The Kaffir herdsmen first ran yelling in every direction, and then rushed back to dig the shell up, amid inextinguishable laughter.

The Hindoo grass-cutter neither ran nor laughed, but awaited destiny with resignation.

By the way, there is a Hindoo servant in the 19th Hussar lines, who at the approach of a "Long Tom" shell always falls reverently on his face and prays to it.
At sundown, in hopes of adding to our starvation rations, I went out among the thorns at the foot of Caesar's Camp to shoot birds and hares.
But the thorns are fast disappearing as firewood, and the appalling rain almost drowned me in the rush of the spruits.

So we dined as usual on lumps of trek-ox thinly disguised.

Talking of rain, I forgot to mention that the deluge on Friday night drowned six horses of the Leicester Mounted Infantry, carried away twenty-seven of their saddles, broke down the grand shelter-caves of the Imperial Light Horse, carried their bridge away to the blue, and flooded out half the poor homes of natives and civilians dug in the sand of the river banks.
_Sunday, December 31, 1899._ Most of my day was wasted in an attempt to get leave to visit Intombi.
Colonel Exham (P.M.O.) and Major Bateson had asked me to go down and give a fair account of what I saw.