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.