id="page17" class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="Pg 17"/> plans and put them into execution without risk of interference from us. That might almost have been foreseen when General Joubert on 31st October hit upon a characteristic plan for finding out what was the exact state of affairs in Ladysmith, and we, with a delightful naïveté, suspecting no guile, seem to have played into his hands. It will be remembered that the most painful incident of "Black" or "Mournful Monday" was the surrender of all but a company or two of the Gloucesters and Royal Irish Fusiliers, which with a mountain battery had been detached to turn the enemy's flanks, with consequences so humiliating and disastrous to us. Under pretence of treating the wounded from this column with great consideration, Joubert sent them into camp here, taking their parole as a guarantee that they would not carry arms again during this campaign. With the ambulance waggon was an escort of twenty Boers, all wearing the Red Cross badge of neutrality. Their instructions were to demand an exchange of wounded, and on the plea of being responsible for the proper care of their own men, they claimed to be admitted within our lines. Such a preposterous request would not have been listened to for a moment by some generals, but Sir George White, being anxious apparently to propitiate an enemy whose guns commanded the town, full as it was of helpless women and children, yielded that point, and so the ambulance with its swaggering Boer escort came into town neither blindfolded nor under any military restrictions whatever. Among this mounted escort Ladysmith people recognised several well-known burghers, who were certainly not doctors or otherwise specially qualified for attendance on wounded men. They were free to move about the town, to talk with Boer prisoners, and to drink at public bars with suspected Boer sympathisers—all this while they probably picked up many interesting items as to the number of troops in Ladysmith, the position of ordnance stores and magazines, and the general state of our defences, which were chaotic at that moment. One among the visitors was particularly curious about the names of officers who dined habitually at the Royal Hotel mess, and very anxious to have such celebrities as Colonel Frank Rhodes, Dr. Jameson, and Sir John Willoughby pointed out to him. Does anybody in his senses believe that such careful inquiries were made without an object, or that the Red Cross badge was regarded as a sacred symbol sealing the lips of a Boer as to all he had seen and heard in Ladysmith?

When Joubert's artillery began shelling the town their fire was directed on important stores, the locality of which could only have been indicated to them by secret agents, and on places where officers are known to assemble at certain hours. These may all have been merely strange coincidences, but, at any rate, they are noteworthy as showing that in some way, whether by accident or cunning design, General Joubert's gunners were able to profit by the truce that was agreed upon without any exact stipulation on either side as to its duration. The tacit understanding seems to have been that both forces should have time to collect their wounded and bury their dead.

It is certain that the Boers took a little more time than was necessary for this purpose, and turned it to good use for themselves by strengthening the earthworks behind which "Long Tom" is mounted, while we in turn were enabled to get a second naval gun of heavy calibre into position before the bombardment began again. The necessity for doing this was probably chief among reasons which kept our artillery silent during the last two days, though it seemed to mere spectators that a chance was thus being given for the enemy to mount batteries on heights that commanded nearly every part of our camp.

To make this perfectly clear without the aid of a map showing contours of all ridges and hollows is very difficult, and one can only attempt to give in words a rough idea of the general position. If the reader will bear in mind what a horse's hoof inverted looks like, he may get a mental picture of Ladysmith and its surroundings—the heels of the horse-shoe pointing eastward, where, five miles off, is the long, flat top of steep Bulwaan, like the huge bar of a gigantic horse-shoe magnet. The horse's frog approximately represents a ridge behind which, and facing Bulwaan, but separated from it by broad stretches of meadow, with the Klip River winding a serpentine course through them, between high banks, is Ladysmith town. Between the frog and the horse-shoe lie our various camps, mostly in radiating hollows, open either to the east or west, but sheltered from cross fires by rough kopjes of porphyritic boulders that have turned brown on the surface by exposure to sunshine. Bushy tangles of wild, white jasmine spring from among these boulders with denser growth of thriving shrubs bearing waxen flowers that blaze in brilliant scarlet and orange, and the coarse grass that begins to show on every patch of earth between the rocks is dotted with clusters like dwarf petunias, or purple bells of trailing convolvulus. A rich storehouse this for the botanist, whose contemplative studies, however, might be rudely disturbed by the shriek and boom of shells bursting about him, for, as I have said, the enemy's guns command most of these ridges, though they cannot always search the hollows in which our camps are as much as possible hidden.

The horse-shoe, in its irregular curve, is dotted here and there with outposts, whose duty it is to keep the enemy's sharpshooters from getting within rifle range of our artillery positions encrusting the ridges at several points like nails of the horse-shoe. Without locating them exactly, one may say that the Naval batteries are on rough eminences of the northern heel, facing Rietfontein Hill, where the Creusot gun, known as "Long Tom," is mounted behind earthworks at a range of 6800 yards, which is well within compass of the Powerful's 12-pounders and at least 3000 yards less than the extreme distance at which shells from her 4.7-inch quick-firing guns would be effective.

Positions for field batteries are prepared at other points round the wide sweep, but only to be occupied as occasion may arise, and therefore one does not care at present to locate them more precisely. The enemy, having heavy artillery of various calibre mounted on Bulwaan, is able to enfilade certain posts held by our infantry pickets on the heels of the horse-shoe, but there are folds among the rocky kopjes where men can lie comparatively screened from shells, which at that distance give timely notice of their coming, as sound travels rather faster than the projectiles do at the end of their flight.

We have outposts on Intombi or Maiden's Castle, which forms the horse-shoe's southern heel, others stretching westward thence to a gap in the toe of the shoe, through which a wood runs nearly due west until it branches off to the Drakensberg Passes in one direction and Maritzburg in the other, and pickets on the north-western and northern heights, with a detached post at Observation Hill, an elongated kopje outside the general defences, overlooking a wide valley of mimosa scrub towards Rietfontein, which is the enemy's main stronghold, commanding as it does the railways to Van Reenan's Pass in the west, and to Newcastle in the north. Except for a distance of two miles from Ladysmith, therefore, both these railways are in the hands of the Boers, who can use them as uninterrupted lines of communication with the Orange Free State and the Transvaal respectively. That they were being so used to some purpose we had reason for believing, during the two peaceful days following the one which from its associations has come to be known among