and shovels did not rise to the occasion! Fort-making
was the rage; the men worked with a will--the women acting as
hod-carriers--to make the graves in which they hoped to live as deep as
possible. All over the city the navvies--amateur and
professional--sweated and panted, so successfully that unless the shells
were to levy _direct_ taxation on the people in the forts, well, the
pieces might skim their heads but they could not cut them off. The
little garden patches were pitilessly disembowelled of the vegetable
seeds so recently planted. We had lived to see them grow, but up they
had to come lest we should be planted ourselves.

In the meantime our friend the enemy--more intimate and candid than
ever--appeared to be fully sensible of the havoc the new weapon was
capable of causing. All ears were strained to catch the first sound of
the Kamfers Dam monster. It was sighted at low range, and the boom,
whiz, and crash seemed to jumble all together. The comparative corks
with which we had been assailed hitherto used to shoot high into the
air, whistling several bars of music before touching _terra firma_, and
by careful attention to time it had been to some extent possible to
dodge them. So at least it was stated. The day waned, and the attack was
not renewed. It was suggested that perhaps the gun had "bust"; but the
straw was too thin to be worth catching at.

It was quite four o'clock in the afternoon ere the first shell hurtled
through the air. The heat in the open was suffocating, and the rush to
the underground atmosphere was not the less brisk on that account. A
constant assault was maintained for two hours. Shops, boarding houses,
and private dwellings were battered indiscriminately. A studio in
Dutoitspan Road was broken up; the Central Hotel was struck; and two
little children were slightly hurt. But the saddest incident of the day
was the death of a young man--an employee of the Standard Hotel--who was
struck down at his work mortally wounded. One or two persons had their
shins kicked by passing fragments. Numerous wonderful escapes were heard
of. What with the vibrations of the demoralising water-melons and their
hap-hazard propensities in the choice of victims, it is difficult even
vaguely to convey an idea of the test to which the mettle of the people
was put.

The bombardment was to have a dramatic termination, for the last heavy
projectile hurled into Kimberley landed in the capacious premises of
Cuthber