Christmas passed in rejoicings on both sides. The belligerents exchanged Christmas and New Year good wishes by the medium of shells specially prepared, containing sweets, chocolates, etc. New Year’s Day found them all much in the same positions. The bombardment of the three towns, Mafeking, Kimberley, and Ladysmith, continued. However, on January 6 Joubert made up his mind to attack--if, indeed, that strange encounter, aimless and incoherent, can be called an attack. Was it an assault by the besiegers or a sortie of the besieged? Perhaps both. It took place at Platrand. Four or five hundred of Prinsloo’s men were seriously engaged; the others (there were 6,000 round the town) took up positions early in the morning, quitted them towards ten o’clock to come back and breakfast in camp, returned to them later, and remained for the rest of the day 1,800 yards from the town, which was no longer defended, without firing a shot, without a thought of throwing themselves against it or of going to the help of their comrades, hotly engaged close by. In the evening they went back quietly to camp, while the commandos of Zand River, Harrismith, Heilbron, and Kroonstad had fifty-four killed and ninety-five wounded. The English lost 138 killed and over 200 wounded. A little dash, decision, and cohesion, and the town might have been taken. Such was Colonel de Villebois-Mareuil’s opinion. But even in the full flush of success we shall never find among the Boers that eagerness, that scorn of death, that enthusiasm which sweep troops forward and make great victories. The same day, at Colesberg, an _accident_ (this word is a happy invention of General French’s to denote a reverse) cost the English 150 lives, among them that of Colonel Watson. The sieges followed their--I will not say normal--course, for the ill-defended towns ought long ago to have been taken by the Boers. Such was the general situation, more or less, when we landed. II Time passed, the screw laboured round, and on January 12 we arrived at Diego Suarez. ’Passengers for Lourenço Marques change steamers!’ For the _Natal_ is bound for Mauritius, along the east coast of Madagascar. We shall therefore spend the night on shore. Wandering about the town, we meet Colonel Gourko, whom we invite to dinner, as we are in a French colony. I can’t pride myself much on this meal, in the name of French culinary art. The next day I lighted on a quartermaster of the Marine Artillery, whom I had known in the Soudan when he was only a gunner. He went off to find the other Soudanese campaigners of the settlement, and in a quarter of an hour I was surrounded by half a dozen old comrades. They were all in high spirits, for it had been a day of promotions, and several of them were toasting their new stripes. I spend a full hour with them, recalling the old days spent in the colony that all who have once known regret.