THE GUNS.

Evening Post, Volume LXIII, Issue 87, 12 April 1902, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE GUNS.

"So the broadside opened upon the banked up Dutchmen, gun by gun, howitzer by howitzer, slowly, relentlessly, from that tropical plateau across the river, each piece methodically finding tvud noting the range and grunting in its own iufernul satisfaction. Now ou a woody .knob, now in a sleepy hollow, now on the vory nipples of Sheba's Tance-like breasts the shells -would burst, -with fearful pauses us the guuuors spied for their handiwork through their telescopes aud earefirily entered the ksults in their range-books, passing them from gun to gun to save trouble and ammunition. And on no part of the position was more of this appalling labour expended than on that upon which we stand, jUsfc in front of the main trench, running like a great rough Bear aCross tho rounded backbone of the hill. There was to be no guesswork here, every British gun must know all about it for itself; and all day the hea-vy throbbing from the thickets sounded in its face, and the big shells caiho sailing enquiringly over the Tug«lft, the shrapnel spouting showers of lead from high in air as if from a 'rose,' the awful slnmmering of tho lyddite, swift and terrible from the long naval guns, with nerve-destroying slowness from the cocked-up howitzers, one by one they came ; nearer and nearer up the hillside came the crash and the unholy sulphurous pother, smothering, other and unseen trenches on tieir way, until by evening not a gun but could dash its fist into tho very face of the strong trench behind which the Boer main body lay in waiting, peering down the , slope between the explosions for something they feared more than tho. whistling fragments of Woolwich steel— the yellow form of the slow, silent British soldier, with whose strong arm and stronger heart they knew the ultimate issue rested.