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The 4.7-inch naval guns and the 5 in. fortress battery were brought into line in the centre of the Hlangwani plateau. All this was good. The big guns were getting back on to the big hills. The firing, which continued all day, swelled into a roar towards night as the Boers made vigorous attempts to drive Hart's Brigade from its lodgments.
Gunboats El Cano and General Lezo, built in 1885, iron, 528 tons, 10 to nearly 12 knots, and each mounting three 3.5-inch rifles. Gunboat Marquis Del Duero, built in 1875, iron, 500 tons, 10 knots, and mounting one 6.2-inch and two 4.7-inch rifles.
The first-class unarmoured cruisers have an armament and speed similar to those of the armoured type, and may have casements for their broadside guns, and barbettes for the heavy ones; the second-class cruisers are armed with 6-inch and 4.7-inch guns, protected by simple shields only, and they have a speed of from 19 to 20 knots.
Battery: four 5.9-inch Krupp rifles, two 4.7-inch, two 3.3-inch, four 2.5-inch rapid-fire, and two machine guns. The Velasco, 1,152 tons. Battery: three 5.9-inch Armstrong rifles, two 2.7-inch hontorias, and two machine guns. The Don Antonio de Ulloa and Don Juan de Austria, each 1,130 tons, speed, fourteen knots.
Pursuing our peregrinations, we reach No. 1 Fort, at the northern angle of the town, north-eastern corner of the islet St. Mary the Less. This old round battery is surmounted by three 32-pounders, en barbette, with iron carriages and traversing platforms, but without racers: a single 7-inch shell would smash the whole affair.
In place of the ordinary level-firing guns found on a modern warship, these uncanny gray things carried 17.7-inch howitzers, a kind of mortar of Japanese construction. There was nothing to be seen above the low deck but a short heavily protected funnel and four little armored domes which contained the sighting telescopes for the guns, the mouths of which lay in the arch of the whaleback deck.
Ox waggons piled high with all kinds of packages, and drawn sometimes by ten or twelve pairs of oxen, mule waggons, Scotch carts, ambulance waggons, with huge Red Cross flags, ammunition carts, artillery, slaughter cattle, and, last of all, the naval battery, with its two enormous 4.7-inch pieces, dragged by long strings of animals, and guarded by straw-hatted khaki-clad bluejackets, passed in imposing array, with here and there a troop of cavalry to protect them or to prevent straggling.
The noise of explosions of gun and projectile came back to us on the hill in regular order, and above them rang the startling discharges of the 4.7-inch naval guns, whose shells in bursting raised huge brown dust clouds from houses, trench, or hillside. At the same time the thunder began to rumble, and vivid streaks of blue light scarred the sombre hills.
This gun must have a range of nearly six miles, and we have nothing that can reach it but our naval 4.7-inch and 12-pounders mounted on Junction Hill, both of which have enough to do in keeping down the fire of "Long Tom" of Pepworth's Hill. November 8.
The guns are two 7-inch rifles, two 6-inch rifles, and six 9-inch smoothbores; ten in all. Yes, call her a turtle, plated with iron; she looks as much like that as like anything else. "When we eighty men from the Warwick first saw her, she was swarming with workmen. They continued to cover her over, and to make impossible any drill or exercise upon her.
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