lf an hour before daybreak carrying
children in their arms, or a cat, or monkey, or a mongoose, or a cage of
pet birds, and they come back similarly laden when the night gets too
dim for gunners to go on shooting. There would be a touch of humour in
all this if it were not so deeply pathetic in its close association with
possible tragedies. One never knows where or at what hour a stray shot
or splinter will fall, and it is pitiful sometimes to hear cries for
dolly from a prattling mite who may herself be fatherless or motherless
to-morrow. We think as little as possible of such things, putting them
from us with the light comment that they happen daily elsewhere than in
besieged towns, and making the best we can of a melancholy situation.

There are, I believe, many good reasons why Sir George White should
allow his army to be hemmed in here defending a practically deserted
town, apart from the ignominy that abandonment would entail, and it is
probably sound strategy to keep Boer forces here as long as possible
while preparations are being matured for attacking them from other
directions. On the latter point one cannot express an opinion without
full knowledge of the circumstances such as we cannot hope to get while
communications are cut off. But nobody can pretend to regard our present
inaction following investment as anything but a disagreeable necessity,
or affect a cheerful endurance of conditions that become more
intolerable day after day. Now and then we have hopes that the Boers may
risk everything in a general attack with the object of carrying this
place by storm, when they would most certainly be beaten off and lose
heavily.

They did something to encourage this hope yesterday. It began with a
heavy artillery duel between "Long Tom" and the naval gun that is known
as "Lady Anne." After vain attempts to silence our battery, the enemy's
fire, generally so accurate, became wild, several shells going so high
that they struck the convent hospital hundreds of yards in rear. This,
at any rate, is the most charitable explanation of acts that would
otherwise be inexcusable. The Red Cross was at that time, and for days
before, flying above the convent, in which Colonel Dick-Cunyngham and
Major Riddell were patients, under the care of nursing sisters.
Fortunately, good shelter was found for them in the convent cellars
until they could be removed to safer quarters, but before this much of
the upper rooms had been reduced