A word or two now as to what we with the guns have learnt during the campaign, although I feel that this may be rather a dull, professional sort of chapter except to those interested in guns and gunnery, and that the subject as treated by myself may be open to criticism from others similarly engaged. I may certainly say that it was not for at least three months after our opening fire at the first battle of Colenso (December 15th, 1899) that I personally felt myself as "fairly well up" to the constantly varying conditions of gun positions, gun platforms, enemy's positions, and the ever-changing "light and shade" of the South African climate, against all of which one had to fight to get correct shooting; the last-named of these, viz., "light and shade," being perhaps our greatest bugbear, often throwing one many thousand yards out in judging a range by eye, which gift is, I think, the best a gunner can possess! Then, too, the Naval guns as they were sent up (owing to the work being pushed at the last moment), some on high wheels and some on low ones, some with drag-shoes opened out and others which wouldn't take the wheels, some with the wires from them to trail plate handles the right length and others much too long, caused (I am talking of the 12-pounders) these guns, instead of forming a level shooting battery, to be each one a study in itself as regarded its shooting powers; and we constantly found one gun shooting, say, three or four hundred yards harder or further than the one next to it although laid to the same range on the sights. This at first sight was rather mystifying, but all these small but important matters above mentioned were not long in being put to rights. On any future occasion such defects will, of course, be avoided from the start by the guns being altogether more strongly mounted on broad-tyred wheels and broad axles of similar height, size and pattern, and, above all, with a strong and uniform system for checking the recoil of the carriage, of which the drag-shoe, as it was fitted and sent up to us, was certainly not capable. [Illustration: _Photo by Symonds, Portsmouth._ Captain Percy Scott, C.B., R.N.]