nchesters and Caesar's Camp from a flat-topped kopje
three or four miles south of them. This gun had been there certainly
since the 3rd, when it shelled our returning reconnaissance; but he,
too, was a gentle creature, and did little harm to anybody. Next day a
third brother, Puffing Billy, made a somewhat bashful first appearance
on Bulwan. Four rounds from the four-point-seven silenced him for the
day. Later came other brothers, of whom you will hear in due course.

[Illustration: THE COUNTRY ROUND LADYSMITH.]

In general you may say of the Long Tom family that their favourite
habitat is among loose soil on the tops of open hills; they are slow
and unwieldy, and very open in all their actions. They are good shooting
guns; Tom on the 7th made a day's lovely practice all round our battery.
They are impossible to disable behind their huge epaulements unless you
actually hit the gun, and they are so harmless as hardly to be worth
disabling.

The four 12-pounder field-guns on Bulwana--I say four, because one day
there were four; but the Boers continually shifted their lighter guns
from hill to hill--were very different. These creatures are stealthy in
their habits, lurking among woods, firing smokeless powder with very
little flash; consequently they are very difficult guns to locate. Their
favourite diet appeared to be balloons; or, failing them, the Devons in
the Helpmakaar Road or the Manchesters in Caesar's Camp. Both of these
they enfiladed; also they peppered the roads whenever troops were
visible moving in or out.

Altogether they were very judiciously handled, though erring perhaps in
not firing persistently enough at any one target. But, despite their
great altitude, the range--at least 6000 yards--and the great height at
which they burst their time shrapnel made them also comparatively
harmless.

There were also one or two of their field-guns opposite the Manchesters
on the flat-topped hill, one, I fancy, with Long Tom on Pepworth's Hill,
and a few others on the northern part of Lombard's Kop and on Surprise
Hill to the north-westward.

Westward, on Telegraph Hill, was a gun which appeared to prey
exclusively on cattle. I am afraid it was one of our own mountain guns
turned cannibal. The cattle, during the siege, had of course to pasture
on any waste land inside the lines they could find, and gathered in
dense, distractingly noisy herds; but though this gun was never tired of
firing on the mobs, I do not t