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.