ld have been
inhabited the minute after, but just then was quite empty. We had a
cheerful lunch, as there were guns returning from a reconnaissance, and
they have adopted a thoughtless habit of coming home past our house.
Briefly, from six till two you would have said that the earth was being
shivered to matchwood and fine powder. But, alas! man accustoms himself
so quickly to all things, that a bombardment to us, unless stones
actually tinkle on the roof, is now as an egg without salt.

The said reconnaissance I did not attend, knowing exactly what it would
be. I mounted a hill, to get warm and to make sure, and it was exactly
what I knew it would be. Our guns fired at the Boer guns till they were
silent; and then the Boer dismounted men fired at our dismounted men;
then we came home. We had one wounded, but they say they discovered the
Boer strength on Bluebank, outside Range Post, to be 500 or 600. I doubt
if it is as much; but, in any case, I think two men and a boy could have
found out all that three batteries and three regiments did. With a
little dash, they could have taken the Boer guns on Bluebank; but of
dash there was not even a little.

_Nov. 15._--I wake at 12.25 this morning, apparently dreaming of
shell-fire.

"Fool," says I to myself, and turn over, when--swish-h! pop-p!--by the
piper, it is shell-fire! Thud--thud--thud--ten or a dozen, I should say,
counting the ones that woke me. What in the name of gunpowder is it all
about? But there is no rifle-fire that I can hear, and there are no more
shells now: I sleep again.

In the morning they asked the Director of Military Intelligence what the
shelling was; he replied, "What shelling?" Nobody knew what it was, and
nobody knows yet. They had a pretty fable that the Boers, in a false
alarm, fired on each other: if they did, it was very lucky for them
that the shells all hit Ladysmith. My own notion is that they only did
it to annoy--in which they failed. They were reported in the morning,
as usual, searching for bodies with white flags; but I think that
is their way of reconnoitring. Exhausted with this effort, the
Boers--heigho!--did nothing all day. Level downpour all the afternoon,
and Ladysmith a lake of mud.

_Nov. 16._--Five civilians and two natives hit by a shrapnel at the
railway station; a railway guard and a native died. Languid shelling
during morning.

_Nov. 17._--During morning, languid shelling. Afternoon,
raining--Ladysmith wallowing