Saturday came.  The common trials of the great bombardment had lulled the food warfare, and the thoughts of all were directed to the provision of adequate protection for life and limb.  The erection of forts and shelters was going on everywhere.  The work had been inaugurated when the bombardment was at its height, and the muscular energy it brought into play was magnificent.  The “boys” (natives) were kept at it like Trojans, under the personal supervision of their respective white chiefs; and the chiefs themselves, unaccustomed though they were to an implement less mighty than the pen, perspired beadily and willingly with the pick and shovel.  Even the ladies, regardless of blisters and the snowy whiteness of their hands, revelled in the role of navvy.  Hallowed little garden patches were ruthlessly excavated; converted into “dug-outs”—­disagreeably suggestive of the grave—­and these were covered over and hedged in with sacks of earth.  The apartments thus improvised were excellent in their way, but somewhat damp and dismal.  They were not strictly well ventilated, but the atmosphere without was so redolent of smoke and powder that sanitation had lost in importance.  Moreover, one could always stick one’s head out of the burrow to inhale the outer air if it were considered fresher than what saluted the nostrils within.  Of course these shelters did not offer so much security from danger as their occupiers fancied (I have already instanced how the recesses of a coal-hole had not been proof against invasion); but they were splinter proof.  If husbands and fathers did magnify the protection they afforded, their motives were kind.

In the meantime we were not left entirely unmolested.  The Beaconsfield Sanatorium continued to be the chief object of Boer solicitude.  Smokeless powder was being employed, and the boom of the particular guns in action was not audible, or, if audible, so faintly as to be mistaken for the Column’s artillery.  We had a man placed on the Conning Tower whose duty it was to blow a warning whistle at sight of the flame of the enemy’s fuse.  But the whistle—­not always heard—­was only too apt to be connected with a policeman in distress.

The forty-eight hours’ ordeal was not repeated, and interest in eating matters was soon revived.  The comparative calm of Saturday incited us to have recourse to all sorts of tricks to unearth what was eatable.  The Soup Kitchen was a huge success, and had they not been already well endowed with this world’s goods the distinguished waiters in charge of the department might have waxed rich.  Thousands of pints were served out daily; indeed there was never a supply sufficient to feed the multitudes that swarmed round the cauldrons containing this delicious elixir of life.  One of the most remarkable sights of the Siege was, not the gravity of doctors, lawyers, directors, etc., presenting tickets for soup—­that was piquant enough—­but the number of young ladies, votaries of fashion, who emerged from the melee bedraggled and flushed with their pails of nectar, to all appearances not only forgetful of the convenances, but beaming with smiles of triumph.  It may have been because their charms were enhanced, artful wenches!  Enhanced, in any case, their charms were.