uch alive, as its
kicking testified. The driver of the vehicle, a Dutchman, received a
wound in the arm. Another Dutchman, curiously enough, was injured
slightly while injudiciously exposing himself on top of a debris heap.
Happily, no more serious casualities occurred. The Municipal Compound
and the Fire Brigade Station had to bear the brunt of the bombardment,
but the damage done was small.

Despite the real element of danger now attending the mania, the thirst
for souvenirs was unquenchable yet, and the masses of struggling
humanity that seemed to drop from the clouds simultaneously with every
missile to be in at its dismemberment, were as fierce as and _more_
reckless than before in the fight for fragments. When the shells had
been wont to crumble accommodatingly, as would a clay pipe, the winning
of a curio had--I mix the metaphor advisedly--merely involved
participation in a football scrimmage. But since the ball had, as it
were, begun to turn "rusty" the popularity of the game, so far from
diminishing, increased. All day long its devotees "scrummed" and
"shoved" for the coveted trophies. Quite a brisk trade was done in
souvenirs, the smallest scrap of iron fetching a tickey (threepence),
and so on in proportion to weight and size as far as half a sovereign.
These souvenirs included sundry nuts and bolts which had been kicked
about the neighbourhood of De Beers workshops for a quarter of a
century. Whole shells, intact, were sold for a couple of pounds each,
and the hundred or so received up to date circulated a good bit of
money. One of the funny spectacles of the bombardment was a local
entomologist, who had a sense of humour, endeavouring to catch the
missiles with his butterfly net; the "buzzing," he said, attracted him.
This humourist is still alive--he caught nothing.

Healthy folk who lived to eat were at this stage beginning to complain
of hunger, and to assert--not quite truthfully--that they got but "one
meal a day." Eight ounces of meat was not enough for them; they could
devour it all at a single sitting; they were slowly starving. Little
sympathy was felt with these uneasy gourmands. Our sources of supply
were by no means inexhaustible, and the Colonel's restriction was
intelligible to all reasonable men. The Boers, on the other hand,
appeared to possess more live stock than they needed, and it was upon
this hypothesis that the plan of confiscating a portion of the one to
equalise the other was conc