We had orders not to go outside the camp for some days, and the C.O. went round and took notes of all the men who were fit to take a rifle if there was an attack; and of course all the men ride about armed.
We had a quiet Easter Day here. The sisters were expecting some officers of the 5th Dragoons over to tea, but they did not turn up, as they had been out all night chasing Boers.
A few days later the Boers burnt a hotel and stores at Ingogo, and some troops were hurried through here to go after them, but of course they got away.
Still a great many deaths here; the other day we had four in twenty four hours; one of those who died was a doctor whom I knew slightly (he travelled up the coast with us when we first came out). He had been practising out here, so his wife was able to come and be with him, and she stayed in our camp. The poor man had heart disease. Of course he wasn't in my line, but the sister of the officers' ward had a case in the theatre, and as he had been asking for me the Lady Superintendent asked me if I would go to sit with him if I could leave my line for a bit. I managed to be with him most of the day, and he died in the evening, and I went with his wife to the funeral the next day.
The enteric line is now full, so one of my tents has been allowed to have night orderlies, and we collect the bad cases into that.
You would be amused at a "kit inspection" here: when one is proclaimed, the excitement is great, and the orderlies, almost tearing their hair, are so distracted that if the sister has any bad cases, she must nurse them herself, or understand that they will get no attention till the inspection is over! All the ward equipment, mugs, plates, buckets, brooms, &c., has to be laid out at the tent door for the officers to count. In a hospital at home, when "stock-taking" comes, you know that anything that is worn out, or damaged, or really lost, will be replaced, and you are glad of the chance of getting things made correct; but here they assure me that things must _be_ correct, or the orderly gets fined or punished; so, to avoid this, he resorts to strategy.
As soon as the officer (with the wardmaster and orderly in attendance) has passed one tent as correct, the things may be put away again, and then comes in the help of the patients (who fully enter into the game), the most nimble trotting off with a medicine glass to one orderly who is short of that, or a bucket to another; I have known a good broom do duty for three different lines by careful dodging about.