bombardment may
be in an unfortified town under the fire of modern artillery. We cannot
accuse the Boers of having deliberately thrown shells into the houses of
peaceful inhabitants, or over buildings on which the Geneva Cross was
flying. These are, unfortunately, just in the line of "Long Tom's" fire
from Rietfontein Hill, and the shells may have been aimed at our naval
battery, but, if so, they went very high, or their trajectory at that
range would not have carried them half a mile beyond the mark.

[Illustration: THE ROYAL HOTEL, LADYSMITH

Showing ruins of Mr. Pearse's bedroom, wrecked by a shell from "Long
Tom," Nov. 3, 1899]

Several fell near the hospital, others went 500 yards farther in the
direction of Sir George White's headquarters, and one came crashing into
my bedroom at the Royal Hotel, not ten yards from where many officers
were then lunching. The hotel is a prominent building, that can be seen
from "Long Tom's" battery, and many people, giving Boer gunners credit
for astonishing accuracy, suggested that the shot must have been aimed
to strike where it did, in the hope of bagging Colonel Frank Rhodes and
Doctor Jameson, whose ordinary hour for meals was known to every spy
frequenting the place, and might easily have been communicated by
them to the artillerist Mattey, who was recognised among a group
drinking at the bar on Tuesday evening. Of slight materials do the
Ladysmith townsmen weave romances, but one can hardly be surprised,
seeing how long they have lived in strained relations with neighbours
whose Boer sympathies were well known. But whether intended for the
Royal Hotel or not, the shell came very near to causing several
vacancies in the senior ranks of this force. Passing through the ceiling
and partition wall of a colleague's bedroom, it burst in mine with such
force that it blew out the whole end-wall, hurling bricks across a
narrow court, all about the dining-room windows, which were smashed by
the explosion; but of those sitting close inside only one was slightly
scratched by broken glass. Clouds of dust, mingled with fumes of powder,
poured in through the open casement, so that those in farther corners
were for some moments in much anxiety as to the fate of their friends.
When they found that no harm had been done there was an assumption of
mirth all round, but nobody cared to stay much longer in that room. At
the moment of explosion I had risen from the table to resume work in my
ch