"mistake" they
did not seem to care, but went on serenely pandering to the butcher's
genial ambidextrousness.

On Thursday a good many shells fell in the neighbourhood of Scholtz's
Nek. With an energy which few had hitherto been disposed to give him
credit for possessing, the enemy continued to engross himself in
establishing, as it were, a fixity of tenure. This growing feeling of
security which animated our friends was most depressing. True, it was
something to hear that the Boers at Ladysmith had been repulsed with
heavy loss--if it were true. It was something; but it was not much.
Privations had developed our bumps of Provincialism; the claims of
Empire took a secondary place, as also did the fortunes of Ladysmith.
One authority stated that forty-five thousand Boers had been killed or
wounded in Natal. But these figures, to be correct, would necessarily
have embraced the warriors outside Kimberley--who were much alive! The
figures were afterwards reduced to four, and eventually to two. But
these important amendments were not proposed and carried for weeks after
the events to which they related, by which time we were so deep in the
slough of despond over something else that we could not sink deeper. We
were still in the dark as to the progress of the campaign. No accurate
accounts of the disasters, mishaps, and reverses that marked its opening
stages were placed before us. Brief and garbled references to
Stormberg, Colenso, and Nicholson's Nek were allowed by "Law" to
illumine the columns of the Press--getting lightly treated as trifles of
no consequence. There existed a small, astute minority who hazarded
unpleasant opinions of these "trifles." Our Teutonic friends candidly
expressed the view that England, to save her Empire, must shortly sue
for peace; but though they were just as anxious as anybody else to see
the Column come in, too much weight was not attached to what foreign
fellows said. The _Advertiser_, too, though ever sanguine in its
editorial columns, was sometimes indiscreet in its humour. It gave us,
for example, an anecdote anent the utterances of a certain prominent
Boer, which was in no wise calculated to allay the unrest prevalent
since Magersfontein. The Boers, he said, were willing to make peace at
their own price, and that price included a full recognition of their
Independence, an indemnity of twenty millions of money, and a perquisite
in the shape of Natal for the Transvaal. For the Free State