The reality of the day was a flash of brilliant light far away beyond the low gorge, where the river turns southward.  My old Scot was the first to see it.  It was about half-past three.  The message came through fairly well, though I am told it is not very important.  The important thing is that communication with the relieving force is at last established.

About 8.30 p.m. there was a great movement of troops, the artillery massing in the main street, the cavalry moving up in advance, the infantry forming up.  Being ill, I fell asleep for a couple of hours, and when I turned out again all the troops had gone back to camp.

     Sunday, December 3, 1899.

Long before sunrise I went up to the examining post on the Newcastle road, now held by the Gloucesters instead of the Liverpools.  The positions of many regiments have been changed, certain battalions being now kept always ready as a flying column to co-operate with the relieving force.  Last night’s movement appears to have been a kind of rehearsal for that.  It was also partly a feint to puzzle the Boers and confuse the spies in the town.

Signalling from lighted windows has become so common among the traitors that to-day a curfew was proclaimed—­all lights out at half-past eight.  Rumours about the hanging and shooting of spies still go the round, but my own belief is the authorities would not hurt a fly, much less a spy, if they could possibly help it.

Nearly all day the heliograph was flashing to us from that far-off hill.  There is some suspicion that the Boers are working it as a decoy.  We lost three copies of our code at Dundee, and it is significant that it was a runner brought the good news of Methuen’s successes on Modder River to-night.  But at Headquarters the flash signals are now taken as genuine, and the sight of that star from the outer world cheers us up.

At noon I rode out to see the new home of the 24th Field Ambulance from India.  It is down by the river, near Range Post, and the silent Hindoos have constructed for it a marvel of shelter and defence.  A great rampart conceals the tents, and through a winding passage fenced with massive walls of turf you enter a chamber large enough for twenty patients, and protected by an impenetrable roof of iron pipes, rocks, and mounds of earth.  As I admired, the Major came out from a tent, wiping his hands.  He had just cut off the leg of an 18th Hussar, whose unconscious head, still on the operating table, projected from the flaps of the tent door.  The man had been sitting on a rock by the river, washing his feet, while “Long Tom” was shelling the Imperial Light Horse, as I described yesterday.  Suddenly a splinter ricocheted far up the valley, and now, even if he recovers, he will have only one foot to wash.

A civilian was killed yesterday, working in the old camp.  The men on each side of him were unhurt.  So yesterday’s shelling was not so harmless as I supposed.