To the man who looks on at all this, the gradual change which has come over the garrison is plainly discernible. In the beginning, when the Boers made war upon us, there was a contempt for bomb-proofs; there was a contempt for many other things besides, since each individual knew better than his Post Commander, and did not hesitate to tell him so, or rather to imply that he had told him so; but the scorn of bomb-proofs was mightier than the sword. In those days we feared nothing beyond mosquitoes and the creeping things of earth, but the change came silently, and although few people commented upon it, the transformation was completed within the first month of the siege. It grew, as it were, in a single night, from a village of mud-walled houses into one in which every other man owned something of a dug-out. For the first few days, while scorn of dug-outs was rife, he who built himself a haven kept it to his inner conscience, recalling it, when its existence was forced upon him, with something of an apologetic air. Thus we existed; then the staff built an underground room, and upon the Sunday that followed this momentous event many there were who visited it, and who, gathering wrinkles, went quietly to their gardens and did likewise. Thus insidiously came the transformation, and although there are still a few who talk disparagingly of these bomb-proof shelters, their faces wear an anxious look when the enemy are shelling, and strangely enough, as the fire waxes hotter, they easily find excuses to visit friends, lingering, the while, in the congenial gloom of their host's dug-out.