ases sometimes lying out, in fact, in a powerful sun for hours, while
the guns were waiting or in action, and often becoming then too hot to
touch. Now, however, I personally don't think that this theory was
right but am of opinion that the variation then noticed, and even
after in the shooting, was simply due to the varying recoil of guns on
different slopes of ground and with indifferent drag-shoes. Royal
Artillery officers confirm one in this opinion.

As for the shells, both common and shrapnel, they stood the knocking
about well, and I never saw or heard of a single common shell used
with 12-pounders not exploding on striking, which speaks well for the
base fuse. The shrapnel I am not quite so sure about; one noticed
often a great deal of damp collected in the threads of the fuse plug
and nose of the shell; owing, I presume, to condensation in their
shell boxes under the change of heat and cold. Still they did very
well and I think seldom failed to burst when set the right distance. I
say the right distance because this at first was a slight puzzle to
us, the subject of height in feet above the sea-level of course never
having before presented itself to us as altering very considerably the
setting of the time fuse; and I don't think that a table of correction
for this exists in the Naval Service; at any rate, I have never seen
one.

To illustrate this, we found at Spion Kop (about 3,500 feet above the
sea-level) that it was necessary to set the time fuse for any given
range some 500 yards short to get the shell to burst at all before
striking; and on the top of Van Wyk, fronting Botha's Pass (some 6,500
feet above sea-level) I had to allow the fuse 800 to 900 yards short
of the range, and similarly at Almond's Nek. This is, I take it, due
to the projectile travelling further against a reduced air pressure at
any height than it does for the same sighting of the gun at sea-level,
for which of course all guns are sighted. I should like to talk to
experts regarding this as we are not quite sure about it up here.[6]

[Footnote 6: I am since glad to hear from Lieutenant
Henderson of H.M.S. _Excellent_, that he is engaged in
working out a table of corrections, such as I mention, and is
also interesting himself in the question of "range-finders,"
and "filters," and other necessities for naval service.]

Of course this firing from a height gives one therefore some 1,000
yards