A Kaffir brought in a newspaper only two days old.  It said Gatacre had suffered a reverse on the Free State frontier.  There was nothing about the German Emperor, and no football news.

In the late afternoon I rode up to the Manchesters’ lines on Caesar’s Camp, our nearest point to Colenso.  But they knew no more than the rest of us, except that an officer had counted the full tale of guns fired in the morning—­137.  The view on all sides was as varied and full of growing association as usual, but had no special interest to-day, and I hurried back to inquire again after Mr. George Steevens, who is down with fever, to every one’s regret.

     December 14, 1899.

After the high hopes of the last few days we seem to be falling back, and to get no nearer to the end.  Very little firing was heard from Colenso.  The Bulwan gun gave us his morning salute of ten big shells in various parts of the town.  They made some troublesome pits in the roads, and one destroyed a house, but nobody was killed.

The howitzers and the Telegraph Hill Gun pounded away at each other without much effect.  Sickness is now our worst enemy.  Next to sickness comes want of forage for the horses.  The sick still average thirty a day, and there were 320 cases of enteric at Intombi Camp last night.  Mr. Steevens has it, and his friends were busy all morning, moving him to better quarters.  Major Henderson is about again.  The Roentgen Rays did not discover the bicycle shot in his leg, and the doctors have decided to leave it there.

It was disappointing to hear that the Kaffir runner I sent with an account of the night attack on Surprise Hill had been captured by the Boers and robbed of his papers.  I had hopes of that boy; he wore no trousers.  But it is perhaps unsafe to judge character from dress alone.  This runner business is heart-breaking.  I tried to make up by getting another short heliogram through, but the sun was uncertain, and the receivers on the distant mountain sulky and wayward.  They showed one faint glimmer of intelligence, and then all was dark again.

In the heat of the day a four-wheeled hooded cart drove from the Boer lines under a white flag bringing a letter for the General.  The envoy was a Dutchman from Holland.  He was met outside our lines by Lieutenant Fanshawe, of the 19th Hussars, who conversed with him for about two hours, till the answer returned.  Seated under the shade of the cart, he enjoyed the enemy’s hospitality in brandy and soda, biltong, and Boer biscuit.  “But for that white rag,” said the Dutchman, “we two would be trying to kill each other.  Very absurd!” He went on to repeat how much the Boers admired the exploits of the night attacks.  “If you had gone for the other guns that first night, you would have got them all.”  He said the gunners on Gun Hill were all condemned to death.  He examined the horse and its accoutrements, thinking them all very pretty, but maintaining the day for cavalry was