d again presently from Blaauwbank and Rietfontein to
the west and north. A smaller battery on Long Hill echoed the deep boom
from "Long Tom," who was carrying on a duel with our naval gun, and
throwing shells over the town, to burst very near Sir George White's
headquarters. Field-guns from the nek near Lombard's Kop joined in
chorus, shooting with effect on Tunnel Hill, held by the Liverpools,
several of whom were hit. Colour-Sergeant Macdonald went out of the
bomb-proof to mark where one shell had struck, when another burst on the
same spot, and he fell terribly mangled by jagged fragments of iron. His
comrades rushed to aid him, but he died in their arms, saying simply,
"What a pity it was I went out to see." In truth the shells did not want
looking for to-day. They were falling in rapid succession from one end
of Bulwaan on Helpmakaar Hill, where the Devons, thanks to having taken
wise precautions in making bomb-proof shelters, suffered little, though
"Puffing Billy" turned occasionally to hurl a 94-pounder in that
direction when tired of raking Caesar's Camp and Maiden's Castle, where
the Manchesters had not only their flank exposed to this fire, but were
smitten in front by a heavy gun the Boers had mounted on Flat-Top
Mountain, some three miles off, and by smaller shells that came from
automatic guns hidden among scrub on the nearer slopes across Bester's
Farm. These did little harm, though the repeated thuds of their
discharge, like the rapid strokes of a Nasmyth hammer on its anvil,
might have shaken the resolution of any but the steadiest troops, seeing
that our field-battery on Maiden's Castle could not for a long time
locate the exact hiding-place of those vicious little weapons, and when
they did get a chance, the enemy's heavy artillery replied to their fire
with a more persistent cannonade than ever. The Manchesters stood
manfully the test of long exposure to this galling storm of iron and
lead, their fighting line continuing to hold the outer slopes, where
from behind boulders they could overlook the hollow between them and
their foes, and get occasionally shots at any Boer who happened to show
himself incautiously. That did not happen often, and their chances of
effective reply to the bullets or shells that lashed the ground about
them were few at first.

When an attack of riflemen did begin to develop with some show of being
pressed home, the Manchesters were still lying there ready to meet it
with a f