nt Boers until the day--supposed to be imminent--when the
relieving army should appear from among the labyrinth of mountains which
lay to the south of them. Some there were who, knowing both the enemy
and the mountains, felt a cold chill within their hearts as they asked
themselves how an army was to come through, but the greater number, from
General to private, trusted implicitly in the valour of their comrades
and in the luck of the British Army.

One example of that historical luck was ever before their eyes in the
shape of those invaluable naval guns which had arrived so dramatically
at the very crisis of the fight, in time to check the monster on
Pepworth Hill and to cover the retreat of the army. But for them the
besieged must have lain impotent under the muzzles of the huge Creusots.
But in spite of the naive claims put forward by the Boers to some
special Providence--a process which a friendly German critic described
as 'commandeering the Almighty'--it is certain that in a very peculiar
degree, in the early months of this war there came again and again a
happy chance, or a merciful interposition, which saved the British from
disaster. Now in this first week of November, when every hill, north
and south and east and west, flashed and smoked, and the great 96-pound
shells groaned and screamed over the town, it was to the long thin
4.7's and to the hearty bearded men who worked them, that soldiers and
townsfolk looked for help. These guns of Lambton's, supplemented by two
old-fashioned 6.3 howitzers manned by survivors from No. 10 Mountain
Battery, did all that was possible to keep down the fire of the heavy
Boer guns. If they could not save, they could at least hit back,
and punishment is not so bad to bear when one is giving as well as
receiving.

By the end of the first week of November the Boers had established their
circle of fire. On the east of the town, broken by the loops of the Klip
River, is a broad green plain, some miles in extent, which furnished
grazing ground for the horses and cattle of the besieged. Beyond it
rises into a long flat-topped hill the famous Bulwana, upon which lay
one great Creusot and several smaller guns. To the north, on Pepworth
Hill, was another Creusot, and between the two were the Boer batteries
upon Lombard's Kop. The British naval guns were placed upon this side,
for, as the open loop formed by the river lies at this end, it is the
part of the defences which is most liable