On the following day, an hour after dawn, the shelling became hot about headquarters, then, however, changed its direction nearer to Captain Vallentin’s house, in which Colonel Rhodes was generally found about breakfast, lunch, and dinner-time as a member of the 7th Brigade mess.  Later the Police Station, or some building near it, seemed to have a curious fascination for the gunners of Bulwaan.  They dropped shells now in front, then in rear, of the Court-house, but always in the same line, so that, for half an hour or so, Colonel Dartnell and his men had a warm time.  One of their tents was hit, but luckily nobody happened to be in it at that moment.  On Wednesday the 20th, too, one of the first shells from Bulwaan burst close to the Police Camp after passing through a row of slender trees and along the fence, inside which Colonel Dartnell’s orderly was just preparing to shave.  He had his looking-glass on a rail of the fence, when between it and himself, a distance of not more than two feet, the shell ripped with a deafening shriek, to bury itself and burst by the root of a tree not three yards off.  How this man escaped death is a wonder.  The wall behind him was scarred by splinters, the iron fence in front torn and twisted into strange shapes, the rails crushed to matchwood by the force of concussion.  Yet there he stood unscathed in the midst of it all.  He had not heard the shell coming until its burst stunned, and for nearly a minute afterwards he remained motionless, too dazed to know what had happened.

In the afternoon (writes Mr. Pearse) Lord Ava and I rode out to have afternoon tea with the officers of Major Goulburn’s battery on Waggon Hill.  Some Boers apparently had a larger and more festive gathering in the dismantled fort on Middle Hill.  They were well within range of our 12-pounder, and the middy in charge was very anxious to have a shot, but Major Goulburn decided not to waste ammunition in breaking up that tea party or ‘dop raad.’  I confess this seemed to me a mistake, for Boers were sniping across Bester’s Valley with such persistency that we had to keep a sharp watch on our knee-haltered ponies lest they should stray towards the dangerous zone, where one man of the Manchesters was killed directly he showed himself.  There would have been some satisfaction in a reprisal, but orders are very strict against wasting ammunition, of which by the way we have none to spare that might not be wanted if the enemy should venture on a general attack.

On the same evening the Boers on Bulwaan signalled to the Gordons at Fly Kraal Post—­“Where is Buller now?  He has presented us with ten guns in place of three you took.”

     What seemed like the answer came on the following day, the 21st,
     when we have the following entry:—­