Wednesday was quiet; so also was Thursday, our peace being marred by
neither shells nor hooters. The hooters, indeed, were never to do it
again--a graceful concession, for which we gave thanks; their cat-calls
had been so nerve-shaking. The monotony was relieved on Friday by some
shells which came right into the city--as far as the Post Office. They
omitted to burst. The boom of a gun, which had been wont to play havoc
with the nervous, had come to be regarded as of no consequence, a mere
tap on a drum, eliciting a _nonchalant_ "Ah, there she goes," and
nothing more. Everybody was alive for fragments of the dead missiles;
curio-hunting was a craze, and hundreds of people were ever ready to
pounce upon the projectiles that wasted their sweetness on the desert
air. The tiniest crumb of metal was treasured as a valuable memento. The
shells fell and broke as would a tea-pot, a brick, or an egg of the
Stone Age. No explosion followed; no fragments flew to hurt one's ribs,
or to play the dentist with one's teeth. The missiles declined to burst.

It was natural that much speculation should arise as to the cause of
this anomalous state of things; and there were people to doubt its being
so much due to obstinacy on the part of the shells as to inexperience on
the part of the Boers. One wiseacre held that the missiles were antique
and obsolete relics of the 'eighty-one struggle. Others questioned
whether "the Boer" then knew that shells were invented. A lot more
contended that "the Boer" was unacquainted with the mysteries of a fuse,
and knew as little about "timing" a shell as he did about discipline.
One or two suggested, tentatively, as a solution of the puzzle, that "he
had forgotten to put the powder in." Another argued that he did not know
how; while there were a few who doubted whether "the Boer" considered
powder in any sense explosive. There was a garrulous "bore" (from
somewhere over-sea, not Holland) who advanced a still clearer
elucidation of the mystery. "What was Rhodes doing in Germany for twelve