It was dated a day or two back.  To-day both guns mentioned have been unusually active.  Their shells have been bursting thick among us, and the sound of their firing must have been quite audible below.  Yet this was the message.

Eggs to-night fetched 30s. 6d. per dozen; a sucking pig 35s.; a chicken 20s.  In little over a week we shall have to begin killing our horses because they will have nothing to eat.

     January 26, 1900.

Full of hopes and fears, I rode early up to Observation Hill as usual, and saw at once that the Boer waggon-laagers, which I watched departing yesterday, had returned in the night.  Perhaps there were not quite so many waggons, and the site had been shifted a few hundred yards.  But still there they stood again.  Their presence is not hopeful, but it does not imply disaster.  They may have gone in haste, and been recalled at leisure.  Buller may have demanded their return under the conditions of a possible armistice.  They may even have found the passes blocked by our men.  Anyhow, there they are, and their return is the only important news of the day.

No message or tidings came through.  The day was cloudy, and ended in quiet rain.  We saw a few shells fall on the plain at the foot of Taba Nyama, and what looked like a few on the summit.  But nothing else could be made out, except that the Boer ambulances were very busy driving round.

Among ourselves the chief event was the feverish activity of the Telegraph Hill big gun.  Undeterred by our howitzers, he continued nearly all morning throwing shells at every point within sight.  By one supreme effort, tilting his nose high up into the air, he threw one sheer up to the Manchesters on Caesar’s Camp—­a range of some 12,000 yards, the gunners say.  Perhaps he was trying to make up for the silence of his Bulwan brother.  It is rumoured that Pepworth Hill is to have a successor to the “Long Tom” of earlier and happier days.  Six empty waggons with double spans of oxen were seen yesterday wending towards Bulwan.

Our hunger is increasing.  Men and horses suffer horribly from weakness and disease.  About fifteen horses die a day, and the survivors gasp and cough at every step, or fall helpless.

Biscuits are to be issued to-night instead of bread, because flour is running short.  It is believed that not 500 men could be got together capable of marching five miles under arms, so prevalent are all diseases of the bowels.  As to luxuries, even the cavalry are smoking the used tea-leaves out of the breakfast kettles.  “They give you a kind of hot taste,” they say.

     January 27, 1900.