The enemy had heard something of them, and burning though was his desire to blow up the diamonds he did not quite court a flight towards heaven in their company. He had seen what dynamite applied to culverts and bridges could do, and doubtless fully measured the indignity of so disentegrating, not to say violent, a manner of quitting this world for a good one. On Friday a party of the Lancashire Regiment went out to cut off a Boer water supply at Curtis Farm. A body of the Light Horse with guns accompanied them--as a hint to the enemy that intervention would be resented. The Boer ignored the hint and lost no time in lodging his protest against our infringement of "the game's" rules. The "Lanks.," however, were not to be deterred; they stuck stoically to their work until their object was accomplished. Our guns had meanwhile kept hurling defiance at the enemy; but there were no casualties on either side. These aquatic operations seriously inconvenienced the Boers; they compelled them to make wide _detours_, to travel a long distance for water around the great ring which encircled Kimberley; the short cuts were dangerous. A sad thing happened when night came. A corporal in charge of a piquet went out to inspect his men. Unfortunately the sentry on duty was unaware of the fact, and on the corporal's return he was mistaken in the darkness for a marauding Boer--with the pitiable result that the sentry shot him dead. In the morning we had news again. It was simply the _truth_ concerning Colenso; fiction could not improve a deal on the loss of ten or twelve British guns. We were unaccustomed to so much candour in the matter of reverses, and this brutal revelation of the truth overwhelmed and astonished us--though we could scarcely pretend that we had not _asked_ for it. A "Slip" unfolded the tale in all its naked veracity. It was _news_, fair and square value for the "thruppence," as siege value goes; but we were in no mood to appreciate the novelty of that; the circumstances were too distressing. Buller was roundly abused, and his staff also were included in a comprehensive denunciation; so that whoever was at fault in the Colenso collapse did not escape the wrath of Kimberley. As one of the Pitts (was it one of the Pitts?) has aptly said: "there are none of us infallible, not even the youngest of us." Not even Lord Methuen, as we had sadly discovered. The brightness of our Christmas prospects was beginning to fade.