we did not
want to know, while all knowledge of more important events was kept
hermetically sealed in one or half a dozen heads. We were not altogether
consistent in this, but--no matter. Saturday wound up the unlucky
thirteenth week of our sorrows. It saw us emaciated, thirsty, and filled
to satiety with the romance of isolation. It found us irascible,
contumacious, with an aptitude for fluent swearing at the tales (of how
light we had grown) unfolded by the weighing-machine. It found us in
lucid intervals conjuring up visions of a beer saturnalia when--alas!
when the barrels were full again. It heard us howling against horseflesh
and the devilish ingenuity of him who discovered a precedent for
roasting it; it heard the chorus, "where is the Column?" and the mocking
echo answering "where!" It heard many divergent opinions as to what the
Column was going to do; some contending that it was waiting to be
re-inforced by the "Sixth Division"; more dictating with fiery rancour
that it was for the "Seventh Division" the Column waited; another
insisting that the "Seventh Division" was operating a thousand miles
away--and _all_ of us knowing about as much of the Sixth or Seventh
Division's movements as Plato did of ping-pong! The need of Army reform
was much felt and talked of. But there was behind this conflict of
tongues a weary but firm determination to keep unfurled at all costs the
flag of no surrender.

CHAPTER XIV

_Week ending 20th January, 1900_

It was an illustration of the people's enduring pluck, this dogged
resolution of no surrender. Not that they felt conscious of any
particular heroism; the thought of capitulation as a means of escape
from discomfort suggested itself to nobody. In moments of mental
depression it might have crossed an ultra-pessimistic mind and been
brooded over as a consummation that no Spartan bravery could enable us
to avert. But to the masses the notion was unthinkable; the idea of
surrender would not bear discussion; it was never discussed. Against
Martial Law as such we did not so much complain; it was an evil, but to
some extent a necessary evil; and however prone we were to find fault,
however scathingly we condemned the machinations of the "Law," or the
stern "will" of its maker, the possibility of yielding to the _other_
enemy was never entertained for one moment. No proposal of the kind was
ever made.

And when it is remembered that the nature and extent of the things they