In the afternoon shrapnel came raining through our eucalyptus trees and rattling on the roof, so I accepted an invitation to tea in a beautiful hole in the ground, and learnt the joys spoken of by the poet of the new _Ladysmith Lyre_:-- "A pipe of Boer tobacco 'neath the blue, A tin of meat, a bottle, and a few Choice magazines like _Harmsworth's_ or the _Strand_-- sometimes think war has its blessings too." But one wearies of the safest rabbit-hole in an afternoon tea-time, and I rode to the other end of the town trying to induce my tenth or twelfth runner to start.

So far, three have gone and not returned, one did not start, but lay drunk for ten days, the rest have been driven back by Boers or terror.
As I rode, the shells followed me, turning first upon Headquarters and then on the Gordons' camp by the Iron Bridge, where they killed two privates in their tents.

I think nothing else of importance happened during the day, but I was so illusioned with fever that I cannot be sure.

Except "Long Tom," the guns were not so active as yesterday, but some of them devoted much attention to the grazing cattle and the slaughter-houses.

We are to be harried and starved out.
_December 2, 1899._ To me the day has been a wild vision of prodigious guns spouting fire and smoke from uplifted muzzles on every hill, of mounted Boers, thick as ants, galloping round and round the town in opposite directions, of flashing stars upon a low horizon, and of troops massed at night, to no purpose, along an endless road.