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For, going earlier into Viviette's room, she had found her white and shaken, still disordered in hair and dress as Dick had left her; and Viviette had sobbed on her bosom and told her with some incoherence that the monkey had at last hit the lyddite shell in the wrong place, and that it was all over with the monkey. So, before Austin spoke, she half divined why he had summoned her.
The burghers in Slabberts Nek, where we happened to be, were subjected to a dreadful cannon fire. This pass was guarded by Captain Smith with two Krupp guns and Lieutenant Carlblom with a pom-pom. Upon these guns the English directed two Howitzers and six Armstrongs. Here, just before sunset, the gallant Captain Rautenbagh was blown to pieces by a lyddite shell, which exploded in front of him.
At last, however, "Long Tom" commenced operations, but the artillerymen in charge had omitted to put the powder in a safe place and it was soon struck by a lyddite shell which set the whole of it on fire. This compelled us to send to the head laager near Ladysmith for a fresh supply of powder.
They'll wrap her in tarpaulins, and carry her in that." He nods and goes up on the lookout with a night-glass, and the wearied officer he relieves comes down. As he has said, it is a desperate night of driving sleet and swirling blackness, illuminated only with the malignant coruscations of lyddite bursting-charges.
When disturbed, they eject a fluid which volatilizes, on contact with the air, with a slight report. Distillers of corrosives, gunners throwing lyddite, bombers employing dynamite: what can all these violent creatures, so well equipped for battle, do beyond committing slaughter? Nothing.
We marched straight towards the mountains, ten or twelve miles, I suppose, till we were pretty close up, and then Clements's two great lyddite five-inch guns came into position and fired at long range. They are called "Weary Willie" and "Tired Tim," and each is dragged by twenty-two splendid oxen.
Already, after five shots, the whole kopje is enveloped in dust and reddish smoke from the bursting lyddite, but elsewhere between us and the sunrise the hills are a perfect dark blue, pure blocks of the colour. The Lancers on their horses show black against the sky as they canter, scattering through the underwood with graceful slanting lances. At slow deliberate intervals the long gun tolls.
Lyddite shells, e.g., are packed two in a case: each case weighs 100 lb., and I have frequently seen a waggon loaded with, say, a ton of these shells, and drawn by eight mules, stuck fast for a time in the open veldt; the passers-by have run up and shoved at the wheels and so at last the lumbering cart has jogged slowly on.
Most of the men look like worthless loafers; the women finely-built, capable creatures. Heavy firing has been going on all day, mostly with lyddite, on our side, by the sound. You can see the shells bursting on the top of a big kopje. This is a funny little place: pleasant cottages dotted round in desultory fashion, as though the town had been brought up in waggons and just tipped out anyhow.
We found that on the evening before the five-inch gun battery and one unit of an ammunition column under Major McGee had gone on board. They had stowed the big guns in the lower hold, and they had enough lyddite stowed forward to insure a perfectly good explosion provided a submarine plugged us with a torpedo. Our adjutant and the steward soon had us in our cabins.
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