one could get into the dining-room to have coffee, except through the kitchen window.  The two hours of darkness that had to elapse were the longest I have ever spent.  Hurried footsteps passed to and fro, dark lanterns flashed for an instant, intensifying the blackness, and all of a sudden the sound I had been waiting for added to the weird horror of the situation, an alarm bugle, winding out its tale, clear and true to the farthest byways and the most remote shanties, followed by our tocsin, the deep-toned Roman Catholic Church bell, which was the signal that a general attack was in progress.  We caught dim glimpses of the town guard going to their appointed places in the most orderly manner, and I remember thinking that where there was no panic there could be but little danger.  An officer of this guard came down the road and told us all his men had turned out without exception, including an old fellow of seventy, and stone-deaf, who had been roused by the rifle-fire, and one minus several fingers recently blown off by a shell.  I went out to the front of the house facing the stadt, and therefore sheltered from the hail of bullets coming from the east; and just as we were noticing that objects could be discerned on the road, that before were invisible, forked tongues of lurid light shot up into the sky in the direction where, snug and low by the Malopo River, lay the natives’ habitations.  Even then one did not realize what was burning, and someone said:  “What a big grass fire!  It must have commenced yesterday.”  At the same moment faint cries, unmistakable for Kaffir ejaculations, were borne to us by the breeze, along with the smell of burning thatch and wood, and the dread sentence with which I commenced this chapter seemed to grow in volume, till to one’s excited fancy it became a sort of chant, to which the yells of the blacks, the unceasing rattle of musketry, formed an unholy accompaniment.  “Hark, what is that?” was a universal exclamation from the few folk, mostly women, standing in front of Mr. Weil’s house, as a curious hoarse cheer arose—­not in the stadt, half a mile away, but nearer, close by, only the other side of the station, where was situated the B.S.A.P. fort, the headquarters of the officer commanding the Protectorate Regiment.  This so-called fort was in reality an obsolete old work of the time of Sir Charles Warren’s 1884 expedition, and was but slightly fortified.

The Boers, after setting fire to the stadt, had rushed it, surprising the occupants; and the horrible noise of their cheering arose again and again.  Then a terrific fusillade broke out from this new direction, rendering the roadway a place of the greatest danger.  My quarters were evidently getting too hot, and I knew that Weil’s house and store would be the first objective of the Boers.  I bethought me even novices might be useful in the hospital, so I decided to proceed there in one way or another.  Although the rifle-fire was slackening towards the east, from