The signalling went on as usual in the evening.  Heavy fighting, we were told, had taken place at Modder River, with considerable loss on both sides.  That was all; it was enough; news of that nature was not satisfying.  The De Beers Directors assembled to hold their adjourned meeting, and to adjourn it again.  Mr. Rhodes acknowledged that he had been wrong in his calculations.  Everybody was wrong, but nobody except Cecil played the candid friend.

Friday was peaceful; an opportune occasion for reviewing our losses.  All told, forty lives had been lost.  The recent disaster brought down upon the military authorities a chorus of adverse criticism.  It had been discovered, too, that it was not the first disaster; and for the losses sustained in the earlier sorties the Colonel and his advisers were also condemned.  This was hard on the military, whose conduct of previous operations had been extolled by the men in the street who now inveighed against it.  There were, of course, fair-minded people who were too honest not to remember this; but they could not forget their meat allowances; and they wrathfully connived at the hard sayings without going so far as to join in their dissemination.  But, indeed, what with regrets, tragedies, dry bread, and indifferent dinners—­their combined effect was not to lift us high above ourselves (later on, the altitude was better).  Down at the railway station extensive preparations were being made for the revivial of traffic.  Hundreds of men were employed laying down new rails, and widening the terminus—­to provide space for the miles of trams in the wake of the Column.  The Royal Engineers, accompanying the troops, were repairing the line as they advanced.  Other people, who knew better, had it that a new railroad through a circuitous route was being made.  This was asserted with a positiveness, a clearness, as it were, of second sight that cowed all promptings of common sense.  But it was not of supreme importance by what route the train came, if it only came soon.  Not a few were indifferent as to whether it ever came (in); they would be satisfied with a seat in a truck going out.  We were anxious to know what was going on in the world.  An intense longing for a glimpse of Stock Exchange quotations existed in some quarters; others were dying to “back” horses; and there were guileless people whose sorrows were epitomised in a sigh for a letter, or two, (or a dozen) from home, and corresponding assurances that all was well there.  We speculated a good deal on the probable depth of the piles of correspondence accumulating for each of us.  The letter-sorters were not enjoying their holidays; we hoped—­we knew they would soon end.  Had we dreamt that they were to lengthen into another seventy days, the dream would assuredly have killed us.  But, thank goodness, in the watches of the night our sleep was not haunted by the spectral truth.  Seventy hours assimilated better