After the high hopes of the last few days we seem to be falling back, and to get no nearer to the end. Very little firing was heard from Colenso. The Bulwan gun gave us his morning salute of ten big shells in various parts of the town. They made some troublesome pits in the roads, and one destroyed a house, but nobody was killed.
The howitzers and the Telegraph Hill Gun pounded away at each other without much effect. Sickness is now our worst enemy. Next to sickness comes want of forage for the horses. The sick still average thirty a day, and there were 320 cases of enteric at Intombi Camp last night. Mr. Steevens has it, and his friends were busy all morning, moving him to better quarters. Major Henderson is about again. The Röntgen Rays did not discover the bicycle shot in his leg, and the doctors have decided to leave it there.
It was disappointing to hear that the Kaffir runner I sent with an account of the night attack on Surprise Hill had been captured by the Boers and robbed of his papers. I had hopes of that boy; he wore no trousers. But it is perhaps unsafe to judge character from dress alone. This runner business is heart-breaking. I tried to make up by getting another short heliogram through, but the sun was uncertain, and the receivers on the distant mountain sulky and wayward. They showed one faint glimmer of intelligence, and then all was dark again.
In the heat of the day a four-wheeled hooded cart drove from the Boer lines under a white flag bringing a letter for the General. The envoy was a Dutchman from Holland. He was met outside our lines by Lieutenant Fanshawe, of the 19th Hussars, who conversed with him for about two hours, till the answer returned. Seated under the shade of the cart, he enjoyed the enemy's hospitality in brandy and soda, biltong, and Boer biscuit. "But for that white rag," said the Dutchman, "we two would be trying to kill each other. Very absurd!" He went on to repeat how much the Boers admired the exploits of the night attacks. "If you had gone for the other guns that first night, you would have got them all." He said the gunners on Gun Hill were all condemned to death. He examined the horse and its accoutrements, thinking them all very pretty, but maintaining the day for cavalry was gone. He was perfectly intimate with the names and character of all the battalions here. Of the Boer army he said it contained all nationalities down to Turks and Jews. He had no doubt of their ultimate success, and looked forward to Christmas dinner in Ladysmith. What we regard as our victories, he spoke of as our defeats. Even Elands Laagte he thought unsuccessful. Finally, after all compliments, he drove away, bearing a private letter from Mr. Fanshawe to be posted through Delagoa Bay and Amsterdam.
December 15, 1899.
In my own mind I had always fixed to-day as the beginning of our deliverance from this grotesque situation. It may be so still. Very heavy firing was heard down Colenso way from dawn till noon. Colonel Downing, commanding the artillery, said some of it was our field-guns, and it seemed nearer than two days ago.
The Bulwan gun gave us his customary serenade from heaven's gate. He did rather more damage than usual, wrecking two nice houses just below my cottage. One was a boarding house full of young railway assistants, who had narrow escapes. The brother gun on Telegraph Hill was also very active, not being so well suppressed by our howitzers as before. When I was waiting at Colonel Rhodes' cottage by the river, it dropped a shell clear over Pavilion Hill close beside it. Otherwise the Boer guns behaved with some modesty and discretion.
In the morning I rode up to Waggon Hill, and found that "Lady Anne" had at last arrived there, and was already in position. She was hauled up in the night in three pieces, each drawn by two span of oxen. Some thirty yards in front of her, in an emplacement of its own, stands the 12lb. naval gun which has been in that neighbourhood for some days. Both are carefully concealed, even the muzzles being covered up with earth and stones. They both command the approach to the town across the Long Valley by the Maritzburg road, as well as Bluebank or Rifleman's Ridge beyond, and Telegraph Hill beyond that.
While I was on the hill I saw one mounted and four dismounted Boers capture five of our horses which had been allowed to stray in grazing.
In the afternoon a South African thunderstorm swept over us. In a few minutes the dry gully where the main hospital tents are placed, as I described, became a deep torrent of filth. The tents were three feet deep in water, washing over the sick. "Sure it's hopeless, hopeless!" cried unwearying Major Donegan, the medical officer in charge. "I've just seen me two orderlies swimmin' away down-stream." The sick, wet and filthy as they were, had to be hurried away in dhoolies to the chapels and churches again. They will probably be safe there as long as the Geneva flag is not hoisted.