been levelled to the ground by fire has been heaped up once more so
that the ruins themselves may bring more ruin!

But although we exhausted ourselves with questions, and many of us
hoped against hope, the hours sped slowly by and no message came. The
Palace, enclosed in its pink walls, had slunk to sleep, or forgotten
us--or, perhaps, had even found that there could be no truce. Then
midnight came, and as we were preparing, half incredulously, to go to
sleep, we truly knew. Crack, crack, went the first shots from some
distant barricade, and bang went an answering rifle on our side.
Awakened by these echoes, the firing grew naturally and mechanically
to the storm of sound we have become so accustomed to, and the short
truce was forgotten. It is no use; we must go through to the end....

VI

SHELLS AND SORTIES

3rd July, 1900.

* * * * *

For a week I have written nothing, absolutely nothing, and have not
even taken a note, nor cared what happened to me or to anybody else.
How could I when I have been so crushed by unending sentry-go, by such
an unending roar of rifles and crash of shells, that I merely
mechanically wake at the appointed hour, mechanically perform my duty
and as mechanically fall asleep again. My _ego_ has been crushed out
of me, and I have become, doubtless, quite rightly so, an
insignificant atom in a curious thing called a siege. No mortal under
such circumstances, no matter how faithful to an appointed task, can
put pencil to paper, and attempt to sketch the confusion and smoke
around him. You may try, perhaps, as I have tried, and then, suddenly,
before you can realise it, you fall half asleep and pencil and paper
are thrice damned.

For we have been worked so hard, those of us who do not care and are
young, and the enemy is pushing in so close and so persistently, that
we have not much farther to run if the signs that I see about me go
for anything. Artillery, to the number of some eight or ten pieces, is
now grinding our barricades to pieces and making our outworks more and
more untenable. Rifle bullets float overhead in such swarms that by a
comparison of notes I now estimate that there must be from five to
six thousand infantry and dismounted cavalry ranged against us. Mines
are being already run under so many parts of our advanced lines, and
their dangers are so near that on the outworks we fall asleep ready to
be blown up....

... Nor are th