ornaments, and the natives were quick to learn that they commanded a good price, for after a shower had fallen there was a helter-skelter amongst the black boys for any unexploded specimens.  One evening we had a consignment into the road just outside my bomb-proof, attracted by a herd of mules going to water.  Immediately the small piccaninny driving these animals scampered off, returning in triumph with one of these prizes, which he brought me still so hot that I could not hold it.  It used often to strike me how comic these scenes at Mafeking would have been to any aeronaut hovering over the town of an evening, especially when the shelling had been heavy.  Towards sundown the occupants of the various bomb-proofs used to emerge and sit on the steps or the sandbags of their shelters, conversing with their neighbours and discussing the day’s damage.  All of a sudden the bell would tinkle, and down would go all the heads, just as one has often seen rabbits on a summer evening disappear into their holes at the report of a gun.  In a few minutes, when the explosion was over, they would bob up again, to see if any harm had been done by the last missile.  Then night would gradually fall on the scene, sometimes made almost as light as day by a glorious African moon, concerning which I shall always maintain that in no other country is that orb of such brightness, size, and splendour.  The half-hour between sundown and moonrise, or twilight and inky blackness, as the case happened to be, according to the season or the weather, was about the pleasantest time in the whole day.  As a rule it was a peaceful interval as regards shelling.  Herds of mules were driven along the dusty streets to be watered; cattle and goats returned from the veldt, where they had been grazing in close proximity to the town, as far as possible out of sight; foot-passengers, amongst them many women, scurried along the side-walks closely skirting the houses.  Then, when daylight had completely faded, all took shelter, to wait for the really vicious night-gun, which was usually fired between eight and nine with varying regularity, as our enemies, no doubt, wished to torment the inhabitants by not allowing them to know when it was safe for them to seek their homes and their beds.  There was a general feeling of relief when “Creechy” had boomed her bloodthirsty “Good-night.”  Only once during the whole siege was she fired in the small hours of the morning, and that was on Dingaan’s Day (December 16), when she terrified the sleeping town by beginning her day’s work at 2.30 a.m., followed by a regular bombardment from all the other guns in chorus, to celebrate the anniversary of the great Boer victory over the Zulus many years ago.  Frequent, however, were the volleys from the trenches that suddenly broke the tranquillity of the early night, and startling were they in their apparent nearness till one got accustomed to them.  At first I thought the enemy must be firing in the streets, so loud were