for fear, I groped my way downstairs.  Outside we were surrounded by more frightened people, whom we quickly reassured.  The woman cook, who had been sitting in her bomb-proof, was quite sure she had been struck, and was calling loudly for brandy; while the rest of us got some soda-water to wash out our throats—­a necessary precaution as far as I was concerned, as mine had only the day previously been lanced for quinsy.  By degrees the cloud of dust subsided, and then in the fading light we saw what an extraordinary escape we had had.  The shell had entered the front wall of the convent, travelled between the iron roof and the ceiling of the rooms, till it reached a wall about 4 feet from where we were sitting.  Against this it had exploded, making a huge hole in the outside wall and in the other which separated our passage from a little private chapel.  In this chapel it had also demolished all the sacred images.  It was not, however, till next day, when we returned to examine the scene of the explosion, that we realized how narrowly we had escaped death or terrible injuries.  Three people had been occupying an area of not more than 5 feet square; between us was a tiny card-table laid with our supper, and on this the principal quantity of the masonry had fallen—­certainly 2 tons of red brick and mortar—­shattering it to atoms.  If our chairs had been drawn up to the table, we should probably have been buried beneath this mass.  But our most sensational discovery was the fact that two enormous pieces of shell, weighing certainly 15 pounds each, were found touching the legs of my chair, and the smallest tap from one of these would have prevented our ever seeing another sunrise.  Needless to say, we left our ruined quarters that evening, and I reposed more peacefully in my bomb-proof than I had done for many nights past.  The air at the convent had accomplished its healing work.  We were both practically recovered, and we had had a hairbreadth escape; but I was firmly convinced that an underground chamber is preferable to a two-storied mansion when a 6-inch 100-pound shell gun, at a distance of two miles, is bombarding the town you happen to be residing in.

CHAPTER XII

     LIFE IN A BESIEGED TOWN (continued)

     “And so we sat tight.”—­Despatch from Mafeking to War
     Office.

February came and went without producing very much change in our circumstances, and yet, somehow, there was a difference observable as the weeks passed.  People looked graver; a tired expression was to be noted on many hitherto jovial countenances; the children were paler and more pinched.  Apart from the constant dangers of shells and stray bullets, and the knowledge that, when we were taking leave of any friend for a few hours, it might be the last farewell on earth—­apart from these facts, which constituted a constant wear and tear of mind, the impossibility of making any