It was decided to evacuate the town, and form two laagers, one at the camp, and one between the Roman Catholic church and the jail. In the camp the women and children were to be placed, while the Infantry Volunteers garrisoned the convent laager. Within the convent, women and children were packed tightly as sardines, while the nuns turned out on errands of mercy. All night and all day, scarcely stopping to eat a mouthful, men worked, sandbagging windows and doors--building barricades and defences of various kinds. Waggons were sent round to gather all families within the shelter of the camp. Rich and poor, good and bad, some 4000 souls, were herded together in tents for their protection. Here they remained for three months, enduring hardships of the most variegated and worrying kind, and loyally waiting for the relieving column that never came. Descriptions of the rations served out to each man daily are not appetising: Bread, 1-1/4 lb., or biscuit, 1 lb.; coffee, 2/3 oz.; sugar, 2-1/2 oz.; meat, 1-1/4 lb.; tea, 1/6 oz.; and salt, 1/2 oz. These were reduced as the siege proceeded. The meat was _trek_ beef, a leathery substitute for steak, and the biscuits were veterans, having "served" in the Zulu and Sekukuni campaigns, and now being nothing better than a swarm of weevils. Life in Pretoria was enlivened by occasional sorties against the Boer laagers, where the enemy was supposed to number some 800 strong. The laagers were distributed at distances of four and eight miles from the town, and were connected by a system of patrolling, which rendered communication from within or without almost impossible. A few messengers (natives) occasionally came into the town, but these were mostly charged with the delivery of delusive messages invented for special purposes by the Boers. There was an ever-present difficulty--that of keeping the natives in check. Many examples of Boer cruelty to these poor blacks are recorded, and they naturally shuddered at the prospect of once more being delivered over to the rule of the sjambok.