ousand houses. Unfortunately for the ends of Justice (!) the
transgressors were so outrageously numerous that the heavy undertaking
of arraigning half the city was not thought feasible. Only a few
particularly refulgent "criminals" were hauled up and fined. Where
sickness darkened a house the "Law" allowed a candle to light it, the
whole night, if necessary, and invalids were accordingly as thick as
leaves in Vallombrosa! An epidemic of all the ills that flesh is heir
to raged in the land. Hypochondriacs moaned with their tongues in their
cheeks in the presence of the prying night-patrol. Fevers flourished;
multitudes were prostrated by influenza; the _pleura_ played the devil
with innumerable lungs. Anybody who was not a malingerer was voted a
fool, an altruist. A magistrate, commenting on the great plague and the
manner in which the majesty of the "Law" (the majesty of Martial Law!)
was being outraged, averred that from his own doorstep every night at
eleven o'clock he gazed at hundreds of illuminated houses. It was true;
and we used to wonder which his worship was--an invalid, an altruist, or
an owl!

We held a position at Otto's Kopje from which our men occasionally made
things unpleasant for the Kamfers Dam Laager. The Boers, naturally, did
not like this, and they in turn sometimes harassed the defenders of the
kopje. But Kamfers Dam was shortly to be made quake, for it had just
leaked out that a gigantic gun was in course of construction at the De
Beers workshops; that men who knew their business were sweating at it
day and night. Opinions were much divided as to the probable utility of
this instrument. Some were disposed to pity the poor Boers when it was
ready for action, while others were not less inclined to lament the fate
of the poor Briton who would sit behind it, to get blown to pieces by a
botched piece of mechanism. The withering criticisms passed on this
prospective product of De Beers were anything but re-assuring. It was
useless to try to impress on the morbid critic that there were skilled
Woolwich men engaged in the manufacture of the gun. The argument would
be crushed by that expressive figure, "rats!" The scorn with which
these rodents were slung by the tail in the face of anyone who believed
in "Long Cecil" (the gun had been so named out of compliment to Mr.
Rhodes) was conclusive. Where was the necessary material to come from?
Oh, De Beers had the material, the optimist would reply. But optimists