REMARKABLE ESCAPES

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 4748, 28 April 1900, Page 4

REMARKABLE ESCAPES

A correspondent writing after the relief of Ladysmith writes :—: — The day has been one of hairbreathth escapee. A Bhell entered a room in which, a little child was sleeping, and blew one of the walls of the bedroom out. Iv the mkißt of the dust ' and smoke the parents heard the cry of the little one, and fushing to the room found her absolutely unhurt, while not more than 20 yards away a fragment of the same shell absolutely disembowelled a man of the Natal police. It was one of the most shocking sights I have seen during the siege. At the same house later in the evening two Englishmen called to congratulate the parents on the narrow escape of the child. They were being shown the little one's pet rabbits, when another splinter of a shell passed within a couple of feet of them and clove one of the rabbits in twain. A thoughtful Tommy took it to his tent for a stew. These things sound extravagant, and like siege tales, which are not alwayß reliable, but I speak of what I have actually seen. I was in the lines of the Natal Mounted Eifles during the afternoon, and as we discussed the perils of the day and made comparisons of what he had heard of other sieges, a man lying on the floor of the tent said, " This must be a good deal worse than the siege of Widdin. I see by this book that the Eussians pitched shells into Widdin for two months, and had a nasty trick of sending in about twenty every night, yet the casualties were only 12 killed and 27 wounded." I glanced at the book, and saw that he was quoting from Dr Charles Eyan's " Under the Bed Crescent." One man was having a quiet bath on his own verandah, when a shell Btruck* a tree, counoned off the side of the house without exploding, and, rolling like a hoop along the verandah, upset the bath- tub and its occupant, without injuring either. The rooms I occupy with other correspondents were struck this afternoon by three separate splinters of shell, the largest of which was ominously suggestive of Judgment Day. One South African journalist, who has been as much un der fire since Dundee as any man out. side the ranks, only lost his nerve when he threw himself down suddeuly to avoid a roaring 90-pounder, and slightly sprained his shoulder in doing so. The largest of the splinters scalped part of the leaves, glanced off, and btruck a wall under which a young fellow was crouching. He picked it up, burned bis fingers, and dropped it again. •

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