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Updated: June 17, 2025
The heliograph briefly told the story; the central hill captured by the British on Wednesday afternoon, recaptured at night by the Boers, and held by them ever since. Our loss about five hundred and some prisoners. It was the worst news we have yet received, all the harder to bear because our hopes had been raised to confidence. It is harder to face disappointment now than six weeks ago.
About six miles southeast of the camp, at a place called Cuzco, there was a well from which the Spanish troops were said to obtain all their drinking-water, and a heliograph signal-station by means of which they maintained communication with Caimanera.
The sun was just setting, and the Clock Tower and the Houses of Parliament rose against one of the most peaceful skies it is possible to imagine, a sky of gold, barred with long transverse stripes of reddish-purple cloud. There was talk of a floating body. One of the men there, a reservist he said he was, told my brother he had seen the heliograph flickering in the west.
Swartz Kop was a less important position, though it also dominated a wide extent of country; but as ridges on the other side covered some important points from its fire, Mount Alice was selected as the position for the naval battery, and also for the signallers, as from here a direct communication could be kept up by heliograph and flash- light with one of the hills held by the defenders of Ladysmith.
If that happened, the only way of communication would be by heliograph; and Sabine says that from Touggourt to Tombouctou this chain of towers has been arranged always on elevations, so that signals can be seen across great stretches of desert; and inside the walls of a bordj whenever possible, for defence.
So for a time the two doomed victims subsided into their accustomed calm of mingled hope and despair, waiting patiently for the expected arrival of the much-longed-for Australasian. If she took that course once, why not a second time? And if ever she hove in sight, might they not hope, after all, to signal to her with their rudely constructed heliograph, and stop her?
Poor old Colonel, though." All that afternoon the heliograph winked and flickered on the hills, striving to tell the good news to a mountain forty miles away. And in the evening there arrived, dusty, sweating, and sore, a misguided Correspondent who had gone out to assist at a trumpery village-burning and who had read off the message from afar, cursing his luck the while.
"I'd like to know what they're doing there," said Dick. "So would I, but it's open country, and they're probably keeping a close lookout. They're really safer doing that in the open than on the roof of a house, out here in the country." "Because they can hide the heliograph? It's portable, isn't it?" "Yes. They could stow it away in a minute, if they were alarmed.
"That was a plucky thing indeed," Chris said; "though, as I should hardly think we should attack at night, it may not be of much service, for the Boers have long since given up trying with their feeble flash- lights to interrupt our night signalling with Ladysmith, especially as, now the weather is finer, we can talk all day if we like with our heliograph."
January 15. Early this morning sixty shots from heavy guns were heard far off to the southward, giving us hope that General Buller had begun his promised advance for our relief. A few hours later I received a heliograph message from my eldest son, whom I supposed to be still in England, saying that he was with the South African Light Horse on probation for a lieutenancy.
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