The view from our tiny bedrooms was very pretty, and the coming and going of every sort of person in connection with the convalescent hospital downstairs made the days lively enough, and compensated for the dreariness of the nights.

The splendid air blowing straight from the free north and from the Kalahari Desert on the west worked wonders in the way of restoring us to health, and I began to talk of moving back to my old quarters.

I must confess I was never quite comfortable about the shells, which seemed so constantly to narrowly miss the building, although the look-out men always maintained they were aiming at some other object.

One morning I was still in bed, when a stampede of many feet down the passage warned me our sentinels had had a warning.

Quickly opening my door, I could not help laughing at seeing the foremost man running down the corridor towards our rooms with the precious Maxim gun, enveloped in its coat of canvas, in his arms as if it were a baby.
"They're on us this time," he called out; then came a terrific explosion and a crash of some projectile against the outer walls and doors.