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:—­