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I suppose we expended about 200 rounds of our precious ammunition. A cool and cloudy sky made the heliograph useless, but in the night the clouds had served to reflect the brilliance of Buller's searchlight. So far the Boers have passed us all round in strategy, but in searchlights they are nowhere, though Bulwan makes a grand attempt.
The early part of the day was distinguished by a violent fire from the big gun of Bulwan upon the centre of the town and the riverside camps. "Lady Anne" answered, for she has not yet been removed to her destined station on Waggon Hill. In the intervals of their fire we could distinctly hear big guns far away near Colenso and the Tugela River.
I connect this feverish activity with the apparition of a chaise and four seen driving round the Boer outposts, and to-day quite visible on the Bulwan. Four outriders accompany it, and queer little flags are set up where it halts. Can the black-coated old gentleman inside be Oom Paul himself? It is significant that the big gun of Bulwan did some extraordinary shooting during the day.
A few minutes after there came the sharp report, the screaming rush and loud explosion, which hitherto have marked "Long Tom" alone. Our suspicions of yesterday were true, and Pepworth Hill knows him no more. He now reigns on Little Bulwan, sometimes called Gun Hill, below Lombard's Kop.
Deserted Pepworth's was on the port-bow, Gun Hill, under Lombard's Kop, on the starboard, Bulwan abeam, Middle Hill astern, Surprise Hill on the port-quarter. Every outline was cut in adamant. The Helpmakaar Ridge, with its little black ants a-crawl on their hill, was crushed flat beneath us.
Billy puffed from Bulwan came 10,000 yards jarring and clattering loud overhead then flung a red earthquake just beyond the Lancers' horses. Again and again, it looked as if he could not miss them; but the horses only twitched their tails, as if he were a new kind of fly. The 4·7 crashed hoarsely back, and a black nimbus flung up far above the trees on the mountain.
They only said, "Dearest love from your own Nance," or "Baby sends kisses," but the Bulwan searchlight tried hard to thwart their affectionate purpose by waving his ray quickly up and down across the flashing beam. January 5, 1900.
Fortunate he, so far that he is at rest, squirming no longer; and with the wail on his lips, the catch in the throat, he went down in the embrace of a deadlier enemy than the Bulwan horror, to which he made reference in one of the last lines he was destined to write in this world. He fell ill in that pestilent town, as all the world knows.
Between seven and eight in the morning the Bulwan gun hurled three shells into our midst, and repeated the exploit in the afternoon. But somehow he seemed to have lost form. He was not the Puffing Billy whom we knew. We greeted him as one greets an enemy who has come down in the world with considerate indulgence. The sailors think that his carriage is strained.
At night the British flashlight from Colenso was throwing signals upon the cloudy sky, and it was amusing to watch the Boers trying to confuse the signals by flashing their two searchlights upon the same cloud. They have one light west of us near Bester's Station, and to-night they showed a very brilliant electric light on the top of Bulwan.
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