of Bulwaan on Helpmakaar Hill, where the Devons, thanks to having taken
wise precautions in making bomb-proof shelters, suffered little, though
"Puffing Billy" turned occasionally to hurl a 94-pounder in that
direction when tired of raking Cæsar's Camp and Maiden's Castle, where
the Manchesters had not only their flank exposed to this fire, but were
smitten in front by a heavy gun the Boers had mounted on Flat-Top
Mountain, some three miles off, and by smaller shells that came from
automatic guns hidden among scrub on the nearer slopes across Bester's
Farm. These did little harm, though the repeated thuds of their
discharge, like the rapid strokes of a Nasmyth hammer on its anvil,
might have shaken the resolution of any but the steadiest troops, seeing
that our field-battery on Maiden's Castle could not for a long time
locate the exact hiding-place of those vicious little weapons, and when
they did get a chance, the enemy's heavy artillery replied to their fire
with a more persistent cannonade than ever. The Manchesters stood
manfully the test of long exposure to this galling storm of iron and
lead, their fighting line continuing to hold the outer slopes, where
from behind boulders they could overlook the hollow between them and
their foes, and get occasionally shots at any Boer who happened to show
himself incautiously. That did not happen often, and their chances of
effective reply to the bullets or shells that lashed the ground about
them were few at first.

When an attack of riflemen did begin to develop with some show of being
pressed home, the Manchesters were still lying there ready to meet it
with a fire steadier than that of the Boers and if anything more deadly.
Being secure from flanking movements, since the Border Mounted Rifles
were on their right sweeping round Waggon Hill and some companies of the
60th in support, the Manchesters could devote all their attention to
that long front, and beat back every attempt of the Boers to cross the