When the trains had gone, Captain Lambton, of the Powerful, showed me the new protection which his men and the sappers had built round the great 4.7 in. gun, which is always kept trained on “Long Tom.”  The sailors call the gun “Lady Anne,” in compliment to Captain Lambton’s sister, but the soldiers have named it “Weary Willie”—­I don’t know why.  The fellow gun on Cove Hill is called “Bloody Mary”—­which is no compliment to anybody.  The earthwork running round the “Lady Anne” is eighteen feet deep at the base.  Had it been as deep the first day she came, Lieutenant Egerton would still be at her side.

     November 6, 1899.

When the melodrama doesn’t come off, an indignant Briton demands his money back.  Our melodrama has not come off.  We were quite ready to give it a favourable reception.  The shops were shut, business abandoned.  Many had taken secure places the night before, so as to be in plenty of time.  Nearly all were seated expectant long before dawn.  The rising sun was to ring the curtain up.  It rose.  The curtain never stirred.  From whom shall we indignant Britons demand our money back?

With the first glimmer of light between the stars over Bulwan, those few who had stayed the night under roofs began creeping away to the holes in the river bank or the rough, scrubby ground at the foot of the hills south-west of the town, where the Manchesters guard the ridge.  Then we all waited, silent with expectation.  The clouds turned crimson.  At five the sun marched up in silence.  Not a gun was heard.  “They will begin at six,” we said.  Not a sound.  “They are having a good breakfast,” we thought.  Eight came, and we began to move about uneasily.  Two miserable shells whizzed over my head, obviously aimed only at the balloon which was just coming down.  “Call that a performance?” we grumbled.  We left our seats.  We went on to the stage of the town.  What was the matter?  Was “Long Tom” ill?  Had the Basutos overrun the Free State?  Had Buller really advanced?  Lieutenant Hooper, of the 5th Lancers, had walked through from Maritzburg, passing the Royal Irish sentries at 2 a.m.  He brought news of a division coming to our rescue.  Was that the reason of the day’s failure?  So speculation chattered.  The one thing certain was that the performance did not come off, and there was no one to give us our money back.

[Illustration:  IMPERIAL LIGHT HORSE SHELTERS]

So we spent the day wandering round the outposts, washing ourselves and our rags in the yellow river, trying to get the horses to drink the water afterwards, contemplating the picturesque, and pretending to cook.  Perhaps the greatest interest was the work upon a series of caves in the river-bank, behind the Intelligence Office.  They are square-topped, with straight sides, cut clean into the hard, sandy cliff.  The Light Horse have made them for themselves and their ammunition.  On the opposite side the Archdeacon