Saturday was heralded in by the music of the Column’s cannon, which verily had charms to soothe our savage breasts.  It was lyddite melody; the lyddite shells were singing.  It was a siege article of faith, a siege truism, that the Boers could not long stand up to a British bombardment; and it was an accepted dogma that lyddite was the article utilised to knock them down.  We had read and heard (and magnified) much of what lyddite could do; our ideas of its decimating powers were elephantine—­and white at that.  Sometimes we pitied the Boers; but were not cognisant, of course, in such weak moments, of the disinfecting qualities of bottled vinegar; we did not then know that a portable cruet formed part and parcel of each burgher’s kit.  It did not need a protest from General Joubert against the use of lyddite to confirm our impressions of what it could do.  The local Press was alarmingly eloquent on lyddite; we read not only of what it could do, but consistent accounts of what it had actually done.  At a certain battle, for example, a lyddite shell fell among seventy Boers; and when the smoke cleared away only eight remained alive, seven of whom were asphyxiated by the fumes!  We were glad that one escaped.  Many similar tales were printed for our delectation, and our credulity—­being of the siege order—­was pathetically fine.

In the afternoon we opened fire with our big gun.  The Boers retaliated with unusual fury, and, I am sorry to add, with unusual effect, for in the duet, which lasted several hours, a missile killed Sergeant-Major Moss and wounded six men.  The death of Mr. Moss caused very general regret; like many who had gone before him, he was a well-known townsman; like others, too, he left a wife to mourn him.  The body of a white lad who had disappeared some weeks before was discovered on Saturday; and these two additions brought up our total of deaths to forty-four.  It may be well to explain that the list included three or four natives.  The natives are human beings; but some people cannot see it.

So closed the fifty-sixth day of the siege.  Two months had rolled by, at traction engine speed.  Some impatience manifested itself; the food was all wrong.  But we looked forward, and were sustained by the ultra-jolly Christmas that would be ours.  The few who had promised themselves an Antipodean Yuletide in the frost—­or slush—­of merry England could not keep their words.  The most would have to be made of the coast towns.  What an exodus it would be!  To sniff the salt air; to fight our battles over again; to fondle the missing (gastric) links that would litter the Christmas table!  The “greater number” could not of course go far from the Diamond City.  But Modder River was near.  There were the time-honoured annual excursions to that modest watering-place and now famous battlefield to excite the imagination, where “shells” could be gathered of more historic value than the “common” ones by the sea.