The Siege of Kimberley. T. Phelan
the reader. That thirty thousand of her Majesty's subjects should be "by law forbid" to quench their thirst was incredible. That men in the "trade" should by consequence suffer financial loss, and have the sweat of their brows, as it were, confiscated, was an evasion of the Constitution (superseded though it was by Martial Law) which outraged the name of liberty. It was a bitter pill to swallow; but it had to be swallowed under pain of penalty for even a grimace. Some of the patients could not let the purgative down; they deliberately let nature take its course—the sequel to which was the mobilisation of the Trapper Reserves for active service. And still the slimness of the native contrived to dodge the wiles of civilisation. With the assistance of some Coolie shop-keepers (who acted as middlemen) he yet managed to drink a fair share. But the middlemen, too, were hauled over the coals. A few Indians went so far as to establish without license little canteens of their own, thereby outraging all law, civil and military. In such cases the canteens were confiscated. The Summary Court had altogether a busy time, and the Official Interpreters, Dutch, Kafir, and Indian, were "sweated" at last.
Wednesday was quiet; so also was Thursday, our peace being marred by neither shells nor hooters. The hooters, indeed, were never to do it again—a graceful concession, for which we gave thanks; their cat-calls had been so nerve-shaking. The monotony was relieved on Friday by some shells which came right into the city—as far as the Post Office. They omitted to burst. The boom of a gun, which had been wont to play havoc with the nervous, had come to be regarded as of no consequence, a mere tap on a drum, eliciting a nonchalant "Ah, there she goes," and nothing more. Everybody was alive for fragments of the dead missiles; curio-hunting was a craze, and hundreds of people were ever ready to pounce upon the projectiles that wasted their sweetness on the desert air. The tiniest crumb of metal was treasured as a valuable memento. The shells fell and broke as would a tea-pot, a brick, or an egg of the Stone Age. No explosion followed; no fragments flew to hurt one's ribs, or to play the dentist with one's teeth. The missiles declined to burst.
It was natural that much speculation should arise as to the cause of this anomalous state of things; and there were people to doubt its being so much due to obstinacy on the part of the shells as to inexperience on the part of the Boers. One wiseacre held that the missiles were antique and obsolete relics of the 'eighty-one struggle. Others questioned whether "the Boer" then knew that shells were invented. A lot more contended that "the Boer" was unacquainted with the mysteries of a fuse, and knew as little about "timing" a shell as he did about discipline. One or two suggested, tentatively, as a solution of the puzzle, that "he had forgotten to put the powder in." Another argued that he did not know how; while there were a few who doubted whether "the Boer" considered powder in any sense explosive. There was a garrulous "bore" (from somewhere over-sea, not Holland) who advanced a still clearer elucidation of the mystery. "What was Rhodes doing in Germany for twelve months," he cried, "tell me that?" The relevancy of this rather startling query was a little obscure, but somebody replied: "He was visiting the Kaiser." This was too much for our interlocutor; he pitied our ignorance of the world, lamented our neglected education, and, as if our weakness in arithmetic was peculiarly discreditable, deplored our inability to put "two and two together."
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