By that time the sun was rising above Bulwaan in a halo of orange, crimson, and purple, and men could count the grim faces of their enemies.  Ladysmith was aroused at dawn by the rattle of incessant rifle fire rolling along Bester’s Ridge from end to end.  Up to that time no big guns had spoken on either side, and people came out of their houses slowly, in sulky humour at having their rest disturbed before the conventional hour for shelling to begin.  While they listened to the continuous crackling as of damp sticks in a huge bonfire, few among them realised that the sounds indicated anything more serious than a Boer demonstration which would fizzle out quickly, and even when bullets began to fall in the town itself, or went whistling away overhead, the only comment made was that Mauser rifles must have a marvellous range if they could send bullets so far beyond the ridge aimed at.

Bulwaan’s 6-inch Creusot opened fire as the sun rose behind it in a splendour of orange and crimson clouds.  The white smoke changed to wreaths of blue and deep purple against that glowing sky, while people waited to hear the gurgling scream of a shell.  It did not come the way they expected, but burst above the dark crest of Caesar’s Camp.  Then the watchers, relieved because the big guns had found other occupation than battering down houses, went back to bed or to their morning baths, little thinking that the fate of Ladysmith was at the moment dependent on men who lay among rocks, or behind grass tussocks, looking through rifle sights at such short range that they could almost see the colour of each other’s eyes.

Colonel Hamilton, who had ridden out with his staff, and accompanied by Colonel F. Rhodes, to the highest knoll of Bester’s Ridge, grasped the situation quickly and ordered up reinforcements.  The Boers who had crept round the crest of the eastern steep, which I have called by its Kaffir name Intombi, were even then almost up to the camp that Colonel Hamilton had quitted half an hour earlier, but screened from the Manchester battalion’s fire by a swell of the ground in front.  Their further progress, however, was stayed by a counter attack from Border Mounted Rifles and Natal Volunteers whom Colonel Royston brought up to reinforce the Frontier Police under Major Clark, who had been holding that point with dogged determination since dawn.  The brigadier, seeing that for a time no headway was being made by the enemy against Caesar’s Camp, turned his attention towards Waggon Hill and sent Lord Ava forward to reconnoitre from the spot where Colonel Edwardes, with the main body of Imperial Light Horse, reduced to less than half its original strength by losses in former actions, was making a gallant effort to relieve the remnants of two squadrons from their perilous plight on Waggon Hill.  Lord Ava watched its issue from the fighting line beside men with whom he had scaled the rough heights of Elandslaagte and the stiffer steeps of Gun Hill.  As he raised himself upon