The most formidable weapon of the Boers was, naturally, the big siege Creusot gun. The very first day I arrived in Mafeking "Creechy" discharged a shell that killed a trooper of the Protectorate Regiment, who happened to be standing up in the stables singing a song, whilst four or five others were seated on the ground. The latter were uninjured, but the dead man was absolutely blown to bits, and one of his legs was found in the roof. A few days after two more shells landed in the market-square, one going through the right window of the chemist's shop, the other demolishing the left-hand one. Some of the staff were actually in the shop when the second shell came through the window, and were covered with dust, broken bits of glass, and shattered wood, but all providentially escaped unhurt. Others were not so fortunate, for a nigger in the market-square was literally cut in half, and a white man 100 yards away had his leg torn off. Again, in Mr. Wiel's store a shell burst while the building was full of people, without injuring anyone; but one of the splinters carried an account-book from the counter and deposited it in the roof on its outward passage. Indeed, not a day passed but one heard of marvellously narrow escapes. As the heat increased, the shelling grew certainly slacker, and, after an hour or two spent in exchanging greetings in the early morning, both besieged and besiegers seemed to slumber during the sultry noonday hours. About four they appeared to rouse themselves, and often my telephone would then ring up with the message: "The gun is loaded, and pointed at the town." Almost simultaneously a panting little bell, not much louder than a London muffin-bell, but heard distinctly all over the town in the clear atmosphere, would give tongue, and luckless folk who were promenading the streets had about three seconds to seek shelter, the alarm being sounded as the flash was seen by the look-out. One afternoon they gave us three shots in six minutes, but, of course, this rapid firing was much safer for the inhabitants than a stray shot after a long interval, as people remained below-ground expecting a repetition of that never-to-be-forgotten crashing explosion, followed by the sickening noise of the splinters tearing through the air, sometimes just over one's head, like the crack of a very long whip, manipulated by a master-hand. The smallest piece of one of these fragments was sufficient to kill a man, and scarcely anyone wounded with a shell ever seemed to survive, the wounds being nearly always terribly severe, and their poison occasioning gangrene to set in. There were many comic as well as tragic incidents connected with the shells of the big gun. A monkey belonging to the post-office, who generally spent the day on the top of a pole to which he was chained, would, on hearing the alarm-bell, rapidly descend from his perch, and, in imitation of the human beings whom he saw taking shelter, quickly pop under a large empty biscuit-tin.