Baden-Powell himself seems to have descended from the eyrie from which, like a captain on the bridge, he rang bells and telephoned orders, to bring the house down with a comic song and a humorous recitation.

The ball went admirably, save that there was an interval to repel an attack which disarranged the programme.

Sports were zealously cultivated, and the grimy inhabitants of casemates and trenches were pitted against each other at cricket or football.
[Footnote: Sunday cricket so shocked Snyman that he threatened to fire upon it if it were continued.] The monotony was broken by the occasional visits of a postman, who appeared or vanished from the vast barren lands to the west of the town, which could not all be guarded by the besiegers.

Sometimes a few words from home came to cheer the hearts of the exiles, and could be returned by the same uncertain and expensive means.

The documents which found their way up were not always of an essential or even of a welcome character.