that state would be untenable, and yet they could not be abandoned
without serious risk that Boers might then be able to advance under
cover near enough to threaten other posts, if not to command by rifle
fire, within twelve hundred yards or so, the heights on which naval guns
are mounted. Only by holding the contours of extreme spurs on Helpmakaar
Hill could the Devons hope to sweep by rifle fire a wide zone of
slightly undulating veldt, and thus command all possible approaches from
Lombard's Kop or Bulwaan in that direction. So they stuck generally to
the lines traced by engineers for their outer defences, but deepened the
trenches, widened the banks in front of them, built bomb-proof
traversers overlaid with balks and earth to neutralise the effects of
enfilading fire, and then began to form for themselves dug-out huts in
which to sleep, with solid earth roofs supported on railway sleepers.

All this means enormous labour, carried on frequently under a galling
cannonade from the enemy's smaller guns, and interrupted occasionally by
the necessity of having to keep down the rifle-fire that comes from a
distant kopje, while standing on the front of these works.

Yesterday, watching a cavalry patrol that tried in vain to feel for a
way through the scrubby nek into more open ground beyond, General
Brocklehurst and his staff were nearly hit by a shell from some
newly-mounted battery the exact position of which could not be located,
for its smokeless powder made no flash that anybody could see in broad
daylight, nor generated even the faintest wreath of vapour. Its
projectile travelled faster than sound, so that the range could not have
been great, but there was nothing by which our own batteries might have
been directed to effective reply. We all abused "Long Tom" at first
because of his unprovoked attack on a defenceless town, but by contrast
with what is known among Devon men as the "Bulwaan Sneak," and among