Note 1 — Chapter III · BESIEGERS AND BESIEGED

Early on the morning after we had marched to the south—on 2nd November—Field-Cornet Jan Lyon went with a body of men to Pieter's Station, broke up the rails there, and took the telegraph clerk prisoner. While he was doing this the two guns which we had brought with us were being dragged up the range of hills between Ladysmith and Colenso. One of them was put on the summit of a pointed hill a little south of Platrand (Cæsar's Hill),—the other on the heights north of Colenso. I was present when Commandant de Villiers drew the latter up the precipitous slopes. There were huge boulders, as high as the wheels of a waggon, thickly strewn on the hillside, and over them the Krupp had to go. A strong span of oxen was put before the gun, and one could hear the creaking of the yokes as the oxen strained to draw the gun up, but as it became steeper and steeper it soon appeared that even the South-African ox had a task which it could not do. The wheels of the gun-carriage got jammed between the boulders and remained immovable. Then the burghers took the work in hand, and what ox-power could not do, human muscles accomplished. Some of the men seized the yokes and the trektouw,[1] and others put their shoulders to the wheel, and up flew the gun. It was not long before the Krupp made itself heard. To the English fort near Colenso it sent a few shells—but the garrison there had fled.