It was a jagged bit of outer casing about three inches thick, and weighing over 6 lbs.

The extraordinary thing about it was that it had flung off exactly at right angles from the line of fire.

Gunners say that melinite sometimes does these things.
I rode south-west, over Range Post and a bit of the Long Valley to Waggon Hill, our nearest point to the relief column and the English mail.

At no great distance--ten miles or so--I could see the hills overlooking the Tugela, where the English are.

Far beyond rose the crags and precipices of the Drakensberg, illuminated by unearthly gleams of the setting sun, which found their way beneath the fringes of a purple thunder-shower and turned to amber-brown a cloud of smoke rising from the burning veldt.
_January 3, 1900._ The quiet hour before sunrise was again broken by the crash of our Naval guns.