ghtest planets were naturally the more general choice, albeit
distance might in the circumstances be expected to lend a dimness to the
view. _Venus_ was essentially a very nice balloon; numbers swore by
_Jupiter_; _Mercury_ had a heavy following. _Taurus_ was indeed a
"Bull"; and Mars! talk of _Mars_ being inhabited; we identified its
inhabitants as being necessarily British. There were _thirteen_ signs in
the _Zodiac_. Anybody who called a star a star was called an ass.
"_That's_ no star," your exasperated kinsman would retort, "do you take
me for a blind fool." And it only required a fixed, steady gaze of ten
minutes, without winking, to convince the most sceptical that it was
indeed "no star"; that it did "move"; that it was "too large" for a
star; that it was absurd to consider it _not_ a balloon. The _Milky Way_
(as per diverse opinions) was one vast creamery of balloons, undiluted
by the "poetry of heaven!" In fine, among all the things that twinkled
there were only some half dozen that hushed the voice of controversy. It
was certain there remained at least five luminaries, five unmistakable
stars, to wit, the Southern Cross. Paul Kruger once expressed
astonishment that the British had not annexed the moon, if it were
inhabited. Well, the moon, though there is a man in it, was, shall I
say, too large, too obviously itself, to deceive the Imperial eye. We
left the recluse in the moon alone, to smile in dreary solitude;
interference with him would spoil the moonshine.

CHAPTER XIII

_Week ending 13th January, 1900_

The rumour-monger and the quidnunc--to whom only brief allusion has so
far been made--had come to be regarded as distinct public nuisances. I
have hitherto refrained from commenting often on the actions and the
utterances of these monomaniacs in our midst. Any attempt to summarise
their mendacities would be foredoomed to failure; the output of rumours
would exceed the limits of an ordinary tome. There were indeed some
enterprising spirits who did embark upon the task of collecting these
rumours, but they dropped it in despair, before economy in foolscap was
even thought of. These fanciful canards grew more nauseating as the
Siege advanced in seriousness, until anything in the nature of news was
deemed of necessity a lie. A local scribe, "The Lad," took the romancers
severely to task in a series of pithy articles, which the _Diamond
Fields' Advertiser_--domiciled though it was in a _glass_ house