Piet Cronje was in command of the Boers now; he was vexed by this unlucky accident, but threatened to send to Pretoria for dynamite guns, just to make this absurd veldt-city jump and squeal. Cronje was willing to ride up and storm Mafeking, but the idle braggarts who formed the greater part of his army dared not face the steel; yet there was more than one lady in the trenches able and ready to use her rifle. The natives had suffered more from shell-fire than the whites. It is not easy to impress the Kaffir mind with the peril of a bursting shell; though the Kaffir may have helped to build bomb-proof shelters for Europeans, yet for himself and his family he thinks a dug-out pit too costly, and will lie about under a tarpaulin or behind a wooden box, until the inevitable explosion some day sends him and his family into the air in fragments. [Illustration: AN AMAZON AT MAFEKING Mrs. Davies, the lady sharpshooter, in the British trenches.] One such victim was heard to murmur feebly as they put him on the stretcher, “Boss, boss, me hurt very.” They bear pain very stoically, and turn their brown pathetic eyes on those who come to help them, much as a faithful hound will look in his master’s face for sympathy when in the agony of death. There were so many shells that missed human life that the people grew careless and ventured out too often. Late in November a local wheelwright thought he would extract the charge from a Boer shell which had not exploded. The good man used a steel drill. For a time all went well, and his two companions bent over to watch the operation; then came a hideous row, a smell, a smoke, and the wheelwright, with both his comrades, was hurled into space. The Boers had not spared the hospital or the convent. The poor Sisters had had a fearful time; the children’s dormitory was in ruins, and their home riddled with holes. Still the brave Sisters stuck to their post, comforted the dying, nursed the sick, and set an example of holy heroism. Here is an extract from a letter describing a scene with the Kaffirs: