rges has been questioned, but this
shrapnel, and others I have seen burst at close quarters, undoubtedly
contained melinite or some similar villainous compound, to which our own
lyddite is near akin. A little later two ladies were driving down the
main street when a shell burst just in front of their trap. The pony
swerved as if to bolt, but his driver pulled him up with a steady hand
and soothed him without a tremor in her voice. At the next corner, fully
exposed to Bulwaan's battery, these ladies stopped, waiting to watch the
effect of another shot.

It must not be thought that our own guns, though seldom mentioned, are
idle all this while. They do not waste ammunition, for a very good
reason, but wait their opportunity for effective reply to the enemy's
batteries, and when a naval 12-pounder or the "Lady Anne" comes into
action the Boer fire is apt to be hurried and wildly inaccurate if it
does not cease for a time. The Boers have however mounted a new gun near
Pepworth's, which sends "sneakers" into town and about Mount Hill with
irritating persistency, and its smokeless powder makes a flash so small
that the exact position cannot be located.

_January 5._--Days in succession pass unbroken by any incidents
dissimilar to the routine which in the very constancy of danger becomes
monotonous. Yesterday and to-day are so much alike that one hardly
remembers which was which unless some personal adventure or a friend's
narrow escape makes a nick in the calendar. Yesterday, for instance, one
of several shells bursting about the same spot shattered the water tanks
behind a chemist's shop, and its splinters came in curious curves over
the housetops, one grazing an officer of the Imperial Light Horse, to
whom I was at that moment talking. The next shell was into the police
camp, where it burst with destructive force, completely wrecking Colonel
Dartnell's tent with all its contents, but injuring nobody. Had that
genial and most popular officer followed the almost invariable practice
of his everyday life, there would have been an end of the man to whom
more than to anybody else we owe the timely retirement from Dundee. He
it was who told General Yule, "You must go to-night or you will not be
able to go at all," and whose advice, being acted upon, brought back
several thousand men to strengthen the garrison of Ladysmith just before
its investment. The loss of such a man would have been irreparable, for
he knows more than any ot