verse at the foot of the low hill now held by the
Devons. The men were quite off their guard, busy with breakfast and
sharing out the kettles. In an instant five lay dead and twelve were
wounded. The shell burst so close that three of the dead were horribly
scorched. One got covered by a tarpaulin, and was not found at first.
His body was split open, one leg was off, his head was burnt and smashed
to pulp. The cries of the wounded told me at once what had happened.
Summoned by telephone, the dhoolies came quickly up and bore them away,
together with the remains of the dead. Three of the wounded died before
the night. Eight dead and nine wounded--it is worse than the disaster to
the King's (Liverpools) almost exactly on the same spot a few weeks ago.
In the middle of the morning much the same thing nearly happened to the
5th Lancers. The 6 in. gun on Telegraph Hill, usually more noisy than
harmful, was banging away at the Old Camp and the Naval battery on Cove
Hill, when one of the shells ricocheted off the hill-top, and plunged
into the Lancers' camp at the foot. Four officers were hit, including
the colonel, who had a bit of finger blown off, and a segment through
both legs. A sergeant lost an eye. One officer ducked his head and got a
fragment straight through his helmet. The shell was a chance shot, but
that made it no better. The men are sick of being shot at like rabbits,
and sicker still of running into rabbit holes for shelter. The worst of
all is that we can no longer reply for fear of wasting ammunition.
There was no sound of Buller's guns all day. I induced another Kaffir to
make the attempt of running the Boer lines. Mr. McCormick, a Colonial
correspondent, also started. I should go myself, but have no wish to be
shut up in Pretoria for the rest of the campaign, cut off from all
letters, and more useless even than I am here. So I spent the afternoon
with others, building a sand-bag fort round the tent where Mr. Steevens
is to be nursed, beside the river bank. The five o'clock shells came
pretty close, pitching into the Light Horse camp and the main watering
ford. But the tent itself is fairly safe. The feeding of the horses is
our greatest immediate difficulty. Every bit of edible green is being
seized and turned to account. I find vine-leaves a fair substitute for
grass, but my horses are terribly hungry all the same.
_December 23, 1899._
The bombardment was violent at intervals, and some hundreds
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