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.