In the morning one of the Irish Brigade rode in through the Liverpools' picket. He was "fed up" with the business, as the soldiers say. He reported that only about seventy of the Brigade were left. He also said the Boer commandants were holding a great meeting to-day--whether for psalms or strategy I don't know; probably both. We heard the usual rumours that the Boers were going or had gone. Climbing to the Manchesters' post for the view, I could see three Boer trains waiting at Modder's Spruit station, about six miles up the Newcastle line. Did they bring reinforcements, or were they waiting to take "Long Tom" home by return ticket? We shall know to-morrow. Over the valley where we repulsed Thursday's attack, the vultures flew as thick as swifts upon the Severn at twilight. Those were the only signs of war--those and the little forts which hid the guns. Otherwise the enormous landscape lay at peace. I have never seen it so clear--the precipitous barrier of the Basuto mountains, lined with cloud, and still touched with snow: the great sculptured mountains that mark the Free State border: and then the scenes which have become so familiar to us all--Elands Laagte, Tinta Inyoni, Pepworth Hill, Lombard's Kop, and the great Bulwan. Turning to the south we looked across to the nearer hills, beyond which lie Colenso, Estcourt, and the road to Maritzburg and the sea. It is from beyond those hills that our help is coming. The Boers have many estimable qualities. They are one of the few admirable races still surviving, and they conduct this siege with real consideration and gentlemanly feeling. They observe the Sabbath. They give us quiet nights. After a violent bombardment they generally give us at least one day to calm down. Their hours for slaughter are six to six, and they seldom overstep them. They knock off for meals--unfashionably early, it is true, but it would be petty to complain. Like good employers, they seldom expose our lives to danger for more than eight hours a day. They are a little capricious, perhaps, in the use of the white flag. At the beginning of the siege our "Lady Anne" killed or wounded some of "Long Tom's" gunners and damaged the gun. Whereupon the Boers hoisted the white flag over him till the place was cleared and he was put to rights again. Then they drew it down and went on firing. It was the sort of thing schoolboys might do. Captain Lambton complained that by the laws of war the gun was permanently out of action. But "Long Tom" goes on as before. I think the best story of the siege comes from a Kaffir who walked in a few days ago. In the Boer camp behind Pepworth Hill he had seen the men being taught bayonet exercise with our Lee-Metfords, captured at Dundee. The Boer has no bayonet or steel of his own, and for an assault on the town he will need it. Instruction was being given by a prisoner--a sergeant of the Royal Irish Fusiliers--with a rope round his neck! _November 13, 1899._