XI.

THE BOMBARDMENT.

     LONG TOM—­A FAMILY OF HARMLESS MONSTERS—­OUR INFERIORITY IN
     GUNS—­THE SENSATIONS OF A BOMBARDMENT—­A LITTLE CUSTOM BLUNTS
     SENSIBILITY.

LADYSMITH, Nov. 10.

“Good morning,” banged four-point-seven; “have you used Long Tom?”

“Crack-k—­whiz-z-z,” came the riving answer, “we have.”

“Whish-h—­patter, patter,” chimed in a cloud-high shrapnel from Bulwan.  It was half-past seven in the morning of November 7; the real bombardment, the terrific symphony, had begun.

During the first movement the leading performer was Long Tom.  He is a friendly old gun, and for my part I have none but the kindest feelings towards him.  It was his duty to shell us, and he did; but he did it in an open, manly way.

Behind the half-country of light red soil they had piled up round him you could see his ugly phiz thrust up and look hungrily around.  A jet of flame and a spreading toad-stool of thick white smoke told us he had fired.  On the flash four-point-seven banged his punctilious reply.  You waited until you saw the black smoke jump behind the red mound, and then Tom was due in a second or two.  A red flash—­a jump of red-brown dust and smoke—­a rending-crash:  he had arrived.  Then sang slowly through the air his fragments, like wounded birds.  You could hear them coming, and they came with dignified slowness:  there was plenty of time to get out of the way.

Until we capture Long Tom—­when he will be treated with the utmost consideration—­I am not able to tell you exactly what brand of gun he may be.  It is evident from his conservative use of black powder, and the old-gentlemanly staidness of his movements, that he is an elderly gun.  His calibre appears to be six inches.  From the plunging nature of his fire, some have conjectured him a sort of howitzer, but it is next to certain he is one of the sixteen 15-cm.  Creusot guns bought for the forts of Pretoria and Johannesburg.  Anyhow, he conducted his enforced task with all possible humanity.

On this same 7th a brother Long Tom, by the name of Fiddling Jimmy, opened on the Manchesters and Caesar’s Camp from a flat-topped kopje three or four miles south of them.  This gun had been there certainly since the 3rd, when it shelled our returning reconnaissance; but he, too, was a gentle creature, and did little harm to anybody.  Next day a third brother, Puffing Billy, made a somewhat bashful first appearance on Bulwan.  Four rounds from the four-point-seven silenced him for the day.  Later came other brothers, of whom you will hear in due course.

[Illustration:  THE COUNTRY ROUND LADYSMITH.]

In general you may say of the Long Tom family that their favourite habitat is among loose soil on the tops of open hills; they are slow and unwieldy, and very open in all their actions.  They are good shooting guns; Tom on the 7th made a day’s lovely practice all round our battery.  They are impossible to disable behind their huge epaulements unless you actually hit the gun, and they are so harmless as hardly to be worth disabling.