ith tin boxes or Asiatic bundles on their heads. Joubert had
sent them in as a present from Dundee. They were refugees from that
unhappy town, and after a visit to Pretoria, they are now dumped down
here to help devour our rations. Some Europeans have come, too--guards,
signalmen and shopkeepers--who report immense reinforcements coming up
for the Boers. Is there not something a little mediaeval in sending a
crowd of hungry non-combatants into an invested town?

CHAPTER IX

INCIDENTS, ACCIDENTS, AND REALITIES

LADYSMITH, _November 9, 1899_.[1]

A day of furious and general attack. Just before five I was wakened by a
shell blustering through the eucalyptus outside my window, and bursting
in a gully beyond. "Lady Anne" answered at once, and soon all the Naval
Brigade guns were in full cry. What should we have done without the
Naval guns? We have nothing else but ordinary field artillery, quite
unable to reply to the heavy guns which the Boers have now placed in
position round the town. Yet they only came up at the last moment, and
it was a mere piece of luck they got through at all. Standing behind
them on the ridge above my tin house, I watched the firing till nine
o'clock, dodging behind a loose wall to avoid the splinters which buzz
through the air after each shot, and are sometimes strangely slow to
fall. Once after "Long Tom" had fired I stood up, thinking all was over,
when a big fragment hummed gently above my head, went through the roof
and ceiling of a house a hundred yards behind, and settled on a
shell-proof spring mattress in the best bedroom. One of the little boys
running out from the family burrow in the rocks was delighted to find it
there, and carried it off to add to his collection of moths and birds'
eggs. The estimate of "Long Tom's" shell has risen from 40lbs. to 96lbs.
and I believe that to be the true weight. One of them to-day dug a
stupendous hole in the pavement just before one of the principal shops,
and broke yards of shutter and plate glass to pieces. It was quite
pleasant to see a shop open again.

So the bombardment went on with violence all the morning. The
troglodytes in their burrows alone thought themselves safe, but, in
fact, only five men were killed, and not all of those by shell. One was
a fine sergeant of the Liverpools, who held the base of the Helpmakaar
road where it leaves the town eastward. Sergeant Macdonald was his name,
a man full of zeal, and always tempte