This class of buckshot--apart from the missiles
themselves--did a good deal of light skirmishing about the calves of
people's legs, and threw dust in their eyes with the force and fury of a
"south-easter." One gentleman, meandering in the Square, narrowly evaded
dismemberment, and was fortunate in getting off with a slight bruise.
Another hissing monster went tearing through the roof of the Buffalo
Club, upsetting a billiard table, and laying it out a disordered heap of
firewood on the floor. Fire-wood was worth something; and since chips of
his anatomy were not in the heap--perchance to be utilised in the
cooking of horseflesh for somebody else to eat--its grateful proprietor
conducted himself with resignation.

Meanwhile the scattered fragments of the same mischievous projectile
careered gaily through the air. One piece--no bigger than a Siege
loaf--with sardonic humour embedded itself in the stomach of a horse and
killed it instantaneously. This was pitiful, for the animal had been
fed, and was in the very act of being shod. The smith escaped unhurt.
Another missile tested the metal of a boiler, in a house in Belgravia,
by smashing it into scrap-iron. Whether the shell was intended for a
batch of bread in the adjoining oven is uncertain; the satisfactory fact
remained that the bread was unbroken. Buildings which had been but
imperfectly ventilated by the smaller shells had proper port-holes made
in them, and chimney-tops went down like nine-pins. We were, in short,
in a couple of hours afforded a grim conception of what modern munitions
can do. To that extent the assault was instructive. But that extent was
small and did not impress our common sense--which, by the way, was
small, too, and not at all common.

At six o'clock the firing ceased, and the "Mafeking terror" was allowed
to cool. I might as well explain here that our surmise was entirely
wrong. The gun came from--nobody knew where; but everybody _said_, from
Mafeking. We said more; the Cape Government (the Bond Ministry) had
purchased it in England for the Transvaal, in furtherance, as was
implied, of the projected sweeping of the English into the sea. This was
a hugged delusion until some fool dispelled it by discovering the gun to
be a "_creuzot_" which had been purchased in _France_ by the Transvaal.
But it mattered little where it had been purchased; it was a tangible
reality, a presage of sanguinary import. It was a time for action; and
maybe the picks