The rumour-monger and the quidnunc—­to whom only brief allusion has so far been made—­had come to be regarded as distinct public nuisances.  I have hitherto refrained from commenting often on the actions and the utterances of these monomaniacs in our midst.  Any attempt to summarise their mendacities would be foredoomed to failure; the output of rumours would exceed the limits of an ordinary tome.  There were indeed some enterprising spirits who did embark upon the task of collecting these rumours, but they dropped it in despair, before economy in foolscap was even thought of.  These fanciful canards grew more nauseating as the Siege advanced in seriousness, until anything in the nature of news was deemed of necessity a lie.  A local scribe, “The Lad,” took the romancers severely to task in a series of pithy articles, which the Diamond Fields’ Advertiser—­domiciled though it was in a glass house—­did not scruple to publish.  The “lovely liar” was hanged, drawn, and quartered.  The “Military critic” was satirised, too; he was the lynx-eyed gentleman who had detected the Lancers approaching Kimberley at a fast gallop two hours after the Column had departed from Orange River.  We had strained our eyes for weeks on the strength of that man’s eyesight, for ’hope springs eternal in the human breast.’

But all these far-seeing mortals had fallen discredited from their high estate; and it was at this pregnant turning point in our fortunes that the need of a little originality (for their credit’s sake) appeared to strike them.  They set themselves to weave a romance as weird, as diabolical, as their perverted ingenuity could suggest.  And a masterpiece it proved to be.

They began to tell us of horseflesh, to recite legends of how under conditions similar to ours it had been eaten, positively eaten, in the past by human beings, who without it would have died, and who did not die when they ate it!  For our part, we should have elected to die first—­but I must not anticipate.  Gradually and tentatively—­just as a man who saw virtue in cannibalism would hem and haw before he advocated its practice—­the subject of horseflesh was furtively discussed in whispers, which ultimately developed into audible commentaries in regard to its odour, taste, and general nutritiousness.  A plea for cannibalism could scarcely encounter fiercer opposition or evoke greater disgust than did the mere suggestion of horseflesh, even as a last resort, a possible infliction, an alternative to surrender.  In no circumstances would we tolerate it.  The very name of such a diet was revolting to our conservative tastes, and filled us with horror; it was bad form to mention it.  If the British army ever brought us to such a pass terrible things would happen; loyalty would be a memory of the digestive past; wholesale forswearing of allegiance to the Queen would be the patriotism of the day.  Horseflesh indeed!  The dish was hounded down as something too utterly inconsonant with the culinary decencies of civilisation.