DEAR COLONEL RENDELL,—I am writing to give you an account of the first action the gun has been in, and to tell you how admirably the men behaved in what were really very trying circumstances. When we left Calcutta I had the gun arranged to go on pack saddles on horses; but when we arrived here we found this would not do, as our animals were not properly trained, and in jumping about they were always knocking pieces of skin off and otherwise damaging themselves. We therefore fitted up one of our transport carts as a carriage, and with two mules as wheelers and four horses in front we get along pretty well. The first day we went out to fight we saw nothing, although there was a little firing about two miles from us. On the way we came to a very nasty piece of ground, and we succeeded in turning the gun head over heels down the side of a kopje. By a miracle it was not injured in the least, and I felt sure it must be going to do some work. Yesterday we went out again, and had only gone about four miles when firing began all along the line. We were on the right, next to a pom-pom; the Boer guns very soon found out the latter, and it had to be moved out of action. In the meanwhile I had been having a go at the Boer gunners at about 3,000 yards. No sooner had the pom-pom gone than a shell missed my head by about a foot, fell twenty yards behind me and burst, wounding four of my horses slightly. This wasn’t quite good enough and I got out of action as soon as I could, but not before they had sent two more shells right among us, or too close to be pleasant; the last one killed two horses and blew a trooper’s foot to pieces.