It has been interesting, however, to observe from the point of view of the medical profession the nature of the wounds caused by the Mauser and Martini rifles and shell-fire. The Mauser perforates, the Martini splinters, the shell pulverises. The point of entry of the Mauser bullet is somewhat smaller than the circumference of a threepenny piece, and if it passes through the bone it does not appear to set up any undue amount of splintering. The hole through which it emerges is usually, except where the path of the bullet has been deflected, as small as the point of penetration. The Mauser does not, as a rule, set up in the body, and in the greater number of cases passes clean through. It is a humane wound, and infinitely less injurious than the Martini and Dum-dum. A Martini destroys a large internal surface making beneath the point of contact a wound between two and three inches in diameter, with an even greater area of exit. It sweeps everything before it, shredding arteries, shattering the bones, while its process of recovery is, in consequence, the more protracted. I have already described the wounds from shell-fire, adding to that account, however, the fact that the merest fragment of a shell is as capable as the shell itself, of making most terrible injuries. [Illustration: Effects of Shell Fire. 2. After.] CHAPTER XVI A SOFT-WATER BATH MAFEKING, _December 6th, 1899_. As compensation to the inhabitants of beleaguered Mafeking for the many dull days we have had lately, yesterday was replete with incidents and crowded with a constant succession of events of more than ordinary interest. We have had our days of activity, when the boom of artillery and the rattle of musketry have impressed into a few brief hours the full measure of martial excitement, we have endured our days of lonesome and tiring idleness when the hot winds of the Kalahari Desert have swept eddies of whirring, biting sand across the trenches, when the pitiless sun has spent its energies upon the heat-stricken garrison. But yesterday we experienced the effect of a combination between that Providence which the Boers claim as their special and benign guardian and the elements themselves. It was a reconnaissance in force by nature. A union of extreme subtlety and one against which it was impossible to contend. It came, it swept everything before it, and it left us drenched with rain, surrounded by small lakes of mud, streams of water, and without dry garments to our names. When the mischief was complete the deluge ceased. The general physiognomy of the scene can be described at once. When dawn broke in the morning across the sky there glowered the haze of heat, which in Africa, as elsewhere, denotes a more than usually tropical day. To those, however, who knew the signs of the sky, the fleeting masses of black cloud, low down upon the horizon, foretold a day of evil tempest. Slowly the rising wind drove them together until, shortly