Of course we
had wet mornings and wet days, but, perhaps fortunately, the rains that
year were fairly moderate, though plentiful enough to have turned the
yellow veldt of the previous autumn into really beautiful long green
grass, on which the half-starved cattle were then thriving and waxing
fat. The view from our tiny bedrooms was very pretty, and the coming and
going of every sort of person in connection with the convalescent
hospital downstairs made the days lively enough, and compensated for the
dreariness of the nights. The splendid air blowing straight from the
free north and from the Kalahari Desert on the west worked wonders in
the way of restoring us to health, and I began to talk of moving back to
my old quarters. I must confess I was never quite comfortable about the
shells, which seemed so constantly to narrowly miss the building,
although the look-out men always maintained they were aiming at some
other object. One morning I was still in bed, when a stampede of many
feet down the passage warned me our sentinels had had a warning. Quickly
opening my door, I could not help laughing at seeing the foremost man
running down the corridor towards our rooms with the precious Maxim gun,
enveloped in its coat of canvas, in his arms as if it were a baby.
"They're on us this time," he called out; then came a terrific explosion
and a crash of some projectile against the outer walls and doors.
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