It was the sort of thing schoolboys might do.

Captain Lambton complained that by the laws of war the gun was permanently out of action.

But "Long Tom" goes on as before.
I think the best story of the siege comes from a Kaffir who walked in a few days ago.

In the Boer camp behind Pepworth Hill he had seen the men being taught bayonet exercise with our Lee-Metfords, captured at Dundee.
The Boer has no bayonet or steel of his own, and for an assault on the town he will need it.

Instruction was being given by a prisoner--a sergeant of the Royal Irish Fusiliers--with a rope round his neck! _November 13, 1899._ The Boer method of siege is quite inexplicable.