or gun. "Long Tom" has done better in long-distance shooting, having
thrown one shell nearly to Cæsar's Camp, and the range-finders make that
out to be 11,500 yards from Pepworth's Hill, but these three shots
to-day hold the record for range and accuracy combined.

During the following three weeks the already wearisome progress of
the siege was broken by no large event. The Boers, discouraged by
their want of success on 9th November, went on from day to day
shelling the town with the guns already in position, and mounting
others on the hills with which to make the bombardment more
effective. They hoped to do slowly at a safe distance what they had
failed to accomplish by a more daring procedure. The period,
notwithstanding, is full of minor incidents, the record of which
must be read with the greatest interest. Mr. Pearse wrote:--

_November 15._--Half an hour after midnight all Ladysmith woke from
peaceful slumber on troubled sleep at the sound of guns, from which
shells came screaming about the town and into camps that had not been
reached by them before. What it all meant nobody could say, but the
firing did not cease until every Boer cannon round about our position
had let off a shot. Some of us began to dress, thinking that the misty
diffused moonlight was the coming of dawn. Women, huddling in shawls and
wraps, rushed off with children in their arms to "tunnels" by the
riverside, and there would have been something very like a panic among
civilians if soldiers had not reassured them. The staff officer, who had
been upon the watch for possibilities, until he heard the first Boer gun
fire, and then got into pyjamas for a good night's rest, saying, "There
will be no attack now," was a philosopher. Everybody cannot look at
things in that cool way when shells are flying about, but a good many of
us went back to bed again on discovering what the time was, puzzled to