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 endured had at this period increased beyond the mere inconveniences of Siege life, it will be conceded that the citizens of Kimberley played a worthy part.  They saw disease and death busy in their midst; they saw the natives succumbing to the ravages of scurvy and kindred ills; they saw sickness playing havoc with the white population; they saw their families in sore need of the necessities of existence, and young children—­hardest of all—­dying from want of nourishment.  The infant mortality was truly heart-rending.  It is recorded that thirteen