Healthy folk who lived to eat were at this stage beginning to complain of hunger, and to assert--not quite truthfully--that they got but "one meal a day." Eight ounces of meat was not enough for them; they could devour it all at a single sitting; they were slowly starving. Little sympathy was felt with these uneasy gourmands. Our sources of supply were by no means inexhaustible, and the Colonel's restriction was intelligible to all reasonable men. The Boers, on the other hand, appeared to possess more live stock than they needed, and it was upon this hypothesis that the plan of confiscating a portion of the one to equalise the other was conceived by the artful and gallant Colonel. No sooner thought of than done. From among the coloured fraternity whose love of looting had occasioned trouble in the past he selected the most expert, and commissioned them to resume their bad ways. On the Monday night operations were commenced, and carried out successfully. By dint of much patience and caution, the trusty looters were enabled (unperceived) silently to segregate some seventy oxen and drive them into Kimberley. Splendid animals they were, too, and an addition to our depleted flocks and herds which gave us solid satisfaction. Whether it was that the enemy was engrossed in a vain search for the missing cattle--if they were missed at all--he gave no expression to his indignation next morning. Not until lunch time had we any indications of annoyance. The vials of Boer wrath were then let loose in earnest, and from the Lazaretto Ridge we were peppered furiously. The shells fell thickly in the principal thoroughfares--eighty or ninety of them--one for every bullock "pinched." Fortunately again, the assault was unattended by loss of life. The tin walls of Saint Cyprian's Church were perforated by pieces of shell. Another hissing monster dropped in Dutoitspan Road in front of a tobacco-shop, but thanks to the picturesque array of pipes and pouches in the window the missile, as if it had an eye for art, refrained from bursting; instead it made a little grave to the depth of several feet and buried itself with honour. Three or four buildings were struck, and a funny man spread an alarming rumour relative to the loss of _eighteen_ lives in the Queen's Hotel! On enquiry it transpired that _two_ cats had met their doom. The victims had been serenading in an out-house when the fatal missile (very properly) slit their throats. The dear people of the neighbourhood affected little sympathy for the slain whose orgies had kept them awake at night. Indeed a wish was expressed that a few more of the cult might get hissed off the world's stage. And curiously enough a second shell _did_ fall at the hotel; but the feline minstrels were out of the way--and their well-wishers so much _in_ it that they made peace with the cats at once.