January 3.—For two days the Boer fire from Bulwaan has been directed mainly at the Town Hall or buildings near it, with occasional diversions towards the Intelligence Offices on one side, or the Indian Ordnance Laager on the other. Within these limits of deviation are the busiest parts of Ladysmith, bakeries for the supply of all who are invested, depots at which civilians assemble to draw their daily rations beside the Market Square, where lank-sided dogs snarl over refuse, and such stores as have still something to sell that has not been requisitioned for military uses. The Royal Hotel seems to be a mark once more. Several shells have come near hitting it to-day, and not twenty yards from the room in which I am making these notes a shrapnel has just burst through the wall of a stable. One horse standing there seems to be badly wounded, but curiously enough hardly shows any signs of terror, though the explosion close to him must have sounded terrific, and he was half blinded by dust mingled with fumes of melinite. The fact that Boers use high explosives for bursting charges has been questioned, but this shrapnel, and others I have seen burst at close quarters, undoubtedly contained melinite or some similar villainous compound, to which our own lyddite is near akin. A little later two ladies were driving down the main street when a shell burst just in front of their trap. The pony swerved as if to bolt, but his driver pulled him up with a steady hand and soothed him without a tremor in her voice. At the next corner, fully exposed to Bulwaan's battery, these ladies stopped, waiting to watch the effect of another shot.
It must not be thought that our own guns, though seldom mentioned, are idle all this while. They do not waste ammunition, for a very good reason, but wait their opportunity for effective reply to the enemy's batteries, and when a naval 12-pounder or the "Lady Anne" comes into action the Boer fire is apt to be hurried and wildly inaccurate if it does not cease for a time. The Boers have however mounted a new gun near Pepworth's, which sends "sneakers" into town and about Mount Hill with irritating persistency, and its smokeless powder makes a flash so small that the exact position cannot be located.
January 5.—Days in succession pass unbroken by any incidents dissimilar to the routine which in the very constancy of danger becomes monotonous. Yesterday and to-day are so much alike that one hardly remembers which was which unless some personal adventure or a friend's narrow escape makes a nick in the calendar. Yesterday, for instance, one of several shells bursting about the same spot shattered the water tanks behind a chemist's shop, and its splinters came in curious curves over the housetops, one grazing an officer of the Imperial Light Horse, to whom I was at that moment talking. The next shell was into the police camp, where it burst with destructive force, completely wrecking Colonel Dartnell's tent with all its contents, but injuring nobody. Had that genial and most popular officer followed the almost invariable practice of his everyday life, there would have been an end of the man to whom more than to anybody else we owe the timely retirement from Dundee. He it was who told General Yule, "You must go to-night or you will not be able to go at all," and whose advice, being acted upon, brought back several thousand men to strengthen the garrison of Ladysmith just before its investment. The loss of such a man would have been irreparable, for he knows more than any other officer in this country about Boers and their methods of fighting, and he has every thread of information at command if he were allowed to use native scouts in his own way. He would have made the best possible chief of an Intelligence Staff, but unfortunately military etiquette or jealousy bars his employment in that capacity. If his advice is asked for he gives it readily as at Dundee, and though he has no authority to act in the way that would be most congenial to his fearless and active nature, he is as ready as ever to render a service when wanted. Some of us know too how much civilians have been encouraged in their endurance of a long siege by Colonel Dartnell's cheery example. Nothing disheartens him. He is always the same whether the day's news be good or bad, and perhaps his unostentatious services will be adequately recognised in the end. If they had been taken advantage of in the beginning there would be fewer blunders to regret.
To-day Colonel Stoneman had more than one narrow escape. Two shells burst within splinter range of the office in which he and his assistants have worked steadily at supply details since the bombardment began. A third passed through the roof over that office after a ricochet, and then, without bursting, rolled to the ground in front of a stoup where several Army Service officers were sitting. That shell will be cherished after extraction of its fuse and melinite charge. Fire from other Boer guns proved more disastrous. Surprise Hill's howitzer threw one shell to the little encampment behind Range Point, where it killed one man and wounded four of the unfortunate Royal Irish Fusiliers.
But the time seems now ripe for larger events. On the following day the Boers made their supreme attempt upon the defences of the town. Their best and their bravest were pitted against the siege-worn British soldier; but though they gained all the advantage of a night surprise, though their fierce energy placed them at this point and that several times within an inch of victory, they were hurled back by a foeman whose determination was greater than their own, and whose courage and spirit of self-sacrifice rose superior.