_March 3rd._--The cold wind, or the wet, or something, has made my back so rheumaticky that I can hardly turn round or get down to tie my bootlaces. I am very lucky to have kept as fit as I have. Dozens of men from the trenches are in hospital with muscular rheumatism from the floods--the source of many evils. I have finished "Monte Cristo." What an artist he was! And I have started "David Copperfield" again. I omitted to record that a shell tore down the house at the front of this, and one wrecked the base of the column office. Several horses were wounded during the bombardment. We had a parade of Mussulman drivers, and I read a communiqué asking them to eat horseflesh, as their Mullah in India requested, this being required by the exigencies of the service. Not they! I believe, nevertheless, there is only one thing rooted deeper than a man's religion, and that is his appetite. This proves it, for hunger is driving them to eat it. What an awful joke on the part of Charon if, when these fellows reach the banks of the river Styx, he informs them the only available ferry is astride of swine. We have finished the inspections. The horse rations have fallen away to very little. We give them pieces of palm tree to gnaw at. _March 4th._--The rheumatism is much worse. It is bleak and cold in the observation post. On such an occasion the vigil is a wretchedly dull one. I'm too cold to dream. One can only psychologize viciously on the difference in point of view between a full man and an empty one. Eating maketh a satisfied man, drinking a merry man, smoking a contented man. But eating, drinking, and smoking maketh a happy man--that is, the heart of him glad. It is not far from the truth to say I have to-day done none of these. For by _eating_ one cannot mean half a slice of chaff bread, nor by _drinking_ a water-coloured liquid like our siege tea, nor yet by _smoking_ a collection of strange dried twigs and dust. Man, it has been excellently observed, cannot live by bread alone. How much less, then, can he live upon half chaff and half flour? Far away on the edge of the western horizon I watched for hours, through my telescope, a convoy of camels, each with a tiny white dot of humanity aboard, striding away with delightful patience to the Turkish camp downstream. They were conveying stores from Shamrun, the enemy depot on the river above us. General Smith, of former mention in these notes, has been dangerously ill in hospital, but the crisis has been passed. He contracted pneumonia on the retirement. I have been to see him. He is very full of pluck, and gave me a _Times_. Tudway, R.N., dropped in for a pipe. We talked of the sea, and he spoke of the soft life on the Chinese station.