hey were
doing well alone; it is conceivable that they now felt less the need of
extraneous assistance. Their energy and enterprise betokened
self-reliance; the will with which they used their picks and shovels was
enigmatical to the British mind. They seemed metaphorically to defy all
Europe and America. And the reply received by the Consuls was quite in
accord with a consciousness on the Boer side of "splendid isolation." It
suggested that they (the Boers) would esteem it a privilege to provide
the protesters with an escort to convey them to a place of safety, if
that would satisfy. It did _not_ satisfy, and there the correspondence
ceased.

It was thus the week ended--the enemy active, vigorous, supercilious;
while we in Kimberley felt fretful, hungry, and sick at heart; but too
thoroughly inured to hardship to shrink from or even to question the
duty of fighting the battle to the bitter end.

CHAPTER XVI

_Week ending 3rd February, 1900_

The fierceness of the assault to which we had been exposed was the great
subject of discussion, but it was not until the sluggish pendulum of
Siege time had again swung round to the Sabbath that we freely and
without dread of interruption gave full expression to our feelings
towards the foe. The inconsistency of a nation so profuse in Christian
professions was much discussed, and ignoring our own shortcomings in the
same respect, to say nothing of the essential cruelty of all wars, we
readily requisitioned our best resources of invective--to show what
charity really was. We had been living in stormy tea-cups for a long
while; our fury was usually more ungovernable than this or that
grievance warranted; but we had never before given way to such
rhetorical excesses, against not only the Boers, but the Military, as
well--Lord Methuen, the Mayor, the Colonel and his Staff. Even Lord
Roberts was snapped at. They were all in turn metaphorically tarred and
feathered.

But these, after all, were old offenders; their faults and
idiosyncrasies had been reviewed often. The occasion demanded a new
scapegoat; and we determined to find him. We looked across the broad
expanse of veld and bitterly reflected on a destiny that circumscribed
our freedom within the barriers of a town; that denied us even the wild
freshness of morning uncontaminated by the _miasma_ of city streets. In
this frame of mind we easily drifted into speculation on first causes.
We began to ask ourselves upon wh