January 12, 1900.

A quiet day again.  Hardly a gun was fired.  Wild rumours flew—­the Boers were trekking north in crowds—­they were moving the gun on Bulwan—­all lies!

I spent the whole day trying to induce a Kaffir to risk his life for L15.  A Kaffir lives on mealie-pap, varied by an occasional cow’s head.  He drinks nothing but slightly fermented barley-water.  Yet he will not risk death for L15!  After four false starts, my message remains where it was.  The last Kaffir who tried to get through the Boers with it was shot in the thigh by our pickets as he was returning.  That does not encourage the rest.

     January 13, 1900.

Between seven and eight in the morning the Bulwan gun hurled three shells into our midst, and repeated the exploit in the afternoon.  But somehow he seemed to have lost form.  He was not the Puffing Billy whom we knew.  We greeted him as one greets an enemy who has come down in the world—­with considerate indulgence.  The sailors think that his carriage is strained.

A British heliograph began flashing to us from Schwarz Kop, a hill only one and a half miles over Potgieter’s or Springfield Drift on the Tugela.  It is that way we have always expected Buller’s main advance.  Can this be the herald of it?  Most of us have agreed never to mention the word “Buller,” but it is hard to keep that pledge.

In the afternoon I was able to accompany Colonel Stoneman (A.S.C.) over the scene of battle on Caesar’s Camp.  His duties in organising the food supply keep him so tied to his office—­one of the best shelled places in the town—­that he has never been up there before.  All was quiet—­the mountains silent in the sunset.  The Boers had been moving steadily westward and south.  They had taken some of their guns on carts covered with brushwood.  We had not more than half a dozen shots fired at us all round that ridge which had blazed with death a week ago.  In his tent on the summit we found General Ian Hamilton.  It was to his energy and personal knowledge of his men that last Saturday’s success was ultimately due.  Not a day passes but he visits every point in his brigade’s defences.

All in camp were saddened by the condition of Mr. Steevens, of the Daily Mail.  Yesterday he was convalescent.  To-day his life hangs by a thread.  That is the way of enteric.

     Sunday, January 14, 1900.

Absolute silence still from the Tugela.  On a low black hill beyond its banks I could see the British heliograph flashing.  On a spur beside it I was told a British outpost was stationed.  In the afternoon we thought we heard guns again, but it was only thunder.  With a telescope on Observation Hill I saw the Boers riding about their camps.  On the Great Plain they were digging long trenches and stretching barbed wire entanglements.  To-day all was peaceful.  The sun set amid crimson thunder-clouds behind the Drakensberg; there was no sign of war save the whistle of a persistent sniper’s bullet over my head.  Our weather-beaten soldiers were trying to make themselves comfortable for the night in their little heaps of stones.