s not well
organised. From dawn the ambulance people had been at work shifting the
hospital tents and all the surgical necessities, but at five in the
afternoon a note came back from the officer in camp urging us not to
send any more patients. "There is no water, no rations," it said; "not
nearly enough tents are pitched. If more wounded come, they will have to
spend the night on the open veldt." But the long train was already made
up. The wounded were packed in it. It was equally impossible to leave
them there or to take them back. So on they went. In all that crowd of
suffering men I did not hear a single complaint. Administration is not
the strong point of the British officer. "We are only sportsmen," said
one of them with a sigh, as he crawled up the platform, torn with
dysentery and fever.

In front of the wounded were a lot of open trucks for such townspeople
as chose to go. They had hustled a few rugs and lumps of bedding
together, and, sitting on these, they made the best of war. But not many
went, and most of those had relations among the Boers or were Boers
themselves.

When the trains had gone, Captain Lambton, of the _Powerful_, showed me
the new protection which his men and the sappers had built round the
great 4.7 in. gun, which is always kept trained on "Long Tom." The
sailors call the gun "Lady Anne," in compliment to Captain Lambton's
sister, but the soldiers have named it "Weary Willie"--I don't know why.
The fellow gun on Cove Hill is called "Bloody Mary"--which is no
compliment to anybody. The earthwork running round the "Lady Anne" is
eighteen feet deep at the base. Had it been as deep the first day she
came, Lieutenant Egerton would still be at her side.

_November 6, 1899._

When the melodrama doesn't come off, an indignant Briton demands his
money back. Our melodrama has not come off. We were quite ready to give
it a favourable reception. The shops were shut, business abandoned. Many
had taken secure places the night before, so as to be in plenty of time.
Nearly all were seated expectant long before dawn. The rising sun was to
ring the curtain up. It rose. The curtain never stirred. From whom shall
we indignant Britons demand our money back?

With the first glimmer of light between the stars over Bulwan, those few
who had stayed the night under roofs began creeping away to the holes in
the river bank or the rough, scrubby ground at the foot of the hills
south-west of the town, where