These aquatic operations seriously inconvenienced the Boers; they compelled them to make wide detours, to travel a long distance for water around the great ring which encircled Kimberley; the short cuts were dangerous.  A sad thing happened when night came.  A corporal in charge of a piquet went out to inspect his men.  Unfortunately the sentry on duty was unaware of the fact, and on the corporal’s return he was mistaken in the darkness for a marauding Boer—­with the pitiable result that the sentry shot him dead.

In the morning we had news again.  It was simply the truth concerning Colenso; fiction could not improve a deal on the loss of ten or twelve British guns.  We were unaccustomed to so much candour in the matter of reverses, and this brutal revelation of the truth overwhelmed and astonished us—­though we could scarcely pretend that we had not asked for it.  A “Slip” unfolded the tale in all its naked veracity.  It was news, fair and square value for the “thruppence,” as siege value goes; but we were in no mood to appreciate the novelty of that; the circumstances were too distressing.  Buller was roundly abused, and his staff also were included in a comprehensive denunciation; so that whoever was at fault in the Colenso collapse did not escape the wrath of Kimberley.  As one of the Pitts (was it one of the Pitts?) has aptly said:  “there are none of us infallible, not even the youngest of us.”  Not even Lord Methuen, as we had sadly discovered.  The brightness of our Christmas prospects was beginning to fade.

It faded a great deal when typhoid fever broke out in the Light Horse camp.  The outbreak was attributed to the uncertain water we had to use, since the purer supply had been cut off.  The new water was none too good.  We had been repeatedly warned to boil it before drinking it, and were now adjured to do so.  A large number heeded the warning, but the perverse majority heeded it not; they did not find it convenient to spare fuel to boil what was not essential to the creation of the “cup that cheers” when there is milk in it.  Scurvy was playing havoc with the native population.  These trials and tribulations did not enhance our festive dispositions on the eve of Christmas.  A programme of sports attracted all the Tapleys; but there was little until evening, when the scramble for the good cheer that was not in the shops had begun, to enable one to remember that Yule was nigh.

The scene was one that will be long remembered in the Diamond City.  It was only the very large stores that had anything to sell.  Before the war broke out Abrahams and Co. had purchased an immense stock of foodstuffs; but a great hole had been made in it, and it was to be much greater after Christmas.  It was at Abrahams’, therefore, that the multitude swarmed.  The traffic in sweet peas, jams, and raisins was heavy.  Boer meal with imported raisins in it was the richest possible pudding!  The sale of sweets was unprecedented—­so