of one yellow flower like an aster. At intervals of about a minute, one of the Hindoos raised a short, wailing chant, in parts of which the others joined. On the ground in front of him lay a sweetly-scented manuscript whose pages he never turned. It was written in the Oriental characters, which seem to tell either of Nirvana or of the nightingale's cry to the rose. At times the other friends tapped gently on three painted drums, hardly bigger than tea cups. The enemy, seeing from Bulwan the little crowd of us engaged upon a heathen rite, threw shrapnel over our heads. It burst and sprinkled the dusty ground behind us with lead. Not one of the Hindoos looked up or turned his face. That low chant did not pause or vary by a note. Close by, a Kaffir was digging a grave for a Zulu woman who had died in childbed. In the river beyond soldiers were bathing, Zulus were soaping themselves white, and one of the Liverpool Mounted Infantry was trying to prevent his horse rolling in four feet of water.

November 22, 1899.

A day only relieved by the wildest rumours and a few shells more dangerous than usual. Buller was reported as being at Hellbrouw; General French was at Dundee; and France had declared war upon England. Shells whiffled into the town quite indiscriminately. One pitched into the Town Hall, now the main hospital. In the evening "Long Tom" threw five in succession down the main street. But only one man was killed. A Natal policeman was cooking his dinner in a cellar when "Silent Susan's" shot fell upon him and he died. For myself, I spent most of the day on Waggon Hill west of the town, where the 1st K.R. Rifles have three companies and a strong sangar, very close to the enemy. I found that, as became Britons, their chief interest lay in sport. They had shot two little antelopes or rehbuck, and hung them up to be ready for a feast. Their one thought was to shoot more. From the hill I looked down upon one of Bester's farms. The owner-a Boer traitor-was now in safe keeping. A few days ago his family drove off in a waggon for the Free State. White were their parasols and in front they waved a Red Cross flag. On a gooseberry bush in the midst of the farm they also left a white flag, where it still flew to protect a few fat pigs, turkeys, and other fowl. The white flag is becoming a kind of fetish. To-day all our white tents were smeared with reddish mud to make them less visible. Beyond Range Post the enemy set up a new gun commanding the Maritzburg road as it crossed that point of hill. The Irish Fusiliers who held that position were shelled heavily, but without loss.

November 23, 1899.

The schoolmaster's wife had a fine escape. She was asleep in her bedroom when a 45lb. shell came through the fireplace and burst towards the bed. The room was smashed to pieces, but she was only cut about the head, one splinter driving in the bone, but not making a very serious wound. Two days before she had given a soldier 10s. for a fragment. Now she had a whole shell for nothing. At five o'clock "Long Tom" threw seven of his 96lb. shells straight down the street in quick succession, smashing a few shops and killing some mules and cattle, but without further harm. We watched them from the top of the road. They came shrieking over our heads, and then a flare of fire and a cloud of dust and stones showed where they fell. At every explosion the women and children laughed and cheered with delight, as at the Crystal Palace fireworks.

Both yesterday and to-day the Boers on Bulwan spent much time and money shelling a new battery which Colonel Knox has had made beside the river near the racecourse. It is just in the middle of the flat, and the enemy can see its six embrasures and the six guns projecting from them. The queer thing is that these guns never reply, and under the hottest fire their gunners neither die nor surrender. A better battery was never built of canvas and stick on the stage of Drury. It has cost the simple-hearted Boers something like L300 in wasted shell.

All day waggons were reported coming down from the Free State and moving south. They were said to carry the wives and daughters of the Free Staters driven by Buller from their own country and content to settle in ours, now that they had conquered it. A queer situation, unparalleled in war, as far as I know.

In the evening I heard the Liverpools and Devons were likely to be engaged in some feat of arms before midnight. So I stumbled out in the dark along the Helpmakaar road, where those two fine regiments hold the most exposed positions in camp, and I spent the greater part of the night enjoying the hospitality of two Devon officers in their shell-proof hut. Hour after hour we waited, recalling tales of Indian life and Afridi warfare, or watching the lights in the Boer laagers reflected on a cloudy sky. But except for a hot wind the night was peculiarly quiet, and not a single shell was thrown: only from time to time the sharp double knock of a rifle showed that the outposts on both sides were alert.

November 24, 1899.

Though there was no night attack a peculiar manoeuvre was tried, but without success. On the sixty miles of line between here and Harrismith the Boers have only one engine, and it struck some one how fine it would be to send an empty engine into it at full speed from our side. Accordingly, when the Free State train was seen to arrive at the Boer rail-head some eight miles off, out snorted one of our spare locomotives. Off jumped the driver and stoker, and the new kind of projectile sped away into the dark. It ran for about two miles with success, and then dashed off the rails in going round a curve. And there it remains, the Boers showing their curiosity by prodding it with rifles. Unless it is hopelessly smashed up, the Free State has secured a second engine for the conveyance of its wives and daughters.

It is a military order that all cattle going out to graze on the flats close to the town should be tended by armed and mounted drivers, but no one has taken the trouble to see the order carried out. The Empire in this country means any dodge for making money without work. All work is left to Kaffirs, coolies, or Boers. Two hundred cattle went out this morning beyond the old camp, accompanied only by Kaffir boys, who, like all herdsmen, love to sleep in the shade, or make the woods re-echo Amarylli's. Suddenly the Boers were among them, edging between them and the town, and driving the beasts further and further from defence. The Kaffirs continued to sleep, or were driven with the cattle. Then the Leicester Mounted Infantry came galloping out, and, under heavy rifle fire, gained the point of Star Hill, hoping to head the cattle back. At once all the guns commanding that bit of grassy plain opened on them—"Faith," "Hope," and "Charity"—from Telegraph Hill, the guns on Surprise Hill, and Thornhill Kopje, and the two guns now on Bluebank Ridge. Two horses were killed, and the party, not being numerous enough for their task, came galloping back singly. Meantime the Boers, with their usual resource, had invented a new method of calling the cattle home by planting shells just behind them. The whole enterprise was admirably planned and carried out. We only succeeded in saving thirty or forty out of the drove. The lowest estimate of loss is L3,000, chiefly in transport cattle.

But who knows whether by Christmas we shall not be glad even of a bit of old trek-ox? Probably the Dutch hope to starve us out. At intervals all morning they shelled the cattle near the racecourse, just for the sake of slaughter. To-day also they tried their old game of sending gangs of refugee coolies into the town to devour the rations. Happily, Sir George White turned at that, and sent out a polite note reminding the commandants that we live in a polite age. So in the afternoon the Boers adopted more modern methods. I had been sitting with Colonel Mellor and the other officers of the Liverpools, who live among the rocks close to my cottage, and they had been congratulating themselves on only losing two men by shell and one by enteric since Black Monday, when they helped to cover the retirement with such gallantry and composure. I had scarcely mounted to ride back, when "Puffing Billy" and other guns threw shells right into the midst of the men and rocks and horses. One private fell dead on the spot. Three were mortally wounded. One rolled over and over down the rocks. Several others were badly hurt, and the bombardment became general all over our end of the town.

November 25, 1899.

Almost a blank as far as fighting goes. It is said that General Hunter went out under a flag of truce to protest against the firing upon the hospital. There were no shells to speak of till late afternoon. Among the usual rumours came one that Joubert had been wounded in the mouth at Colenso. The Gordons held their sports near the Iron Bridge, sentries being posted to give the alarm if the Bulwan guns fired. "Any more entries for the United Service mule race? Are you ready? Sentry, are you keeping your eye on that gun?" "Yes, sir." "Very well then, go!" And off the mules went, in any direction but the right, a soldier and a sailor trying vainly to stick on the bare back of each, whilst inextinguishable laughter arose among the gods.

Sunday, November 26, 1899.

Another day of rest. I heard a comment made on the subject by one of the Devons washing down by the river. Its seriousness and the peculiar humour of the British soldier will excuse it. "Why don't they go on bombardin' of us to-day?" said one. "'Cos it's Sunday, and they're singin' 'ymns," said another. "Well," said the first, "if they do start bombardin' of us, there ain't only one 'ymn I'll sing, an' that's 'Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me 'ide myself in thee.'" It was spoken in the broadest Devon without a smile. The British soldier is a class apart. One of the privates in the Liverpools showed me a diary he is keeping of the war. It is a colourless record of getting up, going to bed, sleeping in the rain with one blanket (a grievance he always mentions, though without complaint), of fighting, cutting brushwood, and building what he calls "sangers and travises." From first to last he makes but one comment, and that is: "There is no peace for the wicked." The Boers were engaged in putting up a new 6 in. gun on the hills beyond Range Post, and the first number of the Ladysmith Lyre was published.

November 27, 1899.

The great event of the day was the firing of the new "Long Tom." The Boers placed it yesterday on the hill beyond Waggon Hill, where the 60th hold our extreme post towards the west. The point is called Middle Hill. It commands all the west of the town and camp, the Maritzburg road from Range Post on, and the greater part of Caesar's Camp, where the Manchesters are. The gun is the same kind as "Long Tom" and "Puffing Billy"—a 6 in. Creusot, throwing a shell of about 96lbs. The Boers have sixteen of them; some say twenty-three. The name is "Gentleman Joe." He did about L5 damage at the cost of L200. From about 8 to 9 a.m. the general bombardment was rather severe. There are thirty-three guns "playing" on us to-day, and though they do not concentrate their fire, they keep one on the alert. This morning a Kaffir was working for the Army Service Corps (being at that moment engaged in kneading a pancake), when a small shell hit him full in the mouth, passed clean through his head, and burst on the ground beyond. I believe he was the only man actually killed to-day.

A Frenchman who came in yesterday from the Boer lines was examined by General Hunter. He is a roundabout little man, who says he came from Madagascar into the Transvaal by Delagoa Bay, and was commandeered to join the Boer army. He came with a lot of German officers, who drank champagne hard. On his arrival it was found he could not ride or shoot, or live on biltong. He could do nothing but talk French, a useless accomplishment in South Africa. And so they sent him into our camp to help eat our rations. The information he gave was small. Joubert believes he can starve us out in a fortnight. He little knows. We could still hold out for over a month without eating a single horse, to say nothing of rats. It is true we have to drop our luxuries. Butter has gone long ago, and whisky has followed. Tinned meats, biscuits, jams—all are gone. "I wish to Heaven the relief column would hurry up," sighed a young officer to me. "Poor fellow," I thought, "he longs for the letters from his own true love." "You see, we can't get any more Quaker oats," he added in explanation.

In the afternoon I took copies of the Ladysmith Lyre to some of the outlying troops. It is but a single page of four short columns, and with a cartoon by Mr. Maud. But the pathetic gratitude with which it was received, proved that to appreciate literature of the highest order, you have only to be shut up for a month under shell fire.

November 28, 1899.

Hopeful news came of British successes, both at Estcourt and Mooi River. The relief column is now thought to be at Frere, not far below Colenso. A large Boer convoy, with 800 mounted men, was seen trending away towards the Free State passes, perhaps retiring. Everybody was much cheered up. The Boer guns fired now and then, but did little damage. At night we placed two howitzers on a nek in Waggon Hill, where the 60th have a post south-west of the town.

November 29, 1899.

A few more Kaffirs came through from Estcourt, but brought no later news. Their report of the fighting on the Mooi River was: "The English burnt the Dutch like paraffin. The Dutch have their ears down." Did I not say that Zulu was the future language of opera? Riding past the unfinished hospital I saw a private of the 18th Hussars cut down by a shell splinter—the only casualty to-day resulting from several hundred pounds' worth of ammunition. The two greatest events were, first, the attempt of our two old howitzers on Waggon Hill to silence the 6 in. gun on Middle Hill beyond them. They fired pretty steadily from 4 to 5 p.m., sending out clouds of white smoke. For their big shells (6.3 in.) are just thirty years old, and the guns themselves have reached the years of discretion. They fired by signal over the end of Waggon Hill in front of them, and it was difficult to judge their effect. The other great event was the kindling of a great veldt fire at the foot of Pepworth Hill, in such a quarter that the smoke completely hid "Long Tom" for two or three hours of the morning. Captain Lambton at once detected the trick, and sent two shells from "Lady Anne" to check it. But it was none the less successful. There could be little doubt "Long Tom" was on the move, "doing a guy," the soldiers said. We hoped he was packing up for Pretoria.

In the evening Colonel Stoneman held the first of his Shakespeare reading parties, and again we found how keenly a month of shell-fire intensifies the literary sense.

November 30, 1899.

At night the Boer searchlight near Bester's, north-west of the town, swept the positions by Range Post, the enemy having been informed by spies (as usual) that we intended a forward movement before dawn. Three battalions with cavalry and guns were to have advanced on to the open ground beyond Range Post, and again attack the Boer position on Bluebank, where there are now two guns. The movement was to prepare the way for the approach of any relieving force up the Maritzburg road, but about midnight it was countermanded. Accurately informed as the Boers always are, they apparently had not heard of this change from any of the traitors in town, and before sunrise they began creeping up nearer to our positions by the Newcastle road on the north. They hoped either to rush the place, or to keep us where we were. The 13th Battery, stationed at the railway cutting, opened upon them, and the pickets of the Gloucesters and the Liverpools checked them with a very heavy fire. As I watched the fighting from the hill above my cottage, the sun appeared over Bulwan, and a great gun fired upon us with a cloud of purple smoke. A few minutes after there came the sharp report, the screaming rush and loud explosion, which hitherto have marked "Long Tom" alone. Our suspicions of yesterday were true, and Pepworth Hill knows him no more. He now reigns on Little Bulwan, sometimes called Gun Hill, below Lombard's Kop. His range is nearer, he can even reach the Manchesters' sangars with effect, and he is far the most formidable of the guns that torment us.



All day the bombardment was severe, as this siege goes. I did not count the shells thrown at us, but certainly there cannot have been less than 250. They were thrown into all parts of the town and forts. No one felt secure, except the cave-dwellers. Even the cattle were shelled, and I saw three common shell and a shrapnel thrown into one little herd. Yet the casualties were quite insignificant, till the terrible event of the day, about half-past five p.m. During the afternoon "Long Tom" had chiefly been shelling the Imperial Light Horse camp, the balloon, and the district round the Iron Bridge. Then he suddenly sent a shell into the library by the Town Hall. The next fell just beyond the Town Hall itself. The third went right into the roof, burst on contact, flung its bullets and segments far and wide over the sick and wounded below. One poor fellow—a sapper of the balloon section—hearing it coming, sprang up in bed with terror. A fragment hit him full in the chest, cut through his heart, and laid him dead. Nine others were hit, some seriously wounded. About half of them belonged to the medical staff. The shock to the other wounded was horrible. There cannot be the smallest doubt that the Boer gunners deliberately aimed at the Red Cross flag, which flies on the turret of the Town Hall, visible for miles. They have now hit twenty-one people in that hospital alone. This last shell has aroused more hatred and rage against the whole people than all the rest of the war put together. When next the Boers appeal for mercy, as they have often appealed already, it will go hard with them. Overcome with the horror of the thing, many good Scots have refused to take part in the celebration of St. Andrew's Day, although the Gordons held some sort of festival, and there was a drinking-concert at the Royal. But the dead were in the minds of all.

About midnight we again observed flash-signaling over the star-lit sky. It came from Colenso way, and was the attempt of our General to give us news or instructions. It began by calling "Ladysmith" three times. The message was in cipher, and the night before a very little of it was made out. Both messages ended with the words "Buller, Maritzburg." It is said one of the Mountain Battery is to be hanged in the night for signalling to the enemy.



CHAPTER XI

FLASHES FROM BULLER

December 1, 1899.

A kaffir came in to-day, bringing the strange story that the old "Long Tom" of Pepworth Hill was hit full in the muzzle by "Lady Anne," that the charge inside him burst, the gun was shattered, and five gunners killed. The Kaffir swore he himself had been employed to bury them, and that the thing he said was true. If so, our "Lady Anne" has made the great shot of the war. The authorities are inclined to believe the story. The new gun on Gun Hill is perhaps too vigorous for our old friend, and the rifling on his shells is too clean. Whatever the truth may be, he gave us a lively time morning and afternoon. I think he was trying to destroy the Star bakery, about one hundred yards below my cottage. The shells pitched on every side of it in succession. They destroyed three houses. A Natal Mounted Rifle riding down the street was killed, and so was his horse. In the afternoon shrapnel came raining through our eucalyptus trees and rattling on the roof, so I accepted an invitation to tea in a beautiful hole in the ground, and learnt the joys spoken of by the poet of the new Ladysmith Lyre:—

"A pipe of Boer tobacco 'neath the blue, A tin of meat, a bottle, and a few Choice magazines like Harmsworth's or the Strand— sometimes think war has its blessings too."

But one wearies of the safest rabbit-hole in an afternoon tea-time, and I rode to the other end of the town trying to induce my tenth or twelfth runner to start. So far, three have gone and not returned, one did not start, but lay drunk for ten days, the rest have been driven back by Boers or terror.

As I rode, the shells followed me, turning first upon Headquarters and then on the Gordons' camp by the Iron Bridge, where they killed two privates in their tents. I think nothing else of importance happened during the day, but I was so illusioned with fever that I cannot be sure. Except "Long Tom," the guns were not so active as yesterday, but some of them devoted much attention to the grazing cattle and the slaughter-houses. We are to be harried and starved out.

December 2, 1899.

To me the day has been a wild vision of prodigious guns spouting fire and smoke from uplifted muzzles on every hill, of mounted Boers, thick as ants, galloping round and round the town in opposite directions, of flashing stars upon a low horizon, and of troops massed at night, to no purpose, along an endless road. But I am inspired by fever just now, and in duller moments I am still conscious that we have really had a fairly quiet day, as these days go.

"Long Tom" occupied the morning in shelling the camp of the Imperial Light Horse. He threw twelve great shells in rapid succession into their midst, but as I watched not a single horse or man was even scratched. The narrowest escape was when a great fragment flew through an open door and cut the leg clean off a table where Mr. Maud, of the Graphic, sat at work. Two shells pitched in the river, which half encircles the camp, and for a moment a grand Trafalgar Square fountain of yellow water shot into the air. A house near the gaol was destroyed, but no damage to man or beast resulted.

Soon afterwards, from the highest point of the Convent Hill, looking south-west over the Maritzburg road by Bluebank, I saw several hundred Boers cantering in two streams that met and passed in opposite directions. They were apparently on the move between Colenso and Van Reenen's Pass; perhaps their movements implied visits to lovers, and a pleasant Sunday. They looked just like ants hurrying to and fro upon a garden track.

The reality of the day was a flash of brilliant light far away beyond the low gorge, where the river turns southward. My old Scot was the first to see it. It was about half-past three. The message came through fairly well, though I am told it is not very important. The important thing is that communication with the relieving force is at last established.

About 8.30 p.m. there was a great movement of troops, the artillery massing in the main street, the cavalry moving up in advance, the infantry forming up. Being ill, I fell asleep for a couple of hours, and when I turned out again all the troops had gone back to camp.

Sunday, December 3, 1899.

Long before sunrise I went up to the examining post on the Newcastle road, now held by the Gloucesters instead of the Liverpools. The positions of many regiments have been changed, certain battalions being now kept always ready as a flying column to co-operate with the relieving force. Last night's movement appears to have been a kind of rehearsal for that. It was also partly a feint to puzzle the Boers and confuse the spies in the town.

Signalling from lighted windows has become so common among the traitors that to-day a curfew was proclaimed—all lights out at half-past eight. Rumours about the hanging and shooting of spies still go the round, but my own belief is the authorities would not hurt a fly, much less a spy, if they could possibly help it.

Nearly all day the heliograph was flashing to us from that far-off hill. There is some suspicion that the Boers are working it as a decoy. We lost three copies of our code at Dundee, and it is significant that it was a runner brought the good news of Methuen's successes on Modder River to-night. But at Headquarters the flash signals are now taken as genuine, and the sight of that star from the outer world cheers us up.

At noon I rode out to see the new home of the 24th Field Ambulance from India. It is down by the river, near Range Post, and the silent Hindoos have constructed for it a marvel of shelter and defence. A great rampart conceals the tents, and through a winding passage fenced with massive walls of turf you enter a chamber large enough for twenty patients, and protected by an impenetrable roof of iron pipes, rocks, and mounds of earth. As I admired, the Major came out from a tent, wiping his hands. He had just cut off the leg of an 18th Hussar, whose unconscious head, still on the operating table, projected from the flaps of the tent door. The man had been sitting on a rock by the river, washing his feet, while "Long Tom" was shelling the Imperial Light Horse, as I described yesterday. Suddenly a splinter ricocheted far up the valley, and now, even if he recovers, he will have only one foot to wash.

A civilian was killed yesterday, working in the old camp. The men on each side of him were unhurt. So yesterday's shelling was not so harmless as I supposed.

Early in the afternoon I met Mr. Lynch, known as one of the Daily Chronicle correspondents in Cuba last year. He was riding his famous white horse, "Kruger," which we captured after the fight at Elands Laagte. One side of this bony animal is dyed khaki colour with Condy's fluid, as is the fashion with white horses. But the other side is left white for want of material. Mr. Lynch showed me with pride a great white umbrella he had secured. Round it he had written, "Advt. Dept. Ladysmith Lyre" In his pocket was a bottle of whisky—a present for Joubert. And so he rode away, proposing to exchange our paper for any news the Boers might have. Eluding the examining posts, he vanished into the Boer lines under Bulwan, and has not re-appeared. Perhaps the Boers have not the humour to appreciate the finely Irish performance. They have probably kept him prisoner or sent him to Pretoria. On hearing of his disappearance, Mr. Hutton, of Reuter's, and I asked leave to go out to the Boer camp to inquire after him. But the General was wroth, and would not listen to the proposal.

December 4, 1899.

This morning the General offered the use of the heliograph to all correspondents in rotation by ballot. Messages were to be limited to thirty words. One could say little more than that we are doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances. But the sun did not come out all day, and not a single word got through.

In the afternoon I rode out to Waggon Hill, south-west of our position, to call upon the two howitzers. They are heavy squat guns about twenty years old, their shells being marked 1880, though they are said in reality to date from 1869. They were brought up from Port Elizabeth where the Volunteers used them, and certainly they have done fine service here. Concealed in the hollow of a hill, they are invisible to the enemy, and after many trials have now exactly got the range of the great 6 in. gun on Middle Hill. At any moment they can plump their shells right into his sangar, and the Boer gunners are frightened to work there. In fact, they have as effectually silenced that gun as if they had smashed it to pieces. They are worked by the Royal Artillery, two dismounted squadrons of the I.L.H. acting as escort or support. Them I found on picket at the extreme end of the hill. They told me they had seen large numbers of Boers moving slowly with cattle and waggons towards the Free State passes. The Boers whom I saw were going in just the opposite direction, towards Colenso. I counted twenty-seven waggons with a large escort creeping steadily to the south along some invisible road. They were carrying provisions or the ammunition to fight our relieving column.

We hear to-day there will be no attempt to relieve us till the 15th, if then. A Natal newspaper, with extracts from the Transvaal Standard and Diggers' News, brought in yesterday, exaggerates our situation almost as much as the Boers themselves. If all Englishmen now besieged were asked why most they desired relief, there is hardly one would not reply, "For the English mail!"



CHAPTER XII

THE NIGHT SURPRISE ON GUN HILL

December 5, 1899.

We have now been shut up nearly five weeks. Some 15,000 people or more have been living on a patch of ground roughly measuring three miles each way. On that patch of ground at the lowest estimate 3,500 cases of explosive iron have been hurled at high velocity, not counting an incalculable number of the best rifle bullets. One can conceive the effect on a Londoner's mind if a shell burst in the city. If another burst next day, the 'buses would begin to empty. If a hundred a day burst for five weeks, people would begin to talk of the paralysis of commerce. Yet who knows? The loss of life would probably be small. The citizen might grow as indifferent to shells as he is to shooting stars. Here, for instance, the killed do not yet amount to thirty, the wounded may roughly be put down at 170, of whom, perhaps, twenty have died, and all except the confirmed cave-dwellers are beginning to go about as usual, or run for cover only when it shells particularly hard.

To-day has not been hard in any sense. It opened with a heavy Scotch mist, which continued off and on, though for the most part the outlines of the mountains were visible. "Long Tom" of Gun Hill did not speak. The bombardment was almost entirely left to "Puffing Billy" and "Silent Susan." They worked away fairly steadily at intervals morning and afternoon, but did no harm to speak of.

Again large numbers of Boers were seen moving along the south-west borders, and a Kaffir brought in the story of a great conference at Bester's on the Harrismith line. Whether the conference is to decide on some future course of action, or to compare the difference between the allied states, we do not know. Probably the Dutch will not abandon the siege without a big fight.

On our side we contented ourselves with sending a shot or two from "Bloody Mary" to Bulwan, but the light was bad and the shells fell short. Sir George White now proposes to withdraw the curfew law, in hopes that any traitors may be caught red-handed. The Town Guard, consisting of young shop assistants with rifles and rosettes, are displaying an amiable activity. Returning from dinner last night, I was arrested four times in the half mile. I may mention that it is now impossible to procure anything stronger than lime-juice or lemonade.

December 6, 1899.

"Long Tom" of Gun Hill surprised us all by beginning a fairly rapid fire about 10 a.m. "Lady Anne" and "Bloody Mary" replied within a few moments of each other, and the second of the two shots exploded right on the top of "Tom's" earthworks, but he fired again within a few minutes, aiming at the new balloon, the old one having been torn to pieces in a whirlwind nearly a week ago. When the balloon soared out of reach, he turned a few shots upon the town and camps, and then was silent.

Since the siege began one farmer has steadily continued to plough his acres on the plain near the racecourse. He reminded one of the French peasant ploughing at Sedan. His three ploughs went backwards and forwards quite indifferent to unproductive war. But to-day the Boers deliberately shelled him at his work, the shells following him up and down the field, and ploughing up the earth all wrong. Neither the farmer nor his Kaffir labourers paid the least attention to them. The plough drove on, leaving the furrow behind, just as the world goes forward, no matter how much iron two admirable nations pitch at each other's heads.

Of course percussion-fused shells falling on ploughed land seldom burst, as a boy here found by experiment. Having found an eligible little shell in the furrows, he carried it home, and put it to soak in his washing basin. When it had soaked long enough, he extracted the fuse and proceeded to knock out the powder with a hammer. Then the nasty thing exploded in his face, and he lost one eye and is otherwise a good deal cut about.

In the afternoon I rode out again to the howitzers on Waggon Hill. The 6 in. gun which they command from their invisible station has not fired for six days. The Boer gunners dare not set it to work for fear of the 85lb. shells which are fired the moment Boers are seen in the sangar. Two were fired just as I left.

From the end of the hill there was a magnificent view of the great precipices in Basutoland, but hardly a Boer could be seen. Ninety-seven waggons had been counted the evening before, moving towards the Free State passes, but now I saw hardly a dozen Boers. Yet if their big gun had sent a shrapnel over us, what a bag they would have made! Colonel Rhodes and Dr. Jameson were at my side, General Ian Hamilton, with Lord Ava and Captain Valentine were within six yards, to say nothing of Captain Clement Webb, of Johannesburg fame, and other Imperial Light Horse officers.

In the evening the Natal Carbineers gave an open-air concert to a big audience. A good many women and girls came. As usual the sailors had the best of it in the comic songs, but the event of the evening was "The Queen." Though the Boers must have seen our lights, and perhaps heard the shout of "Send her victorious," they did not fire, not even when the balloon, fresh charged at the gas-works, stalked past us like a ghost.

December 7, 1899.

A glorious day for the heliograph, which flashed encouragement on us from that far-off mountain. But little else was done. The bombardment was only half-hearted. Some of the shells pitched about the town, smashing walls and windows, and two of the Irish Fusiliers were wounded by shrapnel. Towards evening a lot of children in white dresses were playing among the rocks opposite my window, when "Puffing Billy," of Bulwan, sent a huge shell over my roof right into the midst of them as it seemed. Fortunately it pitched a few yards too high. The poor little creatures scuttled away like rabbits. They are having a queer education—a kindergarten training in physical shocks.

During the day I rode nearly all over the camp and outposts, even getting to Waggon Hill again to see the enemy at their old trick of calling the cattle home with shells. There I heard that the 6 in. gun on Middle Hill was removed last evening, and that was the cause of the two shots I had heard as I left. Our gunners detected the movement too late to prevent it, and the destination of the gun is unknown.

December 8, 1899.

The brightest day of the siege so far. The secret was admirably kept. Outside three or four of the General Staff, not a soul knew what was to happen. At 10 p.m. on Thursday an officer left me for his bed; a quarter of an hour later he was marching with his squadron upon the unknown adventure. It was one of the finest and most successful things done in the war, but what I most admire about it is its secrecy. The honours go to the Volunteers. One regrets the exclusion of the Regulars after all their splendid service and cheery temper, but the Volunteers are more distinctly under Headquarter control, and it was thought best not to pass the orders through the brigades. Accordingly just after ten certain troops of the Imperial Light Horse, under Colonel Edwards, the Natal Carbineers, and Border Mounted Rifles, all under the command of Colonel Royston, suddenly received orders to march on foot along the Helpmakaar road. About 600 went, though only 200 of them actually took part in the final enterprise.

The moon was quarter full, but clouded, giving just enough light to see the road and no more. The small column advanced in perfect silence. Not a whisper was heard or a light seen. After long weeks of grumbling under the steady control of Regular officers, the Volunteers are learning what discipline means. The Cemetery was passed, the gorge of Bell's Spruit, the series of impregnable defences built by the Liverpools and Devons along the Helpmakaar road. At the end of those low hills the Devons were found drawn up in support, or to cover retreat. General Hunter then took command of the whole movement, and the march went on. Three-quarters of a mile further the road enters rough and bushy ground, thinly covered with stunted thorns and mimosa. It rises gradually to the foot of the two great hills, Lombard's Kop and Bulwan, the road crossing the low wooded nek between them. Lombard's Kop, which is the higher, lies in the left. The kop itself rises to about 1,200 or 1,300 feet, in a square-topped pyramid; but in front of it, forming part of the same hill, stands a broad and widely-expanded base, perhaps not higher than 600 or 700 feet. It is called Little Bulwan by the natives and Gun Hill by our troops. Near its centre on the sky-line the Boers placed the new "Long Tom" 6 in. Creusot gun, throwing a 96lb. shell, as I described before, and about 150 yards to the left was a howitzer generally identified with "Silent Susan." Those are the two guns which for the last fortnight have caused most damage to the troops and town. Their capture was the object of the night's adventure.

Leaving two-thirds of-his force in the bush nearly half-way up the slope, General Hunter took about 100 Light Horse, nearly 100 Carbineers and Mounted Rifles, with ten sappers under Captain Fowke, and began the main ascent. Major Henderson, of the Intelligence Department, acted as guide, keeping the extreme left of the extended line pretty nearly under the position of the big gun. So they advanced silently through the rocks and bushes under the uncertain light of the moon, which was just setting. It was two o'clock.

The Boer sentries must have been fast asleep. There was only one challenge. An old man's voice from behind suddenly cried in Dutch: "Halt! who goes there?" One of the Volunteers—a Carbineer—answered, "Friend." "Hermann," cried the sentry. "Who's that? Wake up. It's the Red-necks" (the Boer name for English). "Hold your row!" cried the Carbineer, still in Dutch. "Don't you know your own friends?" The sentry either ran away, or was satisfied, and the line crept on. The first part of the slope is gentle, but the face of the hill rises steep with rocks, and must be climbed on hands and knees, especially in the dark. Up went the 200, keeping the best line they could, and spreading out well to the right so as to outflank the enemy when the top was reached. Within about 100 yards of the summit they came under rifle fire, the Boer guard having taken alarm. A picket in rear also began firing up at random. It was impossible to judge the number of the enemy. Anything between twenty and fifty was a guide's estimate at the time. The slope was so steep that the Boers were obliged to lean over the edge and show themselves against the sky as they fired. Some of our men returned their fire with revolvers. At sixty yards from the top they were halted for the final assault. The Volunteers, like the Boers, carry no bayonets. Their orders were not to fire, but to club the enemy with the butt if they stood. The orders were now repeated. Then some inspired genius (Major Carey-Davis [? Karri Davis], of the I.L.H., it is said) raised the cry: "Fix bayonets. Give 'em cold steel, my lads." All appreciated the joke, and the shout rang down the line, as the men rose up and rushed to the summit. Four bayonets were actually present, but I am not sure whether they were fixed or not.

That shout was too much for the Boer gunners. They scattered and fled, heading across the broad top of the hill, even before our men had reached the edge. Swinging round from the right, our line rushed for the big gun. The Light Horse and the Sappers were first to reach it, Colonel Edwards himself winning the race. They found the splendid gun deserted in his enormous earthwork, the walls of which are 30 ft. to 35 ft. thick. One Boer was found dead outside it, shot in the assault.

Captain Fowke and his sappers at once got to work. The breech-block was unscrewed and taken out, falling a prize to the Light Horse, who vied with each other in carrying it home (it weighs 137lbs.) Then gun-cotton was thrust up the breech into the body of the gun. A vast explosion told the Boers that "Tom" had gone aloft, and his hulk lay in the pit, rent with two great wounds, and shortened by a head. The sappers say it seemed a crying shame to wreck a thing so beautiful. The howitzer met the same fate. A Maxim was discovered and dragged away, and then the return began. It was now three o'clock, and by four daylight comes. The difficulty was to get the men to move. The Carbineers especially kept crowding round the old gun like children in their excitement. At last the party came scrambling down the hill, joined the supports, and all straggled back into camp together, with exultation and joy. They just, and only just, got in before the morning gave the enemy light enough to fire on their line of march.



The whole movement was planned and executed to perfection. One man was killed, three or four were slightly wounded. Our worse loss was Major Henderson, wounded in the shoulder and leg during the final advance. He went through the rest of the action, and returned with the party, but must now retire for a week or so to Intombi Camp, for the Roentgen rays to discover the ball in his leg. It is thought to be a buckshot, or, rather, the steel ball of a bicycle bearing, fired from a sporting gun.

General Hunter found a letter in the gun-pit. It is in Dutch, and half-finished, scribbled by a Boer gunner to his sister in Pretoria. I give a literal translation:—

"MY DEAR SISTER,—It is a month and seven days since we besieged Ladysmith, and I don't know what will happen further. We see the English every day walking about the town, and we are bombarding the place with our cannon. They have built breastworks outside the town. To attack would be very dangerous. Near the town they have set up two naval guns, from which we receive a very heavy fire we cannot stand. I think there will be much blood spilt before they surrender, as Mr. Englishman fights hard, and our burghers are a bit frightened. I should like to write more, but the sun is very hot, and, what's more, the flies are so troublesome that I don't get a chance of sitting still.—Your affectionate Brother."

In the afternoon the General publicly congratulated the Volunteers on their achievement. The Boers added their generous praise—communicated to some doctors left behind to look after our wounded, who returned to us in the course of the day, after being given a good breakfast. Unhappily the above account is necessarily second-hand. No correspondent had a chance of going with the party. The only one who even started was sent back by General Hunter to await the column's return in a guard-room. I have been obliged to build up the story from my knowledge of the ground and from what has been told me by Major Henderson and other officers or privates who were present.

Before that party returned in triumph another important movement was already in progress, of which, I believe, I was the only outside spectator. Just before four I was awakened by the trampling of cavalry going up the Newcastle road. They were the 5th Lancers, the 5th Dragoon Guards, and the 18th Hussars. The 19th Hussars had been out all night burning a kraal and distracting attention from Gun Hill. Just as the stars vanished, the 18th, followed by the others, galloped forward towards the Boer lines in the general direction of Pepworth Hill, though our main force was on the left of the direct line. General Brocklehurst was in command. It is described at Headquarters as a reconnaissance or demonstration. But there are rumours that more was originally intended—perhaps an attack on the Boer rail head, with its three heavy trains this side of Modder Spruit; perhaps the destruction of the Modder Spruit Bridge. If the object was only to discover whether the Boers are still in force, and to demonstrate the coolness of the British cavalry, the movement was entirely successful.

Directly the cavalry advanced across the fairly open valley of Bell's Spruit, passing Brook's Farm and making for the left of Limit Hill on the main road, they were met by a tremendous rifle fire from every ridge and hillock and rock commanding the scene. At the same time, guns opened upon them from Surprise Hill on our left rear, and from some spot which I could not locate on our left front. Still they advanced, squadron after squadron sweeping across Bell's Spruit, and up into the tortuous little valleys and ravines beyond, towards Macpherson's Farm. That was the limit. It is about two and three-quarter miles (not more) from our picket on the Newcastle road, and lies not far from the left foot of Pepworth Hill. The 18th Hussars, through some mistake in orders, attempted to push still further forward towards the hill, but just before five a general retirement began.

Except perhaps at the close of Elands Laagte fight, or in one brief assault of Turks upon a Greek position in Epirus, I have never heard anything to compare to the rifle fire under which the withdrawal was conducted. The range was long, but the roll of the rifle was incessant. The whole air screamed with bullets, and the dust rose in clouds over the grass as they fell. Then the 6 in. gun on Bulwan ("Puffing Billy") and an invisible gun on our right opened fire, throwing shells into the thick of our men wherever the ravines or rocks compelled them to crowd together. They came back fast, but well in hand, wheeling to right or left at word of command, as on parade. The B Squadron of the 18th had a terrible gallop for it, right across the front of fire along a ridge such as Boers rejoice in. Their loss was two killed and seventeen wounded. The others only lost three or four slightly wounded. It proves how lightly a highly-disciplined cavalry can come off where one would have said hardly any could survive.

As we retired the Boers kept following us up, though with great caution. Riding along the valleys, dismounting, and creeping from kopje to kopje among the stones, a large body of them came up to Brooks Farm, and began firing at our sangars and outposts at ranges of 800 to 1,000 yards, the bullets coming very thick over our heads, even after we had reached the protection of the Gloucesters' walls and earthworks. There our infantry opened fire, while two guns of the 13th Battery near the railway cutting, and two of the 69th on Observation Hill, threw shrapnel over the kopjes, and checked any further advance.

But the Boers still held their positions, pouring a tremendous fire into any of the cavalry who had still to pass within their range. As to their number, their magazine rifles, firing five shots in rapid succession, makes any estimate difficult. I have heard it put as low as 600. Perhaps 1,000 is about right. I myself saw some 300 from first to last. By seven the whole of our force was again within the lines. Splendid as the behaviour of all the cavalry was, one man seemed to me conspicuous. Towards the end of the retirement he quietly cantered out across the most exposed bit of open ground, and went round among the kopjes as though looking for something. For a time he disappeared down a gully. Then he came cantering back again, and reached the high road along a watercourse, which gave a little cover. At least 300 bullets must have been fired at him, but he changed neither his pace nor direction. Whether he was looking for wounded or only went out for diversion I have not heard, but one could not imagine more complete disregard of death.

The rest of the day passed quietly. The Boers gathered in crowds on Gun Hill and stood around the carcass of "Long Tom" as though in lamentation. His absence gave us an unfamiliar sense of security. Some called it dull. "Lay it on where you like, there's no pleasing you," said the gaoler.

December 9, 1899.

The Dutch left us pretty much alone. Sickness is becoming serious. The cases average thirty a day, chiefly enteric. A Natal newspaper only a week old was brought in by a runner. It contained a few details of Methuen's fight on Modder River, but hardly any English news. Captain Heath, of the balloon, told me he could see the Boers concentrating in much larger camps than before, especially about Colenso and at Springfield further up the Tugela.



CHAPTER XIII

THE CAPTURE OF SURPRISE HILL

Sunday, December 10, 1899.

Just as we were lazily washing our clothes and otherwise enjoying the Sabbath rest and security at about eight in the morning, "Puffing Billy," of Bulwan, began breaking the Fourth Commandment with extraordinary recklessness and rapidity. He sent nine of his shells into the town, as fast as he could fire them. "Bloody Mary" flung two over his head and one into his earthwork, but he paid no attention to her protests. The fact was, the 5th Dragoon Guards, trusting to Boer principles, had left their horses fully exposed to view instead of leading them away under cover as usual at sunrise. The gunners, probably Germans, thought this was presuming too much on their devotion to the Old Testament, and set their scruples aside for twenty minutes under the paramount duty of slaughtering men and horses. Happily no serious harm was done, and the rest of the day was as quiet as Sunday usually is.

On our side we were engaged all day in preparing a new home for "Lady Anne" on Waggon Hill, south-west of the town. The position, as I have often described, gives a splendid view of the country towards Basutoland and the Free State mountains. It also commands some four miles of the Maritzburg road towards Colenso and the guns which the Boers have set up there to check the approach of a relieving force. By late afternoon the enormous sangar was almost finished. The gun will be carried over on a waggon at night. I watched the work in progress from Rifleman's Post, an important outpost and fort, held by the 2nd K.R.R. (60th). It also commands the beginning of the Maritzburg road, where it passes across the "Long Valley," between Range Post and Bluebank.