s cold and cloudy, as it has been since Monday, but
the sun broke out for an hour or two, in the afternoon, and official
messages could be sent through by heliograph. For information and
relief we received the following words, and those only:--

"German specialist landed Delagoa Bay pledges himself to dam up
Klip River and flood Ladysmith out."

That was all they deigned to tell us.

_February 2, 1900._

After a misty dawn, soaked with minute rain, the sky slowly cleared at
last, letting the merry sunshine through. At once the heliograph began
to flash. I sent off a brief message, and soon afterwards the signal
"Line clear" was sent from Zwartz Kop over the Tugela. The "officials"
began to arrive, and we hoped for news at last. Three or four messages
came through, but who could have guessed the thrilling importance of the
first? It ran:--

"Sir Stafford Northcote, Governor of Bombay, has been made a peer."

The other messages were vague and dull enough--something about the
Prince of Wales reviewing Yeomanry, and the race for some hunt cup in
India. But that peerage! To a sick and hungry garrison!

We were shot at rather briskly all day by the enemy's guns. The groups
of wandering horses were a tempting aim. The poor creatures still try to
get back to their lines, and some of them stand there motionless all
day, rather than seek grass upon the hills. The cavalry have made
barbed-wire pens, and collect most of them at night. But many are lost,
some stolen, and more die of starvation and neglect. An increasing
number are killed for rations, and to-day twenty-eight were specially
shot for the chevril factory. I visited the place this afternoon. The
long engine-shed at the station has been turned to use. Only one engine
remains inside, and that is used as a "bomb-proof," under which all
hands run when the shelling is heavy. Into other engine-pits cauldrons
have been sunk, constructed of iron trolleys without their wheels, and
plastered round with clay. A wood fire is laid along under the
cauldrons, on the same principle as in a camp kitchen. The horseflesh is
brought up to the station in huge red halves of beast, run into the
shed on trucks, cut up by the Kaffirs, who also pound the bones, thrown
into the boiling cauldron, and so--"Farewell, my Arab steed!"

There is not enough hydrochloric or pepsine left in the town to make a
true extract of horse, but by boiling and evaporation the strength i