Our batteries here have for once been most aggressive, shelling the enemy’s position at Rifleman’s Ridge vigorously, while the howitzers directed their fire on Middle Hill without drawing a reply from the 6-inch Creusot, which Captain Christie and his gunners believe to have been put out of action completely.  His twin brother, “Puffing Billy” of Bulwaan, was also silenced for a time, but has come back to quite his old form this evening, and threw several shells into the town and camps, where troops assembled to cheer the news of Lord Methuen’s victory when it was read out in general orders.

December 5.—­The bombardment has been slack again to-day:  all the enemy’s big guns silent.  But there is great movement among the Boers, who are apparently holding a great council of war at General Joubert’s headquarters.  This may account for rumours of dissensions between the Free State and Transvaal commandos.

December 6.—­Now we know what the firing of Boer guns all round Ladysmith at midnight of 19th November meant.  It was a night alarm magnified by imagination into a desperate sortie from Ladysmith, and a correspondent of the Diggers’ News telegraphed his version of the affair in glowing terms to that paper, giving full details of things that never happened.  A copy just received in camp causes much amusement.  Reference to my notes for the 19th of last month will show that we were at perfect peace here.  Not a man of this force except the ordinary patrols moved on the night when we are reported to have made that strenuous but futile effort to break through the enemy’s lines, and not a shot was fired on our side.  The Boers must have been startled at their own shadows or at the movements of a subaltern’s patrol which they magnified into an army, and having beat the big drum they perhaps tried to justify themselves by sending that cock-and-bull story to Pretoria.

To-night our troops are out for exercise, marching through the streets, and singing or whistling merrily as they march.  If the Boers get word of this they may have another scare.  The daily bombardment is now so much a matter of course that one hardly makes a note of it unless some casualty brings home to us the fact that nobody is safe while shells fly about.

December 7.—­During a heavy cannonade in which our naval batteries engaged Gun Hill and Bulwaan from six o’clock until ten this morning, women and children were walking about the streets quite unconcerned.  Hundreds of shells have already fallen in the town, and there are some zealous statisticians who compile charts showing exactly where each shell struck and the direction from which it was fired, but the majority of us do not concern ourselves much about any that burst beyond a radius of fifty yards from our own camps or houses, and so many fall harmless that we seldom ask whether anybody has been hit, and it sometimes happens therefore that one does not hear of serious casualties except by accident.  It comes rather as a surprise to find that our losses since the siege began, thirty-six days ago, amount to thirteen killed and one hundred and forty-eight wounded.  A battle might have been won at less cost.