All the previous week things had been much as usual: inferior food, and very little of it; divine weather; "bridge" in the afternoons; and one day exactly like another. Since the departure of the big gun during the previous month, we had left our bomb-proofs and lived above-ground. In the early hours of the morning alluded to came the real event we had been expecting ever since the beginning of the siege--namely, a Boer attack under cover of darkness. The moon had just set, and it was pitch-dark. A fierce fusillade first began from the east, and when I opened the door on to the stoep the din was terrific, while swish, swish, came the bullets just beyond the canvas blinds, nailed to the edge of the verandah to keep off the sun. Now and then the boom of a small gun varied the noise, but the rifles never ceased for an instant. To this awe-inspiring tune I dressed, by the light of a carefully shaded candle, to avoid giving any mark for our foes. The firing never abated, and I had a sort of idea that any moment a Dutchman would look in at the door, for one could not tell from what side the real attack might be. In various stages of deshabille people were running round the house seeking for rifles, fowling-pieces, and even sticks, as weapons of defence. Meanwhile the gloom was still unbroken, but for the starlight, and it was very cold. The Cockney waiter, who was such a fund of amusement to me, had dashed off with his rifle to his redoubt, taking the keys of the house in his pocket, so no 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