His three ploughs went backwards and forwards quite indifferent to unproductive war.

But to-day the Boers deliberately shelled him at his work, the shells following him up and down the field, and ploughing up the earth all wrong.

Neither the farmer nor his Kaffir labourers paid the least attention to them.

The plough drove on, leaving the furrow behind, just as the world goes forward, no matter how much iron two admirable nations pitch at each other's heads.
Of course percussion-fused shells falling on ploughed land seldom burst, as a boy here found by experiment.

Having found an eligible little shell in the furrows, he carried it home, and put it to soak in his washing basin.