This panacea being pronounced effective a comprehensive programme was rendered. Every popular song that occurred to the mind was turned on and yelled with wild lustiness. Those who did not know the words either whistled the air or improvised an impossible ditty. Whenever there was a pause to recall some new song, the interval was occupied with "Rule, Britannia!" This was a prime favourite, and repetition did not stale its forceful rendition, especial stress being laid upon the words, "Britons never, never, never shall be slaves!" to which was roared the eternal enquiry, "Are we down-hearted?" The welkin-smashing negative, crashing through the night, and not entirely free from embroidery, offered a conclusive answer. It takes a great deal to destroy a Britisher's spirits, but this terrible night almost supplied the crucial test. We were not only combating Prussian atrocity but Nature's ferocity as well, and the two forces now appeared to be in alliance. The men sang, as they confessed, because it constituted a kind of employment at least to the mind, enabled them to forget their misery somewhat, and proved an excellent antidote to the gnawing pain in the vicinity of the waist-belt. Once a singer started up the strains of "Little Mary," but this was unanimously vetoed as coming too near home. Then from absence of a better inspiration, we commenced to roar "Home, Sweet Home," which I think struck just as responsive a chord, but the sentiment of which made a universal appeal. But hymns were resolutely barred. Those boisterous and irrepressible Tapleys absolutely declined to profane their faith on such a night as this. It was either a comic song or nothing. To have sung hymns with the swinish brutal guards lounging around would have conveyed an erroneous impression. They would have chuckled at the thought that at last we had been thoroughly broken in and in our resignation had turned Latter Day Saints or Revivalists. These boys were neither Saints, Revivalists nor Sinners, but merely victims of Prussian brutality in its blackest form and grimly determined not to give in under any circumstances whatever.