shelter combatants. At any rate Intombi is the place for our sick and
wounded, and he will not respect any other hospital flag. Curiously
enough we accept this humiliation, so far as to remove the patients and
provide for them a camping-ground where the tents cannot be seen; but
the Red Cross flag still flies on the Town Hall. Again we watch the
beautiful effects of almost continuous lightning, brilliant as
moonlight, and then turn in before black clouds break in a terrific
thunderstorm. I have remarked before on the advantage of being on a hill
to watch the picturesque effects of a storm such as we have here. But
there are some disadvantages, especially if you have to sleep in a
patrol tent no higher than a fair-sized dog-kennel, and a tent-pole
happens to give way. Then you wake with wet canvas flapping about you.
The rain pours down in a deluge that makes you shiver at the mere
thought of turning out to put the tent-pole right. Let the rain drift
and the canvas flap with sounds like gunshots. It is better at any rate
than lying as Tommy does on the hillside yonder with only one blanket to
roll himself in, and with that thought, perhaps, you may be able to
cuddle yourself off to sleep again in spite of the storm.

_November 23._--Notwithstanding Sir George White's protest, Boer guns
are still laid to bear on the Town Hall, and shells frequently fall in
the enclosure near it, and have hit the building, sending splinters in
all directions, by one of which a dhoolie-bearer was killed. This seems
to me a scandalous violation of all the rules of civilised warfare,
which certainly entitle us to a field-hospital in addition to one at the
base. If Schalk-Burger had objected on the ground that the Town Hall so
long as it was used for sick and wounded came in the line of fire from
his guns to our batteries or defensive works, he would have been within
his rights, but all the same there would have been no truth in that
contention, and at any rate it rests with him to clear himself from the