the effect of which was much exaggerated by the press.  On Thursday, November 2nd, the last train escaped under a brisk fire, the passengers upon the wrong side of the seats.  At 2 P.M. on the same day the telegraph line was cut, and the lonely town settled herself somberly down to the task of holding off the exultant Boers until the day—­supposed to be imminent—­when the relieving army should appear from among the labyrinth of mountains which lay to the south of them.  Some there were who, knowing both the enemy and the mountains, felt a cold chill within their hearts as they asked themselves how an army was to come through, but the greater number, from General to private, trusted implicitly in the valour of their comrades and in the luck of the British Army.

One example of that historical luck was ever before their eyes in the shape of those invaluable naval guns which had arrived so dramatically at the very crisis of the fight, in time to check the monster on Pepworth Hill and to cover the retreat of the army.  But for them the besieged must have lain impotent under the muzzles of the huge Creusots.  But in spite of the naive claims put forward by the Boers to some special Providence—­a process which a friendly German critic described as ’commandeering the Almighty’—­it is certain that in a very peculiar degree, in the early months of this war there came again and again a happy chance, or a merciful interposition, which saved the British from disaster.  Now in this first week of November, when every hill, north and south and east and west, flashed and smoked, and the great 96-pound shells groaned and screamed over the town, it was to the long thin 4.7’s and to the hearty bearded men who worked them, that soldiers and townsfolk looked for help.  These guns of Lambton’s, supplemented by two old-fashioned 6.3 howitzers manned by survivors from No. 10 Mountain Battery, did all that was possible to keep down the fire of the heavy Boer guns.  If they could not save, they could at least hit back, and punishment is not so bad to bear when one is giving as well as receiving.

By the end of the first week of November the Boers had established their circle of fire.  On the east of the town, broken by the loops of the Klip River, is a broad green plain, some miles in extent, which furnished grazing ground for the horses and cattle of the besieged.  Beyond it rises into a long flat-topped hill the famous Bulwana, upon which lay one great Creusot and several smaller guns.  To the north, on Pepworth Hill, was another Creusot, and between the two were the Boer batteries upon Lombard’s Kop.  The British naval guns were placed upon this side, for, as the open loop formed by the river lies at this end, it is the part of the defences which is most liable to assault.  From thence all round the west down to Besters in the south was a continuous series of hills, each crowned with Boer guns, which, if they could not harm the distant town, were at least effective in holding the garrison to its lines.  So formidable were these positions that, amid much outspoken criticism, it has never been suggested that White would have been justified with a limited garrison in incurring the heavy loss of life which must have followed an attempt to force them.