essort_. Who could tell?

The enterprise displayed was admirable; but--had we to wait till the
vegetables grew? Were they to grow while we waited? This sudden zeal for
the development of the land recalled the song of the condemned Irishman
who took advantage of his judge's clemency, and with characteristic
humour selected a gooseberry bush from which to be hanged. When the
objection was raised that "it would not be high enough," he expressed
his willingness to wait till it grew!

This policy of despair irritated the landless classes, and some of them
were mean enough to remind us that Martial Law forbade the use of water
for gardening purposes. But the reminder only furnished the workers with
a fresh incentive; it made their work a real as well as an ideal
pleasure. The possibility of breaking the "Law" (with impunity) was
worth a deal of productive, or unproductive, labour. The bread ordinance
had not increased our respect for "benevolent" despotism. Any chance of
setting at naught the _absolute_ prepensities of our legislators (with a
watering-can or by judicious keyhole stuffing, to hide the light) was
duly availed of.

No amount of the portentous signalling that went on night after night
could resuscitate our faith in the Military. An age ago the
Magersfontein misfortune had put off indefinitely the long-expected
succour. We had been made to feel our insignificance beside the
"Military Situation." Our population after all was mainly black, but
black or white, we were nothing to the "Military Situation." Sickness
might increase, and troubles multiply; Kafirs and children might perish
in batches; meanwhile the "Military Situation" decried even a tear.

CHAPTER XVII

_Week ending 10th February, 1900_

The pen-ultimate Sunday of our captivity was notable for nothing but the
average crop of rumours which had characterised every day of our Siege
existence. The listlessness of the people stood out in marked contrast
to their sanguine outlook when the Siege was young, and when the folly
of prophesying unless one knew remained not only, as it were, unsmoked
but outside our pipes altogether. Still--to pursue the metaphor--our
pretensions in the role of prophet had clearly ended in smoke. Happily,
the disillusioning fog had come upon us by degrees. The cheerfulness
with which we had resigned ourselves to bear the first-class
misdemeanant's treatment of a cut and dry "three weeks'" imprisonment
but exemplified, w