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Updated: May 13, 2025
Depression was to-day increased by one of those futile sorties which only end in retirement. In the early morning a large Boer convoy of waggons was seen moving along the road beyond Bluebank towards the north, about eight miles away. Ninety waggons were reported. One man counted twenty-five, another thirteen. I myself saw two. At all events, waggons were there, and we thought of capturing them.
Soon afterwards, from the highest point of the Convent Hill, looking south-west over the Maritzburg road by Bluebank, I saw several hundred Boers cantering in two streams that met and passed in opposite directions. They were apparently on the move between Colenso and Van Reenen's Pass; perhaps their movements implied visits to lovers, and a pleasant Sunday.
Both are carefully concealed, even the muzzles being covered up with earth and stones. They both command the approach to the town across the Long Valley by the Maritzburg road, as well as Bluebank or Rifleman's Ridge beyond, and Telegraph Hill beyond that. While I was on the hill I saw one mounted and four dismounted Boers capture five of our horses which had been allowed to stray in grazing.
It commands a very wide district the old camp, the Long Valley which the Maritzburg road crosses, the Great Plain behind Bluebank, and most of our western positions. It began firing early in the morning and continued at intervals all day. For an hour or two people were surprised at seeing a free balloon sailing away towards Bulwan.
But only the howitzer, the automatic, and the Bluebank were actually aimed our way. The Bluebank was most effective. It was amusing to see the men of the 60th when a shell pitched among them to-day. How they regarded it as a busy man regards the intrusion of the housemaid just a harmless necessary nuisance, and no more.
Meantime our batteries kept sprinkling shrapnel over Bluebank with their usual steadiness and perfection of aim. The enemy's gun was soon either silenced or withdrawn. The rifle fire died down. Not a Boer was to be seen upon the ridge, but three galloped away over the plains behind as though they had enough of it. The Light Horse dismounted and advanced to Star Point. All looked well.
Tack, tap; tack, tap it went on minute by minute, hour by hour. The sun warmed the air to an oven; painted butterflies, azure and crimson, came flitting over the stones; still the devil went on hammering nails into the hills. Down leftward a black-powder gun was popping on the film-cut ridge of Bluebank.
Our guns fired at the Boer guns till they were silent; and then the Boer dismounted men fired at our dismounted men; then we came home. We had one wounded, but they say they discovered the Boer strength on Bluebank, outside Range Post, to be 500 or 600. I doubt if it is as much; but, in any case, I think two men and a boy could have found out all that three batteries and three regiments did.
As a messenger of hope to us all it was not lost. The distance was only fourteen miles from where I stood a morning's walk less than an hour and a half's ride. Yet our relief may take many days yet, and it will cost hundreds of lives to cross that little space. The Boers have placed a new gun on the Bluebank ridge.
But it was past ten before even the nucleus of a force reached Range Post, and the waggons were already far away. Out trotted the 18th and 19th Hussars, three batteries, and the Imperial Light Horse on to the undulating plain leading up to the ridge of Bluebank, where the Boers have one gun and plenty of rocks to hide behind.
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