But the new gun was only a diversion, while the stream of invective against horseflesh went on like the brook for ever. It is an ill wind that blows nobody good; the truth of this was well exemplified in the luck of the dogs. The poor animals looked shockingly thin and wasted, and had for a long time been unable to move about with their wonted agility in pursuit of locusts and mosquitoes. The mongrels that had any fight or vitality left in them would engage in a terrific struggle on the streets at night for the contents of the refuse buckets which our primitive sanitation laws permitted to obstruct the pathways until morning. It need hardly be said that there was not much in the way of crusts, scraps, or bones to appease canine hunger, and the resultant keenness of the competition made the night extremely hideous. This snarling struggle for existence had gone on night after night to the supreme annoyance of martyrs who would fain have slept, and who urged (in letters to the Editor) the wholesale destruction of the snarlers as a work at once humane, essential, and congenial. This was in pre-horse food days, when the ox was paramount on our tables.

But now all was changed, and every dog had his day indeed! The brutes—not knowing the difference—revelled in horseflesh. The people who could not look at it gave it all to their dogs; while the most enthusiastic equine meat-eater invariably left a trifle behind him. Canine gluttony was a source of much amusement, envy, or disgust (according to the individual temperament); and the ubiquitous cynic reminded one of a good time coming when the horse would be locally extinct and "fat dog" the daintiest of diets. The irony of it all was that there were still at Kenilworth some hundreds of oxen, in perpetual danger of being "sniped "; and the populace argued (not unreasonably) that to force on us irrational rations was in the circumstances a callous thing. There were doubtless considerations to palliate this procedure on the part of the Protector, but we would not see them. The cattle were there in sufficient numbers to feed us until relief arrived. True, relief appeared to be remote, but our view was that (if a calamity were to be averted) it must come within a month at the outside. And what a pretty denouement it would be, we said, if, through thrusting "strange food" upon us until the Column came in, there were left a monster herd of jubilant bullocks to swell the chorus of welcome! And, if I mistake not, they did actually swell it. At any rate, General French was reported to have been highly indignant when informed of how much more useful than palatable the horse was, and to have ordered its exclusion from the abattoir forthwith. We had to continue vegetating on Siege rations for two weeks after the arrival of French; but from the first moment of his entry the nightmare of horseflesh troubled us no more.

Those dark days were not without their humours withal; and there was a piquancy in the very imperviousness of our risible faculties to their correct appreciation. Asses and mules—it was said—were butchered in common with horses, and discussion was wont to be rife on the relative merits of the three animals in their new sphere of usefulness. The difficulty involved in distinguishing a steak of one from a steak of another was no small one; but donkey was reputed to taste sweeter than common horse—a questionable recommendation!—and the advocates of this theory were called cannibals. The mule had its backers, too; it was the gentler animal, they contended in sustainment of their preference. But all three beasts had acquired a fresh interest, notoriety, and dignity; and it was edifying to watch men, not noted for their sporting proclivities, eyeing an animal with the knowing look of a connoisseur that seemed to say: "I wonder what he would taste like." Whether it was that, being so cheap he might be regarded "gift horse," or for some less occult reason, the points of a beast were never looked for in the mouth. His age, for example, might strike a thinking person as an important factor to be remembered in the summing up of a horse's fitness for the grill. But the people generally never thought of that, and were mainly influenced in their judgments by the spareness or fleshiness of the animal's hindquarters. On Saturday the atmosphere was thick with rumours of imminent trouble. The precise terms of the Boer ultimatum we did not know, but that an ultimatum had been received was not denied. We heard of a fifty-pound gun (bigger than ours!) being put into position on the Free State border—with a view to instilling in us the wisdom of recognising the inevitable. The less formidable instruments of torture nearer home were also being augmented. There was a feeling that events of an uncommon character were on the march. People talked of presentiments—one being that the Baralongs outside Kimberley were being armed to assist in our annihilation. The much debated topic anent the likelihood of the Sixth Division being sent to join Methuen was settled at last—to our chagrin. It had gone off at a tangent somewhere else. Who knew that the Seventh Division would not follow suit? In any case, weeks had to pass before the Seventh (being still at sea) could get anywhere. Our prospects of speedy liberation were therefore none too excellent. The Empire was passing through a crisis, and if Kekewich had had only the statesmanship to make known to us the truth, the plain unvarnished truth, we might have been less captious in our criticisms of things both local and Imperial. Even the new gun, in common with the times, was out of joint and undergoing repairs at the workshop.

Nutritious food of any sort was now a rarity in real earnest. Eggs were hard at a price per dozen that purchased a gross in the not too cheap days of peace; while ducks and drakes, no bigger than crows, but worth their weight in diamonds, were too heavy for the patrons of paste. The military people had an extensive variety of precious birds stuffed away in their own selected aviaries. They had also seized upon all the cigarettes in town. Now, this was held up as a well-grounded and specific grievance against the military. It was conceded that the sick and wounded had first claim on our humanity; and the chicken monopoly, had it stood alone, would not have invited criticism. But the cigarette appropriation was reckoned a scandal. There was an abundance of matches in the military stores—but nowhere else. The tobacconists were selling off, at quadrupled rates, quantities of ancient, nasty-smelling "safety-matches," which but yesterday, alas! they would have paid us to bury somewhere! Of course there were wide possibilities of economy in this direction—the one match often putting the kettles to boil in half a street. The waste in the matter of pipe-kindling had to be modified, and the mediaeval makeshift of flint and steel restored. The fierce rays of Sol, through the media of our monocles, were also utilised to light cigars. What else on Saturday? Yes, Mafeking, they said, was fighting on still; and Generals Buller and Warren had forded the Tugela, en route to Ladysmith. That their plunge might stimulate Methuen to burn his boots and brave the turgid waters of the Modder, was the fervent wish of Kimberley at the end of fourteen weeks of irksome, emaciating duress.



CHAPTER XV

Week ending 27th January, 1900

The whirligig of the enemy (time, not the Boer, not the "Law") had again carried us to the beginning of another week. The Sundays were now exceedingly dull, and on the particular Sabbath with which I am dealing little worthy of record came within the sphere of my observations. I shall therefore—in the absence of matter of graver import—take advantage of its Sunday silence to say a word or two about the Diamond Fields' Advertiser. The views of the besieged in regard to their local print had undergone a change. They had at one time been proud of their paper. It had formerly been conducted on well-defined principles; and it was its departure from these principles to the status of an "Organ" that preached, but which at the frown of a Draconic Colonel practised not its articles—it was this that brought down upon its head the wrath of the local democracy. The authorities had for a while permitted the paper to publish war-scraps; but whether it was due to a tendency on the Editor's part to expand these allowances, the privilege was withdrawn and scraps were proscribed. Even the fiction in the columns of our journal was subjected to a rigid censorship; and when the Public had expected it to be voicing their protests against the Russian government of the day, the paper was virtually in Slavonic hands and controlled by the Czar himself. Its eight large pages had been reduced to four small ones, which became better known as the "Official Gazette" of the district. But though we read in it garrison orders from time to time, the three-penny novelette of the town would have been a more fitting designation. It had once quoted from a London contemporary a statement to the effect that hundreds of lives had been thrown away at Magersfontein in an attempt to rescue Cecil Rhodes! Our "Organ" was then independent enough to retort that there was, besides Mr. Rhodes, the fate of thousands of British subjects to be considered. But now it was far otherwise; the independence of tone had vanished. Instead of dignified sarcasm, we were apologetically regaled with parallels of all the sieges in the world's history—Troy, Plevna, Sebastopol, Paris, etc.—and calmly assured that our tribulations weighed lightly in the balance with what was suffered in the brave days of—"wooden" horseflesh!

Still the journal, though it evoked the displeasure of its quondam admirers, doubtless acted for the best in a difficult situation; and there were many who might have overlooked the "parallels" were it not for the advertisements. For through the advertising columns we were perpetually being pressed by the merchants of the city to come in and buy everything that makes life worth living! All the dainties an aspirant to gout could wish for were, according to our "Official Gazette," to be had for the asking. At the hotels, "Highland Cream Whiskey" was for ever arriving; and "O.K." (another thistle!) kept "licking 'em all" with monotonous invincibility. Iced beer was on tap; the champagne was sparkling; the wine needed no bush. The cheese was still alive (on paper). Cakes, hams, jams, biscuits, potted fish, flesh, and good red herring were, so to speak, all over the shops. This was the sort of pabulum our morning sheet supplied by way of breakfast for inward digestion, and there was an irony in the meal which its uniqueness did not help to make palatable. Absent-minded people still went shopping for luxuries gone but not forgotten; to provoke a premature "April fool" from the startled grocer, who was powerless to make real the chimeras that haunted the jungles of the shoppers' imaginations. Even practical (new) women would sometimes think of Bovril, and rush off to buy it all up, only to find that it had been bought up long ago, and that not for nothing had so much money been expended in the booming of that bullock in a bottle! Our boarding-house tariffs were ridiculously low (the paper said) at seven or eight pounds per month; while the allurements of the boating and the creature comforts of Modder River, and the balminess of its breezes, were dangled before our eyes with aggressive cynicism. The shipping agents were most attentive to detail in regard to the departure of vessels from Cape ports—just as if the availability of aerial tugs, to convey us to the coast, went without saying. Such were the irritating features of our morning paper. Their humour was utterly lost on us; they only served to sharpen the unhappy appetites of all whose fatal misfortune was ability to read.

Nasty stories had been told with reference to the reign of terror to be inaugurated on Monday. But they did not materialise; the rule of Martial Law—bad to beat—remained unbeatable. The expected rarely happened, and peace was oftener than not the characteristic of the prophets' red-letter-day. Such occasions gave us scope and opportunity to discuss the Kabal that ran her Majesty's writ, and to wonder whether it (the writ) should ever again be pacemaker to the people's will. The spectacle of a number of Union Jacks floating on the breeze was the most startling incident of the day. What did the transformation mean? A wild conjecture seized us; it was a moment of unalloyed joy when the fond thought of Kimberley's relief having been accomplished during the night flashed across our minds. But our jubilation was short-lived, for the Boers presently fired a salute with intent clearly to tatter rather than honour the Flag—in defence of which Long Cecil, tattered itself, was unable to play a part.

The echoes of a heavy cannonade were the feature of Tuesday. This led us to infer that the much-vaunted "siege train" (which was the talk of the city) had begun its work of devastation. The inspiration of itself would not have been the harbinger of consolation—we were long listening to sound and fury, meaning nothing—but we were quick to associate it with the unfurling of the Flag, to put the two "straws" together—and sigh!

"The Column," our Gazette asserted, "had made a most successful reconnaissance." But experience had taught us how to estimate a bald, non-committal statement of that kind. Our faith in the Column had been shaken; so much so that cynics hummed, with impunity, that the "little British army goes a long, long way." We dared to doubt the bellipotence of the Column. The wisdom of self-help was brought home to us at last. We were fast learning to put not our trust in Columns, and to ponder the possibility, handicapped though we were, of hewing from within a way to freedom.

Meanwhile Long Cecil, successfully treated, was again in the arena. A few "compliments" were jerked at the Kamfers Dam Laager; the Boers were made to feel that they had a foeman to deal with worthy of their lead. The success of the gun and the skill of him who made it were on every lip. The theme occasioned as much enthusiasm as could be expected from hearts saddened by disconsolation. And the man in the moon, too far distant to betray the grimness of his smile, looked silently on. Favourable accounts of the progress of events in Natal conduced to the serenity of the evening. The night was so still and grand that it seemed almost a pity to seek refuge in repose; and when ultimately we did persuade ourselves to retire it was to dream of Long Cecil and his potentialities—a sanguine dream of self-reliance and ability to burst our bonds.

But, oh! what a change came over its spirit in the middle of the night; when startled from our slumbers by the hissing of shells in the streets we awoke to a sense of what was real. In the blackness of the early morning it was hard to connect the booming of cannon with reality. The shells were falling and bursting in rapid succession. It was the inauguration of a nerve-ordeal; the prelude to a terrible day; the beginning of a bombardment long-sustained and fierce.

Not for long did the guns blaze in vain. A young girl lay dead, struck down in the privacy of her bedroom. Shell after shell came whistling through the air, jeopardising the reason of scared women, in terror for the safety of their children. Men rushed about everywhere seeking shelter for their families. A gentleman walking in the Dutoitspan Road had his hat unroofed, and a young lad was prematurely put out at elbow by a piece of shell which passed through the sleeve of his coat. Half a score of guns poured forth a heavy fusillade until eight o'clock, when a short interval for breakfast was conceded.

Fast and furious fell the instruments of destruction into every street and alley that throbbed with human life—smashing tables and delfware, ripping up floors, and spreading alarm abroad in the land. The Public Library was the recipient of a missile that played havoc with a hoary tome. Public buildings and churches were peppered indiscriminately. Saint Cyprian's—ventilated before in the same accidental fashion—was holed again. All Saints' fared little better. The Catholic Cathedral was slightly damaged. Saint Augustine's was hit; and, judging by its battered walls, the Dutch Reformed Church went nearer to demolition than any other. No structure with any pretensions to size escaped. The Town Hall was subjected to a fierce assault; for into the Market Square, to the right and left of the hall, in front and in rear, the shells fell in abundance. But the solid walls of the building were not tested, which was strange in view of its exposed position and the large area it covered. Inside, the busy officials were hard at work, pandering to the needs of the hungry throng who sought dispensations from starvation, and who dared not venture out again lest they should die hungry withal. The Town Hall towered impregnable—impervious to the myriad battering-rams that yearned to lay it low. As if it had occurred to them that the chances rather favoured finding the Mayor at home, the Boer gunners subsequently launched through the roof of his store in Jones' Street a shower of shrapnel which riddled the occupants of a compartment in the upper storey. The Mayor, fortunately, was not one of these; when the smoke cleared away it was found that the injured consisted of some handsome wax figures. At Beaconsfield a youth was struck, and another projectile went so near to putting a poor old woman, who lay upon a sick bed, beyond the borders of eternity that her feeble limbs were deprived of the couch's solace. An Indian subject of the Queen had his bungalow shattered. Not even the hallowed sanctuary of the "Law's" guardians was held sacred, for a missile telescoped a policeman's helmet—which, happily, was off its head at the moment.

All day long existence was made well-nigh unendurable. None knew the moment when an account of one's individual stewardship might be demanded. It is in trials of this kind that mankind is most vividly impressed with the reality of being in life and death simultaneously. That these trials surpassed any that had hitherto ruffled the noiseless tenor of our way was a truism. But coming at a moment when our nerves were sufficiently unstrung by the dearth of tonics, they were doubly enervating. Stomachal grievances were forgotten, and few ventured to desert the imaginary security of their homes to face the risks the redress of grievances would entail. Thus did the hours creep on until darkness with its interregnum of peace had fallen on the city.

But the interregnum was of brief duration, for, to our unspeakable horror, the bombardment was resumed at nine o'clock. If in the clear light of day the shells were trying, what were they in the night! A ghost story well told in the daytime perturbs a superstitious mind; but to feel queer at its recital in the night one need not necessarily be superstitious at all. This new departure intensified the strain and went far to make faint many a heart that had until then remained stout. The guns were fired with longer intervals between the shots; the shells did not follow on the top of one another as in the day; but one nocturnal projectile excited as much terror as did ten when the sun was shining. Far into the night—for hours after midnight—the war was waged, and sleep denied the pleasure of steeping our "senses in forgetfulness." To sleep was nearly impossible, and at the first peep of dawn to recline on a bed at all was not easy, so fierce and sudden was the energy with which a dozen guns commenced to bark in chorus.

And with sad results. The men in the redoubts enjoyed comparative immunity from the dangers of the bombardment; it was mainly the women and children in the houses who had to bear the brunt of the assaults. A lamentable instance of the pity of it was only too soon forthcoming. In the house of a Mr. Webster (who was in camp with his regiment, the Volunteers) his wife and children were at breakfast, when crash! through the roof came a shell on top of the tea-pot. The mother sustained fearful injuries, to which she subsequently succumbed. Her six-year-old child was also killed; her second son had his leg and arm broken; while her youngest child—a little girl—was badly bruised. The stricken family were removed to hospital amid a shower of shells, which continued with unabashed fury to seek whom they slaughter. Nearly all our public buildings were hit, and the places of worship were again a mark for the vandal. Houses everywhere were damaged, and extraordinary indeed were the escapes of their distracted occupiers. No less gracious was the kindly fortune that shielded those whom duty, caprice, or foolhardiness brought into the streets. One family stuffed away in the ostensible security of a coal-hole vegetated there all day. They were grateful for their modern ark, but outraged nature disapproved and caused a shell to pierce it. Nobody was hurt, remarkable to relate, and the frightened household ascended with alacrity to take their chances in a purer atmosphere. In every part of the town the shells kept falling. Beaconsfield appeared to be the most favoured hunting ground, for its Sanatorium was not only a colossal structure but the home of the Colossus himself. Hundreds of shells dropped in its vicinity, while the millionaire went round the city in a cart, to all outward seeming as little concerned as the most penurious of men. Some weeks before a grazier who had fallen into the hands of the Boers had been assured that it was Rhodes they wanted—not Kimberley. Such a revelation in the case of a personality less notable or less esteemed might have made things awkward for him.

Forty-five minutes were allowed for lunch—an interval which the Boers considered long enough for them—and no doubt for us, too, since they might fairly assume that we did not get much to eat. But on our side there was the trouble and delay involved in the getting of it. To jostle about in a crowd for an indefinite period of time for sake of a scrap of flesh meat—and such meat! such flesh!—required rare ravenousness of appetite; and the bursting of a shell in the midst of a surging mass of humanity was so certain to be attended by fatal results that it was only the very healthy who bothered battling for so little.

The forty-five minutes were of brief duration, and the assault was promptly renewed when the clock struck two. First came the boom; then the warning whistle; next the boom of a second gun almost before the bursting crash of the first shell had proclaimed its contact with terra firma. It was not the numbers of the killed (because they were marvellously few) that awed the people so much as the possibilities of the situation. The guns were fired at long range, and ten or fifteen seconds had to elapse ere anybody could be sure that his turn had not come. Had a closer range been feasible the bombardment might have been more destructive, but the suspense would have been less trying. The shells fell thickly the whole afternoon. Never, hardly ever, was there a lull as the iron roofs of the houses continued to be fitted for service as rough observatories which enabled us to see balloons indeed. Several mourners attending a funeral on its way to the cemetery narrowly escaped dismemberment, by a missile which dropped behind the hearse. The Fire Brigade were alert and ready for contingencies; the brigade station at the Municipal compound was singled out for attack; and it looked as if the skill of the Boers in picking out and disabling the Officers in the field extended to the town, for the Chief of the firemen was struck while standing on his own doorstep. He received a few ugly cuts, as also did two of his children.

And where all this time, it may be asked, where was Long Cecil? Long Cecil had been doing its best, but with the odds so long as ten to one against, its best was a negligible quantity. It sent shell after shell in one direction, then in another, but the enemy heeded it not at all; and though it may have irritated the Boer a little and done all that one gun of its calibre could do, it did not mitigate the perils of the populace. That it had done its best was undeniable, but it sank in the public esteem for other reasons. It was reputed to have killed two women in the Boer camp with its "compliments." I cannot vouch for the truth of the story, but it was seized upon to intensify the growing aversion to the whilom bepraised product of Colonial enterprise. The report converted hostile head-shakes into voluble "I told you so's," and swelled the feeble chorus that had prophesied ill of Long Cecil from the beginning.

Why did the Military insist on aggravating the enemy? This was our new shibboleth. We had, practically speaking, been left unmolested until Long Cecil sounded its timbrel. Hence the bloody sequel! Now, all this would have been in better taste had not those of us loudest in the gun's condemnation been equally boastful anent the fear it was to put into the hearts of the Boers. They were to be taught that Long Cecil was a thing to conjure with. In fact, Long Cecil had accentuated what is known in vulgar parlance as the Jingo spirit. But it had failed to come up to expectations, and all that was left—the dregs of our chivalry—was gone; and perhaps the highest form of chivalry extant now-a-days is consistency. The forty-eight hours' bombardment had been threatened long ere Long Cecil emerged from the workshop in the panoply war. But it was enough for the nonce to have even an inanimate scape-goat with which to relieve our grief—in the absence of something mellow to drown it in.

Firing ceased at six o'clock, and many families, waiving the discomforts of the trek, had already betaken themselves to the redoubts, away from the centre of assault. They remained there all night, needlessly, as it happened. Friday was not looked to with any particular pleasure; but apart from some deliberate attempts to snap-shot the Sanatorium we had little to disturb us. The device of fixing the lens on the local library was next resorted to; a shell dropped on its doorstep, and Beaconsfield church had a like experience. One or two guns kept firing irregularly all day. A shell entered a kitchen and made a complete wreckage of its culinary appliances. Long Cecil, at this stage, made some excellent practice, upsetting presumably the kitchen at Kamfers Dam, as several women were among those who fluttered hither and thither for shelter. Long Cecil was a surprise to the Boers; they had heard of the gun, and inclined to regard its existence as a myth. They had laughed at the visionary who had tried to piece it together; and there were not a few among ourselves who had shared their incredulity.

The proceedings of the previous two days had banished any timidity that had existed hitherto in the ranks of the town's defenders. They were eager for a fight. The sweetness of revenge was appreciated in some measure, and those who might in other circumstances have shirked personal danger, or collapsed in its presence, had their nerves steeled for a fair and square encounter. Our defences were never tested; we were beginning to wish they were. A determined and persevering effort on the Boers' part might have made them masters of Kimberley. The victory, however, would have been of the Phyrric order.

Saturday came. The common trials of the great bombardment had lulled the food warfare, and the thoughts of all were directed to the provision of adequate protection for life and limb. The erection of forts and shelters was going on everywhere. The work had been inaugurated when the bombardment was at its height, and the muscular energy it brought into play was magnificent. The "boys" (natives) were kept at it like Trojans, under the personal supervision of their respective white chiefs; and the chiefs themselves, unaccustomed though they were to an implement less mighty than the pen, perspired beadily and willingly with the pick and shovel. Even the ladies, regardless of blisters and the snowy whiteness of their hands, revelled in the role of navvy. Hallowed little garden patches were ruthlessly excavated; converted into "dug-outs"—disagreeably suggestive of the grave—and these were covered over and hedged in with sacks of earth. The apartments thus improvised were excellent in their way, but somewhat damp and dismal. They were not strictly well ventilated, but the atmosphere without was so redolent of smoke and powder that sanitation had lost in importance. Moreover, one could always stick one's head out of the burrow to inhale the outer air if it were considered fresher than what saluted the nostrils within. Of course these shelters did not offer so much security from danger as their occupiers fancied (I have already instanced how the recesses of a coal-hole had not been proof against invasion); but they were splinter proof. If husbands and fathers did magnify the protection they afforded, their motives were kind.

In the meantime we were not left entirely unmolested. The Beaconsfield Sanatorium continued to be the chief object of Boer solicitude. Smokeless powder was being employed, and the boom of the particular guns in action was not audible, or, if audible, so faintly as to be mistaken for the Column's artillery. We had a man placed on the Conning Tower whose duty it was to blow a warning whistle at sight of the flame of the enemy's fuse. But the whistle—not always heard—was only too apt to be connected with a policeman in distress.

The forty-eight hours' ordeal was not repeated, and interest in eating matters was soon revived. The comparative calm of Saturday incited us to have recourse to all sorts of tricks to unearth what was eatable. The Soup Kitchen was a huge success, and had they not been already well endowed with this world's goods the distinguished waiters in charge of the department might have waxed rich. Thousands of pints were served out daily; indeed there was never a supply sufficient to feed the multitudes that swarmed round the cauldrons containing this delicious elixir of life. One of the most remarkable sights of the Siege was, not the gravity of doctors, lawyers, directors, etc., presenting tickets for soup—that was piquant enough—but the number of young ladies, votaries of fashion, who emerged from the melee bedraggled and flushed with their pails of nectar, to all appearances not only forgetful of the convenances, but beaming with smiles of triumph. It may have been because their charms were enhanced, artful wenches! Enhanced, in any case, their charms were.

The Kitchen was booming, but the generality of people had in their enthusiasm so far failed to observe that the quality of the soup had sadly deteriorated. It had been degenerating day by day. Condiments were no longer available; mealie meal was withheld, and the soup had thus become thinner and less seasoned. But the trade had been established, and business continued brisk. There was no competition (unfortunately), and our newspaper kept assuring us with unnecessary gush that horseflesh was excluded from the Kitchen, and that accidents were impossible. The meat used was strictly orthodox. The Press dilated speciously on the economy practised under the system and on its general advantageousness. Universal confidence was reposed in the Soup Directorate.

But, alas and alack! one fatal day an evil-minded fellow got a lump of something solid in his jug, and instead of holding his peace he held a post-mortem examination and essayed to prove by some Darwinian process of reasoning that the opaque thing was more apish than orthodox! Prior to the date of this inquest, however, people had grown so habituated to the soup that they could not give it up if they would. They went on dutifully consuming it—just as everybody still does his beer, the recent poisoning revelations notwithstanding. They ate all they could get of it; it was in truth an indispensable necessity. The Kitchen was a blessing—in disguise, the wits said—and the most aesthetic, though not without misgivings, in the end gave the broth the benefit of the doubt. Only a small band of martyrs elected to bleed at the shrine of principle; they declined to stultify their stomachs with "horse soup." This was a reckless assumption, indicative of a shocking disbelief in human nature; an inexpedient conclusion. They were all honourable men on the Kitchen Committee. What! all? the reader may exclaim. Well, all but one, perhaps—who told an interviewer in London that "horseflesh made excellent soup!" But that was long afterwards; and, moreover, proved nothing. The gentleman in question no doubt acted discreetly, before unbosoming himself, in placing six thousand miles of sea between him and the Kitchen. For that matter greater iniquities than his have been condoned to give prejudice a fall.

The Italian and American Consuls had protested on behalf of their respective governments against the recent indiscriminate assault upon non-combatants. We were pleased to hope that the protests were not unavailing. They were in conformity with the spirit, if not with the letter, of International Law; and it was stated that the Boers desired to stand well with any and every nation that might possibly make real their Utopian dream of European intervention. Of course, they were doing well alone; it is conceivable that they now felt less the need of extraneous assistance. Their energy and enterprise betokened self-reliance; the will with which they used their picks and shovels was enigmatical to the British mind. They seemed metaphorically to defy all Europe and America. And the reply received by the Consuls was quite in accord with a consciousness on the Boer side of "splendid isolation." It suggested that they (the Boers) would esteem it a privilege to provide the protesters with an escort to convey them to a place of safety, if that would satisfy. It did not satisfy, and there the correspondence ceased.

It was thus the week ended—the enemy active, vigorous, supercilious; while we in Kimberley felt fretful, hungry, and sick at heart; but too thoroughly inured to hardship to shrink from or even to question the duty of fighting the battle to the bitter end.



CHAPTER XVI

Week ending 3rd February, 1900

The fierceness of the assault to which we had been exposed was the great subject of discussion, but it was not until the sluggish pendulum of Siege time had again swung round to the Sabbath that we freely and without dread of interruption gave full expression to our feelings towards the foe. The inconsistency of a nation so profuse in Christian professions was much discussed, and ignoring our own shortcomings in the same respect, to say nothing of the essential cruelty of all wars, we readily requisitioned our best resources of invective—to show what charity really was. We had been living in stormy tea-cups for a long while; our fury was usually more ungovernable than this or that grievance warranted; but we had never before given way to such rhetorical excesses, against not only the Boers, but the Military, as well—Lord Methuen, the Mayor, the Colonel and his Staff. Even Lord Roberts was snapped at. They were all in turn metaphorically tarred and feathered.

But these, after all, were old offenders; their faults and idiosyncrasies had been reviewed often. The occasion demanded a new scapegoat; and we determined to find him. We looked across the broad expanse of veld and bitterly reflected on a destiny that circumscribed our freedom within the barriers of a town; that denied us even the wild freshness of morning uncontaminated by the miasma of city streets. In this frame of mind we easily drifted into speculation on first causes. We began to ask ourselves upon whose shoulders the blame primarily rested for conditions which made such slavery possible; how it came to pass that a few toy-guns and a handful of soldiers had been deemed sufficient to protect Kimberley; and finally to vote the error of judgment incompatible with good administration. And then we remembered that the Bond was a powerful organisation, that a Bond Ministry was in Office. The needed scapegoat, in the person of the Prime Minister, was thus easily discovered. He it was who pooh-poohed the necessity of arming Kimberley, and we accordingly lost no time in setting him up in the game of Siege Aunt Sally as a popular target for our rancour. And pelted he was with right good will. The genial Mr. Quilp, when he found himself deserted by his obsequious flatterer, Sampson Brass, cried out in the seclusion of his apartment at the wharf: "Oh, Sampson, Sampson, if I only had you here!" and he was considerably consoled by his operations with a hammer on the desk in front of him. The feelings of Mr. Quilp were understood, if not respected in Kimberley.

The name of the Prime Minister had not been long added to our "little list" when a local liar led off mildly with intelligence of the Premier's resignation. We improved on this by assuming that his resignation was obligatory—that he had been "dismissed." That he had been arrested was the fiction next resorted to; and finally it was blazoned forth that he had been dismissed from the world altogether. After that he was let rest, and we returned to the misdemeanours of men, in and out of khaki, whose turns had not yet come. Let me observe in passing that the Prime Minister was—as we learned subsequently—more sinned against than sinning. His apologia, and the extent to which he had been wronged and misrepresented are matters outside the scope of these memoirs. But they shed a lurid light on the picturesque canards we swallowed—and digested with an ease that any ostrich would envy.

While engrossed in these denunciations of everything and everybody, Sunday glided by—glided, for the pendulum was not so slow on Sundays. We prepared for the worst the Boers could do on the morrow—rumour said it was to be very bad—and were in no way disposed to be comforted by the message, on the seriousness of our position, which the Colonel was credited with having despatched to Lord Roberts. We were unenlivened by the talk we heard on all sides as to the probable effect of the Foreign Consuls' protests; in optimistic quarters it was felt that the protests would lead to "intervention" of a kind rather different from that bargained for by brother Boer. The war, it was asserted, might stop "very suddenly." Well, of course, it might stop in certain eventualities, or it might not; the sky might fall, but we might easily die (on the diet) before it came down. The Boers toiling at their trenches outside cherished no illusions on these points. Their magazines had been blown up, but, the road to Bloemfontein being clear, they could replenish them. Plumer's proximity to Mafeking (notified in the afternoon) would have been of more significance in our eyes had not experience prejudiced us against faith in proximity value, Methuen's proximity to Kimberley, for example, aggravated our sorrows in a very special way.

On Monday Lord Methuen kept telling us from the wilderness that he was there and still alive. The vitality of the enemy, however, concerned us more. Operations were started early; three shells presumably intended for the Sanatorium landed in Beaconsfield. The first two fell harmlessly, and the charm associated with the third was no less disappointing—to an outsider. The charm surrounding the life of Mr. Rhodes was more tangible; it appeared to extend to the roof that covered him. The greater part of the day was peaceful; but the Military were the Military, war was their profession; and a fight with the foe being for the moment impracticable, they ingeniously set about renewing the strife with their erstwhile friends—who, like Sancho Panza, clamoured merely for something to eat. Our recent experiences had tended to moderate our claims in this regard; we had become inured to bad living; our constitutions had had time to wax weak; our appetites were less hearty. Matters appertaining to the stomach had reached a sad pass. Mealie meal, ad lib., was no longer possible, and porridge—well, the good that it had done lived after it, though we had never acknowledged the actual doing of it. Rice was issued to Indians exclusively, and, albeit they got nothing else, they had on the whole rather the better of Europeans. The exhaustion of our golden syrup made the children—young and "over-grown"—weep. We had been reduced to the ignominy of cultivating a toleration of what was called treacle, and even that nauseous compound was drifting towards extinction. They were hard times for all who could eat their soup; they were harder still for those whom the look of it satisfied. To these latter a tribute of praise for consistency is due, whatever may be said of their sense. The pathos of it all was that we got plenty of tea. We had no milk, and because we needed in consequence all the more sugar we were given less; and as "mealie-pap" had pride of place on the menu the day's allowance of sugar was only too apt to be recklessly monopolised in giving that a taste. We were observing a protracted lenten season, a more rigorous fast than any Church prescribes. The local Catholic Bishop appreciated the gravity of the situation when he suspended the Church's law against the use of meat on Fridays. Eat it when you can (which might be only one day in the week, Friday as likely as any other), this edict amounted to in effect.

But we had yet fourteen ounces of bread to preserve us, the whole of which ration was sometimes polished off by mid-day meal time. There could be no modification in that direction. Fourteen ounces of bread was needed to sustain life. But the Military apparently thought otherwise; they suddenly intimated that we must endeavour to keep its lamp aflame on "ten!" The Commissariat reckoned it possible; so the new "Law" was set in motion without compunction. A number of Fingoes preferred to die at home for choice, and with leave of the Colonel made an effort to get there. Unhappily, they were not allowed a choice; the Boers drove them back "to die with the English." Unlike the Basutos, the Fingo tribe was not physically or geographically in a position to make reprisals for such indignities. Besides, the English, the Boers knew, would be bound to share their last crust with their black brethren, and they wanted us to get to the last crust stage at our earliest convenience.

Contrary to expectation, nothing exciting occurred on Tuesday. The enemy again concentrated their fire on the Sanatorium; they evidently esteemed starvation, however expedient as a means for shuffling off the common herd, a little too good for a thinker in Continents. According to documents which had been found in the pocket of a Boer prisoner, Mr. Rhodes was awaiting a favourable opportunity to escape in "a big balloon!" This strange idea may have been responsible for the efforts made to lay the great balloonist.

A cricket match was played in the afternoon by twenty-two disciples of Tapley; and sundry flashes of congratulation—adulatory of our gallant stand—were exchanged between our Mayor and Port Elizabeth's. These messages were soothing, but none of us acknowledged it. Soft words, alas! only reminded us of parsnips. And soon we should be without bread. The bread question was the topic of the hour, and gave rise to more acrimony than had any antecedent injustice. Such unwonted severity in the administration of Civil affairs was a strain on the loyalty of a people self-governed since they were born. The view was stoutly maintained that the situation was not so bad as to warrant the adoption of such drastic measures. They were straining the limits of human endurance too callously. Nothing could alter our resolve to dispute with the Boer every inch of the ground we defended. So much was agreed. But the tendency to famish us displayed by our Rulers was not calculated to improve the morale of a civilian, or any, army. It did not bespeak the early relief of Kimberley. Actions like Kekewich's and Gorle's in the matter of bread fostered feelings of indifference. They would not stimulate the town's defenders to shoot better or to fight the more tenaciously in a crisis. With troops pouring into the country, wherefore the need of so much supererogation? A hungry man capable of demolishing a ten ounce loaf—a siege product—in ten bites might well echo wherefore indeed!

On Wednesday Lord Methuen could be heard banging as usual. In the early days, the halcyon days of optimism, the banging would have been exhilarating to a degree; but the march of events had compelled us to reason better. The day was uncommonly quiet; even the diurnal fling at Mr. Rhodes was omitted. Lies, rumours, sensations, fabrications were still rampant. A poster in all the paraphernalia of Official authority, proclaiming the relief of Mafeking—four months too soon!—adorned the walls of the Town House. General Buller, we were informed, was about to unlock the door of Ladysmith—"the key had been found." But evidently the lock had not, as was proven by the subsequent disastrous retreat across the Tugela.

Business was at this period conducted in more orderly fashion at the Washington Market, partly due, no doubt, to the unmixed "meat" put up for sale. Everything was simplified; the Authorities had developed into wholehoggers in horseflesh. A placard bearing the grim inscription, "horse only" was flaunted in the market place. The arrangement saved the butcher much troublesome computation—untrammelled as he was by bovine fractions—and injured trade agreeably. It kept off the folk who had no dogs, and others who preferred to take the State Soup, with their eyes shut. All the cattle slaughtered were exclusively for the Kitchen. The "Law" decreed it; it was in the "Gazette," and was nothing if not in equity. The quality of the soup was poorer than ever; the quantity offered for sale was suspiciously large, and, oh! so inferior to the article served out with a flourish of ladles a week before. Many took the pledge against it (some of them broke it), but there were plenty less aesthetically constituted who could dissipate on two pints! We could yet buy carrots, dry, tough little things; but they were vegetables beyond question, and there is much in a name where horses are cooked. They (the carrots) were sold by the State at threepence a bunch, and the people still made wild rushes to purchase them. A force of police was always on duty at the vegetable, the carrot wing of the market, and it was interesting to watch the human nature in everybody, including strong men not ordinarily credited with much of it.

Thursday was uneventful. The quasi-official statement relative to the relief of Mafeking was contradicted. The peculiarity of the proceeding—of contradicting an agreeable canard—not the contradiction itself—occasioned surprise; it was so unusual. Some people attributed it to a desire on the Colonel's part cheaply to vindicate Official veracity in all things—not injurious to the "Military Situation!" All our little troubles and kicks against the pricks had to be subordinated to the "Military Situation." The quality of the very horse we ate was due to the "Military Situation." The local situation, with its alarming death roll, was a trifle light as air beside the other. Had the Colonel in his wisdom seen anything in its suppression advantageous to the "Military Situation," the truth anent Mafeking would hardly have seen the light. The "Military Situation" was sacrosanct, supreme, inviolable! It was a fetish, a sort of idol that the "Law" commanded all creeds and classes to worship.

In the afternoon an occasional shell was jerked into the town. Kenilworth was loudly barked at for an hour; and the correspondent of the London Times, while driving in the suburb, narrowly escaped being bitten. But no cattle were hit; that was the pity of it. We could have forgiven the Boers much had they only killed the oxen, and provided us with something rational to eat, in spite of the Colonel and his horses.

Friday was all excitement; we had a glimpse of the balloon again, waltzing at a high altitude in the heavens, the Column's artillery the while maintaining a continuous uproar. Soon a terrific report was heard, which was presumed to have been caused by the explosion of a Boer magazine. A lyddite missile had done the deed; no "common" shell, we argued, could have created such a noise. After an hour the balloon disappeared, and we were of the earth earthly once more. Late in the evening some harmless shells dropped into the streets, and a second catastrophe befel a Boer magazine.

Saturday again. Lord Methuen proclaimed it through the throat of his cannon. Long Cecil—pretending to deduce from their silence that the Boers imagined it to be Sunday—was most profuse in the distribution of "compliments." But no acknowledgment came back, no error was admitted, and the day dragged itself to an end, leaving little in its train to turn one's thoughts from gloomy retrospection.

It was at this time that practical people began to express amazement at the conduct of their less practical neighbours. A new epidemic had broken out. The doctrine of self-help was being practised with a vengeance. The pleasure of gardening was the newest discovery. In short, the notion of growing vegetables on our own, so to speak, since we could not buy them readymade, had come to be acclaimed as the higher sagacity. The curious feature of this departure was that it should grow in popularity as the Siege approached its appointed end. Relief or no relief, the vegetables would not be wasted. But the practical people only laughed at economic platitudes. Vegetable seeds were in great demand, and families were everywhere to be seen reclaiming their ten by ten feet patches of common-age—where half a blade of grass had never grown before! Some enthusiasts, to enlarge their holdings, went even so far as to pull down their untenanted fowl-houses. The soil was not so favourable to horticulture as it might have been, but the best was made of it. Inspired by a determination to live as long as possible we ruthlessly uprooted our flowers, and conjured up visions of unborn potatoes and cabbage. If the Military kept whittling down our rations, if we were to be permitted only to nibble like so many birds, the vegetables might one day serve as a dernier ressort. Who could tell?

The enterprise displayed was admirable; but—had we to wait till the vegetables grew? Were they to grow while we waited? This sudden zeal for the development of the land recalled the song of the condemned Irishman who took advantage of his judge's clemency, and with characteristic humour selected a gooseberry bush from which to be hanged. When the objection was raised that "it would not be high enough," he expressed his willingness to wait till it grew!

This policy of despair irritated the landless classes, and some of them were mean enough to remind us that Martial Law forbade the use of water for gardening purposes. But the reminder only furnished the workers with a fresh incentive; it made their work a real as well as an ideal pleasure. The possibility of breaking the "Law" (with impunity) was worth a deal of productive, or unproductive, labour. The bread ordinance had not increased our respect for "benevolent" despotism. Any chance of setting at naught the absolute prepensities of our legislators (with a watering-can or by judicious keyhole stuffing, to hide the light) was duly availed of.

No amount of the portentous signalling that went on night after night could resuscitate our faith in the Military. An age ago the Magersfontein misfortune had put off indefinitely the long-expected succour. We had been made to feel our insignificance beside the "Military Situation." Our population after all was mainly black, but black or white, we were nothing to the "Military Situation." Sickness might increase, and troubles multiply; Kafirs and children might perish in batches; meanwhile the "Military Situation" decried even a tear.



CHAPTER XVII

Week ending 10th February, 1900

The pen-ultimate Sunday of our captivity was notable for nothing but the average crop of rumours which had characterised every day of our Siege existence. The listlessness of the people stood out in marked contrast to their sanguine outlook when the Siege was young, and when the folly of prophesying unless one knew remained not only, as it were, unsmoked but outside our pipes altogether. Still—to pursue the metaphor—our pretensions in the role of prophet had clearly ended in smoke. Happily, the disillusioning fog had come upon us by degrees. The cheerfulness with which we had resigned ourselves to bear the first-class misdemeanant's treatment of a cut and dry "three weeks'" imprisonment but exemplified, we had thought in all seriousness, the traditional sporting instincts of our race; and though it was not over-pleasing to our traditional pride, the destruction of our dogmas had not been taken to heart. Our faith in the invincibility of the British army had long continued unshaken. The interval between the expiry of the period (of three weeks) which with the collective wisdom of all the wizards we had decreed to be a synonym for the Siege's duration, and the morning of the pronouncement relative to the advance of the Column from Orange River, had had its tedium neutralised by a cheerful vituperation of Gladstone's defective statesmanship in the year of 'eighty-one and his wicked efforts at a later date to "give Ireland away too." The move from Orange River had occasioned general rejoicings. Unaccountable delay ensued. One disappointment was followed by another. Anxiety began to manifest itself. The dire stage of doubt was reached. Hunger, thirst, and horseflesh succeeded in due order; until at last we saw:—

What shadows we are, And what shadows we pursue.

We pursued them no longer—in the Siege sense. "All the pleasing illusions, which make power gentle and obedience liberal," were gone. The eating and the drinking were gone. Even the surreptitious read in bed was but a relic of joy; the penalty of burning the candle at both ends was being paid. To have a bath was a crime; a little water was allowed for tea and soup only. Soda-water was the sole product of the lemonade factories; but the quality of Adam's ale tasted worse and was more suggestive of typhoid in that form than in any other. Made into tea it was better, until the Military, with fears for the nerves of the "Military Situation," indirectly curbed our excesses in the cup that does not inebriate. A proclamation was issued which actually went so far as to establish by "Law" the number of ounces of fuel to be used by householders! Expert landladies declared the number (six ounces) insufficient; the cynical boarders said it was too much! The medical men had been entreating us—vainly, for the most part—to boil the water before drinking it in any form, and had proclaimed it inimical to health in its raw state. But the "Military Situation," bless you! could not be compromised by microbes, and if extravagance in fuel involved a possibility so awful it had to be crushed with an uncompromising hand.

Such were the anomalies prevailing; taken in conjunction with the ever-increasing seriousness of our position they were hard to bear with patience. Our hopes of relief were at zero. "Three months more" would sum up a fair consensus of opinion in regard to the further continuance of the Siege. Oh, it was said, the food would not last so long. But it had been undergoing such a process of stretching; who knew how much farther it would not be carried. The authorities were capable of anything. A death or two (or twenty-two!) from starvation would not soften hearts obsessed by an elusive "Situation." Surrender, however, was out of the question; having gone so far we could not turn back. The Flag, too, whatever the Standard-bearers might be, was worth keeping aloft. Exacting too much it was; but there was no alternative, save surrender, to the lowering of it.

Our mental machinery being thus rusted for want of the oil of contentment it is not incomprehensible that the bulk of the people should have come to regard the Siege as a thing interminable; and faith in miracles was not the average citizen's predominant characteristic. The mere mention of the Column provoked a jeer. Numerous philosophers came into being. Shakespeare was never so highly appreciated, nor so famous; never reckoned so "clever," nor quoted so generally; scarcely heard of before, indeed, by some of the new philosophers. His Hamlet's soliloquy (which accorded with our mood) was considered very good.

Monday came and went quietly enough, the enemy's attention being given entirely to Kenilworth. It made no difference to us whether the cattle lived or died; we regarded the assault as a waste of energy. A few horses—the irony of it!—were slaughtered by the shells intended for the oxen. The mutilation of the latter would have been far more advantageous to the Civil "Situation," and—how nice if the Boers had been better shots!

Throughout Tuesday a good many interchanges took place between the rival artillerists. Long Cecil made some excellent practice, while the Boers occupied themselves with Beaconsfield. A few raps were attempted at the Sanatorium hall-door, as an intimation that a special eye ogled the visitors; and some projectiles which fell in the rear of the Kimberley Club indicated that the same vigilant optic was alive to the fact that Rhodes lunched there. It may here be mentioned that Mr. Rhodes often brought his lunch—fresh eggs and the like!—to the hospital to give to some wounded soldier with unimpaired digestive mechanism. Otto's Kopje was assailed during the day, and havoc was played with a few trucks—rusted with ease—at the railway station.

The inevitable calm which precedes a storm was felt on Wednesday. The morning passed quietly. Whispers of imminent woe were painfully common. Rumour, subordinating love, ruled "the Court, the camp, the grove." It was not literally defined, this surpassing evil; its exact nature was locked up in the breasts of the Authorities. Hours rolled by; dinner-time (the time for dinner) passed; sufficient for the day is the evil thereof; we were beginning to think that we had received the day's allotment, when a boom rang through the startled air! Now, a boom (in warfare) is not an harmonious note; but one gets accustomed to discord as to most other things. It was not the boom that was strange; it was the loud, unearthly chord it seemed to strike; the dread whiz which followed; which blanched faces, and sent the timid housemaid diving beneath the bed out of harm's way. Was it an earthquake?—the buildings shook. A fearful crash dissipated the notion. A fearful crash, indeed; but a material sound—a relief from its weird, unnerving prelude. Individuals living miles apart asserted that the missile had seemed to shoot past their ears. Yet one shell had caused all the tumult. The awful whiz was repeated again and again. The great six-inch gun from Mafeking had started its work of destruction. The crisis had come. The last and bloodiest act of the tragedy had begun—with no knowledge on our side that it was the last, to sustain us.

It had come without warning; when the heat was insufferable, and the town a veritable Sahara as regards facilities for quenching thirst; when the tension was at its worst; when sickness, disease, and death were busiest. It had come, in fine, with a crown for the sorrows of Kimberley.

From an artist's point of view a town with high stone buildings would have offered better raw material for picturesque ruins. In Kimberley we had but one substantial building that would meet the necessities of the case, viz., the City Hall. It was the only imposing structure we could boast of, and was by consequence the harder to hit, albeit some creditable tries were made to hit it. Large holes were dug in the Market Square, in which process of grave-digging by storm a little girl was injured—not by a shell, but by the volley of small pebbles it displaced. This class of buckshot—apart from the missiles themselves—did a good deal of light skirmishing about the calves of people's legs, and threw dust in their eyes with the force and fury of a "south-easter." One gentleman, meandering in the Square, narrowly evaded dismemberment, and was fortunate in getting off with a slight bruise. Another hissing monster went tearing through the roof of the Buffalo Club, upsetting a billiard table, and laying it out a disordered heap of firewood on the floor. Fire-wood was worth something; and since chips of his anatomy were not in the heap—perchance to be utilised in the cooking of horseflesh for somebody else to eat—its grateful proprietor conducted himself with resignation.

Meanwhile the scattered fragments of the same mischievous projectile careered gaily through the air. One piece—no bigger than a Siege loaf—with sardonic humour embedded itself in the stomach of a horse and killed it instantaneously. This was pitiful, for the animal had been fed, and was in the very act of being shod. The smith escaped unhurt. Another missile tested the metal of a boiler, in a house in Belgravia, by smashing it into scrap-iron. Whether the shell was intended for a batch of bread in the adjoining oven is uncertain; the satisfactory fact remained that the bread was unbroken. Buildings which had been but imperfectly ventilated by the smaller shells had proper port-holes made in them, and chimney-tops went down like nine-pins. We were, in short, in a couple of hours afforded a grim conception of what modern munitions can do. To that extent the assault was instructive. But that extent was small and did not impress our common sense—which, by the way, was small, too, and not at all common.

At six o'clock the firing ceased, and the "Mafeking terror" was allowed to cool. I might as well explain here that our surmise was entirely wrong. The gun came from—nobody knew where; but everybody said, from Mafeking. We said more; the Cape Government (the Bond Ministry) had purchased it in England for the Transvaal, in furtherance, as was implied, of the projected sweeping of the English into the sea. This was a hugged delusion until some fool dispelled it by discovering the gun to be a "creuzot" which had been purchased in France by the Transvaal. But it mattered little where it had been purchased; it was a tangible reality, a presage of sanguinary import. It was a time for action; and maybe the picks and shovels did not rise to the occasion! Fort-making was the rage; the men worked with a will—the women acting as hod-carriers—to make the graves in which they hoped to live as deep as possible. All over the city the navvies—amateur and professional—sweated and panted, so successfully that unless the shells were to levy direct taxation on the people in the forts, well, the pieces might skim their heads but they could not cut them off. The little garden patches were pitilessly disembowelled of the vegetable seeds so recently planted. We had lived to see them grow, but up they had to come lest we should be planted ourselves.

In the meantime our friend the enemy—more intimate and candid than ever—appeared to be fully sensible of the havoc the new weapon was capable of causing. All ears were strained to catch the first sound of the Kamfers Dam monster. It was sighted at low range, and the boom, whiz, and crash seemed to jumble all together. The comparative corks with which we had been assailed hitherto used to shoot high into the air, whistling several bars of music before touching terra firma, and by careful attention to time it had been to some extent possible to dodge them. So at least it was stated. The day waned, and the attack was not renewed. It was suggested that perhaps the gun had "bust"; but the straw was too thin to be worth catching at.

It was quite four o'clock in the afternoon ere the first shell hurtled through the air. The heat in the open was suffocating, and the rush to the underground atmosphere was not the less brisk on that account. A constant assault was maintained for two hours. Shops, boarding houses, and private dwellings were battered indiscriminately. A studio in Dutoitspan Road was broken up; the Central Hotel was struck; and two little children were slightly hurt. But the saddest incident of the day was the death of a young man—an employee of the Standard Hotel—who was struck down at his work mortally wounded. One or two persons had their shins kicked by passing fragments. Numerous wonderful escapes were heard of. What with the vibrations of the demoralising water-melons and their hap-hazard propensities in the choice of victims, it is difficult even vaguely to convey an idea of the test to which the mettle of the people was put.

The bombardment was to have a dramatic termination, for the last heavy projectile hurled into Kimberley landed in the capacious premises of Cuthbert's Boot Store. Nobody was hit; but not many minutes had passed when dense volumes of smoke followed by flames issued through the windows—until at last the building had developed into a mighty bonfire. What everybody long feared had at length happened. The excitement was intense; hundreds of men, women, and children flocked to the burning pile. The Fire Brigade used the hose for what it was worth; but to no avail; the house was doomed, and finally was completely gutted. When the blaze was at its height a few small shells fell amid the gesticulating throng of sight-seers. A stampede followed; but nobody was struck, mirabile dictu; and there was a general alternative run away and sneak back as each missile exhausted itself.

There was an element of romance, more startling than the fire itself, in all this. It was thought that the building (Abraham's Store) adjacent to the one in flames was in grave danger, and the united exertions of the firemen were ultimately directed to the task of saving it. Within its hallowed walls was collected the bulk of our confiscated food! It had been stored away by order of the Czar, and was guarded day and night by a strong detachment of well-armed Cossacks. This circumstance lent, it need hardly be said, a piquant and absorbing interest to the progress of the blaze. It was of supreme importance—to the "Military" as well as minor "Situations"—that the supplies should be preserved. What a glowing page it would be in the war's history that the enemy three miles away had compelled surrender by burning our provisions! For ourselves, we got so little of the provisions to eat that we should not have been particularly broken-hearted by the contretemps. Familiarity breeds contempt, and we Were familiar with the "Military Situation"; its exactions were so absurdly impalpable. It was natural, therefore, that the activity of the Military should have provoked a certain amount of chaff from the multitude of hungry civilians. The chaff went round, anyhow, whether it was natural or not. Officers tripped over officers in the wildest confusion, ordering, shouting, swearing, and directing the shop-boys, the soldiers, and the Kafirs who toiled like demons to throw the threatened foodstuffs into the street in an impossible space of time. The men tumbled and staggered in clusters, while the advantages of being a native unencumbered by the collars of our celestial civilisation were conspicuously apparent. We had our eyes wide open for all possible pickings; but so also had the rascally Cossacks. Only one gentleman (a most respected citizen) got off with a case of—candles! Barrels of oil were rolled into the streets (between files of soldiers, lest anyone should roll a barrel home), to the indignant surprise of the people thus afforded ocular demonstration of the extent to which the commandeering mania had been carried; it was worse even than they had thought—which is saving a great deal! When everything had been finally heaped outside, steps were taken forthwith—to carry them in again. All danger of their ignition had long since vanished; and the mob dispersed in a wild rush as the clock chimed nine.

What a day Friday was! Beginning at six in the morning the firing was kept up unceasingly until night-fall. All day long the death-dealing projectiles swept like a hurricane through the city, terrorising, killing, lacerating, surpassing previous visitations by odds that were long indeed. We had had sufficient evidence to judge of what the great gun at Kamfers Dam alone could do. But on Friday we were pelted from all directions with a fury unknown hitherto. The first bulletin to send a thrill of horror through the people—huddled away in holes—contained intelligence of the deaths of a well-known lady and her infant child; they had been struck down as they emerged from their shelter for a breath of fresh air. In Woodly Street a huge missile went clean through the roof of a house, shot past the heads of a lady and gentleman seated on the stoep, fell on a soft patch in front of the door, and burst with a deafening thud five feet under ground. With the aid of a pick and shovel the fragments were exhumed and pieced together in the presence of the pallid spectators; and had the next shell fallen on or near the same spot (as sometimes happened) the results would have been more calamitous. Many persons had an idea that they were safer in the streets than in houses where the additional danger of flying furniture was ever present. Several exciting escapes were witnessed in the Market Square, and shells fell thickly in the vicinity of the fire station. A telephone pole had a semi-lunar lump neatly cut out by a passing missile. With undiminished fury the bombardment proceeded, battering down walls and gables, and filling hearts with a desire, a longing for vengeance, to be duly indulged when the fates were propitious.

It was growing late on this tragic Friday when a profound sensation was caused by a rumour which excited universal awe. George Labram had been killed by a shell at the Grand Hotel. It sounded incredible, so improbable and astounding, that he of all others, he who had achieved greatness in adverse circumstances by constructing a large gun, the famous Long Cecil—that he should be a victim. Labram dead! Was it a fabrication? Alas! no; it was true; a sad, a lurid incident, hardly needed to mark the day memorable. There was a pathetic strangeness in the fatality that gave rise to philosophic reflections.

Emboldened by a conviction that we should presently be glad to supplicate for food and quarter, the enemy relaxed not their energy. It must not be supposed that our guns were idle all this time. Long Cecil plied pluckily to hit back, and succeeded in frustrating the ambitious efforts of the Boers to draw their guns still nearer. They were rather too close as things were, however, and with the aid of the Maxims we successfully besought the enemy to fling away ambition. To that limited extent we defeated Boer designs. Lord Methuen's sympathetic coughs in the bed of the Orange River were heard at intervals throughout the day, the long, enervating day which did terminate at last. Worn out by its trials though we were, sleep was not easily coaxed to weigh our eyelids down; like other "necessaries," it was rare indeed.

Contrary to expectation, the ferocious assault was not resumed on Saturday morning. It was a blessed interlude, too; there was so much to whistle about with unbated breath. The prejudice against the Boers and the arrogant gentlemen who led and fed us was at its fiercest. How was it all going to end? A feeling of desperation, engendered by the sufferings of their families, permeated men's hearts and filled them with a readiness to dare much, to sacrifice a great deal. The situation was critical, and many a reckless plan to ease it emanated from minds normally prudent. The outcry against the Military rose to a high pitch; the air was reeking with denunciations apropos of their culpability for—things in general. Their manipulation of the victuals, as I have endeavoured to show, did not pre-possess many in their favour, and fresh complaints in this connection were constantly forthcoming. Information was being suppressed, we cried; our actual condition and circumstances were being misrepresented; the notoriety of individuals was being purchased at the expense of the "greater number!" Of course, these charges had been in the air for a long while; but after Friday they, though still much in the air, matured in intensity. Dissatisfaction was expressed on all sides. We—some of us—were willing to admit the necessity of Martial Law, its rigours, severity, and discipline; but it was too much to expect us to stand mutely by while the Military gabbled of the "Military Situation," and (as we suspected) inwardly built temples of fame in the air, in which they would merit a prominent niche when, say, half a year had passed; when the last horse-chop had frizzled on the pan; and when incidentally numbers had been killed, maimed, or starved!

The clamour developed. No fuel was needed to feed the spreading flame of resentment. None was needed, but it was supplied all the same—and from a most unexpected quarter, namely, the Diamond Fields' Advertiser! It was a startling denouement. The chains that bound the "mighty engine" were burst asunder. The spell of militarism was broken; the people's paper was itself again, and the people took it to their hearts as the champion of their rights and privileges. Its leading article on Saturday summarised the situation in a nutshell. It is too good to pass. Commenting on the version of our sorrows supplied by signal, the sturdy organ in a manner after our own hearts let flow the following deluge of consoling truths:—

"... What are the facts? We have stood a Siege which is rapidly approaching the duration of the Siege of Paris; we have practically defended ourselves with citizen soldiers; for, thankful as we are to the Imperial garrison, their numbers have condemned them to play a secondary role; we have raised a large body of mounted troops, who have on two occasions attacked the enemy's strongholds with the most magnificent gallantry; and through the genius of Mr. Labram—whose tragic death yesterday has sent a thrill of sorrow through the whole community—we have been able not merely to supply ammunition for the pop-guns sent to Kimberley, but also to produce in our workshops the only weapon capable of minimising the terrible havoc and destruction caused by the enemy's six-inch gun, throwing a projectile weighing 100 pounds broadcast over the town at range of three miles. They shout to us, 'Have patience!' Will they remember that we have fought alone and unaided for four long months? Will they remember that we are situated practically in the centre of a desert, 600 miles from the coast, and have been compelled from the beginning to depend on our own resources, and that our lives are daily and hourly exposed to danger? Is it unreasonable, when our women and children are being slaughtered and our buildings fired, to expect something better than that a large British army should remain inactive in the presence of eight or ten thousand peasant soldiers? Surely the time has come to put in plain English the plain truths of the situation. We have been influenced in the past by various considerations, notably a desire to avoid compromising what is called the 'Military Situation.' We have now come to the conclusion that respect for the 'Military Situation' merely means deceiving our own people. The Press correspondents cabling to the London papers are actually not permitted to mention that Kimberley has been bombarded by a six-inch gun! This is indeed the last straw, and if only for the sake of future record we take this opportunity of placing the naked truth before our readers."

Lively indeed was the satisfaction which greeted this unexpected change of policy. But there was little time for jubilation, for after breakfast the shells came whistling through the air. They were delivered in a desultory fashion, and in the afternoon at still less frequent intervals. Happily, little damage was done and firing ceased at sunset. It was over for the week; the prospective respite of thirty-six hours was a pleasing thought; the morrow would be Sunday, and Sunday was sacred. Precedent and our sense of the fitness of things alike justified the assumption. But it did not occur to us that the chimes of midnight were yet many hours off, nor that from eight o'clock to twelve the unkindest cut of all was to be administered.

There was something terribly unearthly in the sound of the whizzing destroyers as they careered across the houses in the blackness of the silent night. This was the hardest strain of all, and more trying to the nerves than anything they had to endure in the clear light of day. It was a never-to-be forgotten ordeal in the lives of the good folk of Kimberley. From his high and dangerous perch on the conning tower the bugler ever and anon blew his bugle, suggesting to the scared housemaid the psychological moment for a plunge beneath the bed. On each application of the fuse to Long Tom the bugle rang out in clarion tones its warning to seek cover. It made plaintive melody in the nocturnal stillness, bespeaking the death-knell perchance of many. Nobody was abroad, excepting a solemn procession of men wending its way to the cemetery with all that was mortal of George Labram. Cannon in front of them volleyed and thundered—to avoid which the late hour had been chosen for the burial.

Thus closed the long and dreadful week. Over-wrought women and children emerged from their sodden refuges to court a long-deferred rest, if they might, for after the events of the night anything might happen. Who was to tell what the morning might not show?



CHAPTER XVIII

Week ending 17th February, 1900

We awoke on Sunday morning with fears of what had happened during the night. It transpired, however, to our infinite relief, that most of the shells had fallen on the soft earth of the Public Gardens. One poor soldier had his leg completely severed from his body, while the escapes of his nonchalant bed-fellows were hairbreadth. A house was set on fire and reduced to ashes. Another missile entered the hospital, but did no great harm beyond rudely extinguishing a lighted lamp. A lady who resided in a house close by went as near to the borders of eternity as was possible without crossing them. She was seated on a folding-chair, and had momentarily altered her position to find a bunch of keys required by her servant when right through the spot on which she would have been still reclining but for the timely intervention of the girl a huge projectile came crashing. The shock was fearful, and though, the missile failed to burst both women had an escape from death unprecedented in its narrowness. A native was seriously injured; and, finally, it was ascertained that a Malay canteen had been invaded, the sequel to which was the destruction of an army of—empty bottles! There was a negative satisfaction in the fact that they were empty which the hapless Malay was not venal enough to appreciate.

In the houses, the streets, the camps, the all-engrossing topics of discourse were the terrors of the week so dramatically closed when churchyards yawned on Saturday. Excited groups were talking everywhere, and questions of hunger and thirst, supremely acute, were subordinated to the more urgent public importance of the new situation, its dangers, and its gravity. The feeling grew, the belief gained strength that the weight of the Siege cross was being officially minimised. The outside world, Lord Roberts included, knew nothing of its actual heaviness. This revelation was tangible and distinct. The gun story narrated by our newspaper only too clearly exemplified the meagre information sent out concerning the public larder, the public health, the parlous pass altogether to which the public had been reduced. No confidence could be reposed in the men at the helm; in pilots who betrayed unwillingness to steer for harbour; who preferred recklessly to exploit their valour for the sake of a selfish notoriety. To these haughty, arbitrary men, accidentally armed with authority, was attributed much that was avoidable. Their conduct stirred our invective powers to rich depths of condemnation. Not that from this candid declamation we expected good to flow; it only served as a salve for our tortured dignity.

It was the last Sunday of the Siege! But no advance ray of light that was to come illumined our mental horizon. We expected nothing; chimeras had ceased to satisfy, and were not the less sternly because tacitly taboo. It was sought indeed to placate us with talk about "imminent developments." They told us that a meeting of leading citizens had been held under the presidency of Mr. Rhodes; that the naked truth of things had been telegraphed to the Commander-in-chief; that the Commander-in-chief had on receipt of the message sent a flying Column to relieve us. All this was circulated to soothe; but it failed abjectly in its purpose. We were not to be fooled "the whole of the time," by cant about flying Columns—whose wings, like those of Icarus, were only too likely to get detached in the heat of the Karoo. Such was the temper, the inflexible pessimism of the people; the much-talked of change that was to come over the scene was voted a delusion and a fraud.

Business was of course entirely suspended; and further projects to ensure immunity from danger for the women and children were being discussed. It was confidently expected that the bombardment would be resumed with surpassing fury at midnight. An underground dwelling had been constructed at the railway station, and under the bridge great walls of sandbags had been erected for the protection of pedestrians. In all parts of the town gangs of men were excavating the debris heaps and converting them into habitations in which thousands, irrespective of colour, social status, or nationality, were henceforth to commingle and waive all distinctions of class. To the redoubts, where wonderful contrivances in the way of chambers had been fitted up, some men brought their families. Shelters and "dug-outs" sprang into being everywhere; and the troubles of the inner man, in reality more poignant than ever before, were relegated for the moment to the limbo of forgotten tribulations. Reliance on relieving expeditions was considered foolish; all our thoughts and energies were centred in a desire to stay the slaughter of the innocents, and thus in a manner to spike the enemy's guns.

A wild craving to spike them in a more concrete fashion pervaded the minds of hundreds. The cavil against the Colonel abated not a jot; the epithets hurled at his devoted head were as picturesque as of yore. But side by side with this domestic hostility there had developed a deeper, less noisy feeling of resentment against the dear Boers themselves. Volunteers in plenty were ready for any deed of daring that would enable them to give back blow for blow. Not the least enthusiastic in this regard were the Regular soldiers; they wanted to destroy or capture the gun at Kamfers Dam, recking not the wildness, the impracticability of the enterprise, but eager for a try—to be heroes in the strife. Colonel Kekewich was waited on for his sanction; but he argued that the expedition would entail certain destruction for half of the proposed attacking force, and would result in failure. The fortifications of the enemy, he maintained, were too strong, the gun was too well guarded. In the excitement prevailing a practical view of this kind was apt to be misconstrued, as indeed it was. The Colonel's position was a delicate and responsible one; but, ignoring that, his refusal to countenance the proposed assault lowered him in the minds of individuals bursting to do something desperate, as well as in the valorous estimation of others who merely wanted to see it done.

It was the last Sunday of the Siege! It was not stated; no credence would have been accorded to the suggestion. The day advanced, and blood-curdling legends—appertaining to the arrival of batteries from the north, to assist in the completion of Kimberley's subjugation—abounded on all sides. The rumour-monger excelled himself; not one but four six-inch guns were to sing on Monday; our past experiences were to be proved but a foretaste of worse things in store. The Mines had been talked of as a place of refuge, and when the hour at which we lunched (when luncheons were) was reached the dead walls of the city were placarded with great posters, inviting all women and children who desired perfect security to take up their residence in the caverns of De Beers! The drastic nature of the prophylactic was objected to; it was feared by the quidnuncs that the treatment might prove more injurious in its ultimate effects than the ills it was intended to ward off. But this element was silenced, and soon was witnessed a procession of people with bundles of bedding and crockery on their shoulders wending their way (in a thunderstorm) to their deep-level homes. From all parts of the city streams of families were converging towards the "Kimberley" and the "De Beers" mines. There were a few bejewelled dames whose ideal of good form and adoration of the convenances would not allow them to entertain such a "fall"; it was asking too much; what would Mrs. Grundy say? There was again a timid set whose notions of a pilgrimage to the bowels of the earth were peculiar; who associated with it all the dangers attending a balloon adventure—plus the probability of asphyxiation. But as time wore on the crowds grew thicker and thicker, until the outstanding minority began to feel lonely, then to waver, and finally to take their places as martyrs in the "Lift" that was to lower them into regions infernal. It was a striking ensemble that mustered at the mouth of the mines. All grades of society were there, and specimens of almost every European nation, mingled with the Kafir the Zulu, the Hottentot and the countless shades and depths of duskiness that make up the coloured classes. The process of lowering the "Lift" began at four o'clock. It was tedious work. Only eight or nine persons could be let down at a time, and some of the trippers had so many rugs, mattresses, cushions, antimacassars, and like lumber along with them as to make the downward flight of eighteen hundred feet a pleasure-trip distinctly modern. With exemplary patience the emigrants waited, until it suddenly dawned on them—so slow was the progress made—that there was every possibility of the dread hour of twelve anticipating them. And then the pushing and the shoving commenced. It was past eleven, and there were yet hundreds to go down when "house full" was shouted. Arrangements were hurriedly made to domicile the surplus in the debris heaps. Midnight came; not a gun was heard. Morning dawned; and the weak and young were safe from the ravages of shot and shell. Thus had closed the last, eventful Sunday of thraldom. The work achieved did much to ease men's minds, to revivify their hope, and to strengthen their readiness to immolate themselves, if need be, on the altar of duty.