The quiet hour before sunrise was again broken by the crash of our Naval guns. "Bloody Mary" (now politely called the "Princess Victoria") threw five shells along the top of Bulwan. A Naval 12-pounder sent three against the face of the hill. Again it was intended to catch the Boer gunners and guard as they were getting up and preparing breakfast.
No news came in, and it was a day as dull as peace, but for some amenities of bombardment.
The Surprise Hill howitzer tried a longer range. At lunch "Bulwan Billy" made some splendid shots close to our little mess and burst the tanks at Taylor's mineral water works. In the wet afternoon the big gun's work was less dignified. He threw five shrapnel over the cattle licking up what little grass was left on the flat, and did not kill a single cow.
The guides boast that to-day they killed one Boer by strategy used for tigers in India. Two or three of them went out to Star Kopje and loosed two miserable old ponies, driving them towards the Boer lines to graze. A Boer or two came for the prize and one was shot dead.
At night the flash signals from Colenso were very brilliant on a black and cloudy sky. They only said, "Dearest love from your own Nance," or "Baby sends kisses," but the Bulwan searchlight tried hard to thwart their affectionate purpose by waving his ray quickly up and down across the flashing beam.
There was little to mark the day beyond the steady shelling of snipers by the Natal Navals, and a great 96lb. shell from Bulwan which plunged through a Kaffir house, where black labourers live stuffed together, took off a Kaffir's foot, ricocheted over our little mess-room, just glancing off the roof, and fell gasping, but still entire, beside our verandah. I rode up to Cæsar's Camp in the morning sun. It was a scene of sleepy peace, only broken by the faint interest of watching where the shells burst in the town far below.
It has been a commonplace of the war that the Boers could cling to a position of their own choosing from behind stones, but would never venture to attack a position or fight in the open. Like all the comforting commonplaces about the Boers, this is now overthrown. The untrained, ill-equipt farmers have to-day assaulted positions of extraordinary strength, have renewed the attack again and again, have rushed up to breastworks, and died at the rifle's mouth, and have only been repulsed after fifteen hours of hard and gallant fighting on the part of the defence.