Men and horses crawl feebly about, shaken with every form of internal pain and weakness.

Women suffer even more.
The terror of the shells has caused thirty-two premature births since the siege began.

It is true a heliogram to-day tells us there are seventy-four big waggons waiting at Frere for our relief--milk, vegetables, forage, eleven waggons of rum, fifty cases of whisky, 5,000 cigarettes, and so on.

But all depends upon those parallels, so slowly advancing against Taba Nyama, and our insides are being sapped and mined far more quickly.
Towards noon a disaster occurred, which has depressed the whole town.
Two of the _Powerful's_ bluejackets have lately been making what they called a good thing by emptying unexploded Boer shells of their charges, so that the owners might display them with safety and pride when the siege is over.

For this service they generally received 10s.each.It is only two days since they were in my cottage--chiselling out the melinite from a complete "Long Tom" shell which alighted in my old Scot's garden.
I watched them accomplish that task safely, and this morning they set to work upon a similar shell by order of the Wesleyan minister, who wished to keep it in his window as a symbol of Christianity.