A TYPICAL DAY AT LADYSMITH.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9946, 23 January 1900, Page 2

A TYPICAL DAY AT LADYSMITH.

HOW TIME IS KILLED AT LADYSMITH. Mr G. W. Steevens, the brilliant war correspondent of the Daily Mail, whose death we recorded yesterday as the result of fever contracted in Ladysmith, recently sent the following undated message from the beleagured. town to hie journal; — "The following is a typical day of the siege of Ladysmith. I awake at midnight with the words 'Sons of Satan' in my ear. The Boers are shelling the troopers of the Light Horse. Cuddling together on my verandah are troops listening to the banging of shells. Says one voice: 'Eight among the horses.' Another says, 'Clean through the mess tent.' With each bang the silver moonlight on the wall flickers to gold. A score of rounds is fired, but nobody is touched. Then the Boers are silent, and tho troops converse about the shells for an hour 'longer. I sleep till' half-past 3, and am Again awakened. Says a noarse voice, 'Turn out squadron.' For half an hour the men loudly get up, and I sleep again. AH the flies are awakened at 5. I feel a buzz in the ear and a. twitch on tho nose. I put the sheet over my head, but tho flies crawl up my legs. It is daylight now, but there is a bite in the sultr- air. The strong bulwark of Lombard's Kop is swathed in stagnant mist. I ride out under the already heavy sun and scramble over the stones to the hilltop where the 'Highlanders are putting the finishing touch Jo the new laager. Active kilted figures are piling sandbags, , cutting busb.63, and dragging it together for a zareba. "I descend the grassy flat at a gallop, through great black hordes of lazy cattle watched by lazy blacks, grazing on the neutral ground between us and the enemy. A few spofs are scored by shells irom points where the Boers creep up during" the night. They are now falling back before &ur patrols, the crack of whoso rifles sgunds muffled in the lifeless air. I return within the lines, past the sentry steadfastly staring over the plain to tho hills beyond, past the sack and blanket couches where the officers sleep, past the smoking camp, where the cooks are getting breakfast. "Breakfast over, the lazy bombardment of the town begins. Now it is shouting, rattling 'Puffing Billy'; now it is swishing, rushing 'Silent Susan'; now the popping, puffing shrapnel. We know them all by ear. "Once in a dozen times the hoarse bark of our naval guns replies.

"One interlude of activity tempts me up the hill where the Rifle Brigade are at work. Some are shovelling new houses out of the red-hot earth. Others are sleeping in dark, cool grottoes en- " tered by hatchway skylights. Here the -~ Brigadier-General is working in his office, cane-floored and ceiled with timber. Outside a rare shot of the Boer snipers is answered by our firing line, consisting only of six good shots — one has just dropped Boers at 2050 yards, "Presently, with a splitting bang, a Howitzer shell flies over towards the tents below. Then a buzzing, half-spent Mauser bullet starts a great black and cream butterfly, and soon a small shell fizzes through the roof of the iron huts, and bursts clanging inside. "The firing falters through the afternoon, when sharp gusts of whirling dust prcludo the usual storm. The sky is blue-black with clouds which huddle down over the hills; a few huge drops fall with the rattle of thunder; a sudden spurt of rain; and then it clears to a sunset of flame-coloured pillows on beds of rose. " "Good-night,' say the shells, and then to bed. "Multiply this by a million, and you get the siege of Ladysmith."