when they find bullets falling dangerously close to them.  They will be behind a rock all day if need be, waiting for the chance of a pot-shot, and stay there until darkness gives them an opportunity to get away unseen.  They give no hostages to fortune by taking any risks that can be avoided.  The game of long bowls and sniping suits them best.  When one place gets too hot for them to pot quickly at our men without risk of being potted in turn, they will steal away one by one, wriggling their way between boulders, creeping under cover of bushes, doing anything rather than show themselves as targets for other men’s rifles.

[Illustration:  SKETCH MAP OF POSITIONS ROUND LADYSMITH, NOVEMBER 1899]

They have made the most of physical features, that in this country lend themselves to such tactics, by occupying hills with heavy artillery, in front of which are rough kopjes strewed with trap rock, and round these the Boer riflemen can always move for advance or retirement well screened from our fire.  They have, however, to reckon sometimes with the far-reaching power of shrapnel shells.  When they ignore that we may manage to catch them in a cluster.

So it happened to-day.  After being beaten off from the direct attack on Observation Hill they began feeling round its left flank by way of kopjes, between which and our outposts there is a long bare nek, and in rear of that the railway line to Van Reenan’s Pass runs through a deep cutting with open ground beyond.  To effect a turning movement of any significance the Boers had choice of two things:  either they must show themselves on spurs where there was scant cover, or take to the cutting; and we knew by experience which they would prefer.  In anticipation of such a development one field-battery had been placed on the rough slope that juts northward from Range Post, through which runs the main road to Colenso in the south and to several of the Drakensberg passes in the west.  Up through a gorge deeply fretted by Klip River this battery commanded the long bare nek.  Two other guns, the Maxim-Nordenfelts of Elandslaagte, manned by a comparatively weak detachment, took up a position on their own account at the foot of King’s Post near our old permanent, but now disused, camp, whence they could bring a fire to bear on the same point.  All tried a few percussion shells by way of testing the range and then turned to the use of shrapnel, which, admirably timed, burst just beyond the nek, searching its reverse slopes and enfilading the railway ravine with a hail of bullets, where apparently the Boers must have been caught in some numbers.  At any rate they are said to have lost heavily there, and from that time the attack or rather fusilade directed against Observation Hill began to slacken.  We had not many men hit considering that the skirmish had begun soon after daybreak and continued with little cessation up to nine o’clock, when the Rifle Brigade reported three wounded, one being young Lieutenant Lethbridge, who is so badly injured that recovery in his case can hardly be hoped for.