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+Project Gutenberg's The Siege of Mafeking (1900), by J. Angus Hamilton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: The Siege of Mafeking (1900)
+
+Author: J. Angus Hamilton
+
+Release Date: April 2, 2012 [EBook #39348]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SIEGE OF MAFEKING (1900) ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Christine P. Travers and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: The Colonel at Work.]
+
+
+
+
+  THE SIEGE OF MAFEKING
+
+
+  BY
+
+  J. ANGUS HAMILTON
+
+
+
+
+  WITH FIFTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS AND TWO PLANS
+
+
+
+
+  METHUEN & CO.
+  36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
+  LONDON
+  1900
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE
+
+
+I have to acknowledge gratefully permission to publish in this book
+certain articles contributed before and during the siege of Mafeking
+to _The Times_ and _Black and White_. To the editor of the latter
+paper I am indebted also for leave to reproduce photographs taken by
+myself and published, from time to time, in that journal.
+
+I would acknowledge, too, in anticipation, any kindly toleration my
+readers may extend to me for the many shortcomings, of which I am
+dismally conscious, arising from the hasty preparation of this volume.
+When I explain that between the date of my return to England and this
+date--when I start for China--barely a fortnight has elapsed, I shall
+make good, perhaps, some small claim upon the indulgence of the
+critics and the public.
+
+                                                    J. A. H.
+  _July 21, 1900_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                               Page
+
+        I.  AT SEA                                         1
+
+       II.  A GLANCE AHEAD                                11
+
+      III.  ON THE ORANGE FREE STATE BORDER               22
+
+       IV.  BRICKS OF STRAW                               34
+
+        V.  DIAMONDS AND WHITE FEATHERS                   41
+
+       VI.  TWO DAYS BEFORE WAR                           49
+
+      VII.  THE SKIRMISH AT FIVE MILE BANK                57
+
+     VIII.  THE FIRST DAY OF BOMBARDMENT                  67
+
+       IX.  THE ADVENT OF "BIG BEN"                       78
+
+        X.  A MIDNIGHT SORTIE                             88
+
+       XI.  CANNON KOPJE                                  97
+
+      XII.  A RECONNAISSANCE                             108
+
+     XIII.  THE TOWN GUARD                               120
+
+      XIV.  WASTED ENERGIES                              130
+
+       XV.  SHELLS AND SLAUGHTER                         140
+
+      XVI.  A SOFT-WATER BATH                            147
+
+     XVII.  THE ECONOMY OF THE SITUATION                 152
+
+    XVIII.  A VISIT TO THE HOSPITAL                      158
+
+      XIX.  A LITTLE GUN PRACTICE                        165
+
+       XX.  THE ATTACK UPON GAME TREE                    175
+
+      XXI.  THE ADVENT OF THE NEW YEAR                   188
+
+     XXII.  NATIVE LIFE                                  196
+
+    XXIII.  BOMBAST AND BOMB-PROOFS                      202
+
+     XXIV.  SOME SNIPING AND AN EXECUTION                212
+
+      XXV.  LIFE IN THE BRICKFIELDS                      220
+
+     XXVI.  FROM BAD TO WORSE                            225
+
+    XXVII.  THE FIRST ATTACK UPON THE BRICKFIELDS        232
+
+   XXVIII.  THE SECOND ATTACK UPON THE BRICKFIELDS       240
+
+     XXIX.  THE NATIVE QUESTION                          247
+
+      XXX.  POLITICAL ECONOMY                            253
+
+     XXXI.  "A HISTORY OF THE BARALONGS"                 261
+
+    XXXII.  'TIS WEARY WAITING                           271
+
+   XXXIII.  TWO HUNDRED DAYS OF SIEGE                    278
+
+    XXXIV.  THE EPICUREAN'S DELIGHT                      283
+
+     XXXV.  THE LAST FIGHT                               290
+
+    XXXVI.  RELIEVED AT LAST                             311
+
+   XXXVII.  THE END                                      319
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND PLANS
+
+
+                                                        Page
+
+  THE COLONEL AT WORK.                         _Frontispiece_
+
+  MAJOR LORD EDWARD CECIL, C.S.O.                         45
+
+  OUTPOSTS AND ENTRENCHMENTS, SOUTHERN FRONT.             55
+
+  HEADQUARTERS                                            68
+
+  CANNON KOPJE                                            98
+
+  MAJOR GODLEY ON THE LOOK-OUT                           112
+
+  EFFECTS OF SHELL FIRE. I. BEFORE                       144
+
+  EFFECTS OF SHELL FIRE. II. AFTER                       146
+
+  BOERS INSPECTING BRITISH KILLED                        184
+
+  THE COLONEL ON THE LOOK-OUT                            192
+
+  WAR CORRESPONDENTS AND THEIR BOMB-PROOF SHELTERS       212
+
+  PLAN OF THE BRICKFIELDS                                222
+
+  CAPE BOYS HURLING STONES AT THE BOERS                  224
+
+  KILLING HORSES FOR THE GARRISON                        292
+
+  THE BRITISH SOUTH AFRICAN POLICE FORT                  298
+
+  "MAFEKING," THE AUTHOR'S DOG                           324
+
+  PLAN OF MAFEKING                                       338
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+AT SEA
+
+
+                                   R.M.S. _DUNVEGAN CASTLE_,
+                                     _September 16th, 1899_.
+
+A breeze was freshening, tufting the heaving billows with white crests
+and driving showers of spray and clots of foam upon the decks of the
+_Dunvegan_. Passengers stood in strained attitudes about the ship,
+fidgeting with the desire to be ill and the wish to appear
+comfortable--even dignified. In the end, however, circumstances were
+too strong for the passengers, transforming them, from a state of calm
+despair, into a condition of sickness and temporary dejection. Every
+one was perturbed, and those delicate attentions which the sea-sick
+demand were being offered by a much-worried deck steward. Here and
+there groups of more hardy voyagers were spending their feeble wit in
+unseasonable jokes; here and there bedraggled people, wet with spray
+and racked by the anguish of an aching void, were clutching at the
+possibility of gaining the privacy of their cabins before their
+feelings quite overpowered them. In this mad rush, not unlike the
+scramble of a shuttlecock to escape the buffetings of the battledore,
+I also joined, fetching my berth with much unfortunate sensation.
+Alas! I am a wretched sailor, and travelling far and near these many
+years, crossing strange seas to distant lands at oft-recurring
+periods, has not even tutored me to stand the stress of the ocean
+wave. I cannot endure the sea.
+
+The _Dunvegan Castle_ was steaming to the Cape, carrying the mails,
+together with a number of tedious and most tiresome people, whose
+hours aboard were passed in periods of distracting energy--in deck
+quoits, in impossible cricket matches, in angry squabbles upon the
+value of the monies which, day by day, were collected by the crafty
+from the foolish and pooled in prizes upon the daily run of the
+steamer. It was said that these were pleasant gambles, but the
+Gentiles paid and the Hebrews, returning to their diamonds, their
+stocks and shares, scooped the stakes. It is a way that the people of
+Israel and Threadneedle Street have made peculiarly their own; and,
+indeed, the multitude and variety of Jews upon this evil-smelling
+steamer suggested that she might have held within her walls the
+nucleus of an over-sea Israelitish colony, such another as the
+Rothschilds founded.
+
+Time was idle, dreary, and so empty! There was nothing to do, since
+nothing could be done. The monotony was appalling, and if this were
+the condition in the saloon, how distressful must have been the lot of
+the third class, who constituted in themselves, as good a class of
+people as that contained in the saloon. Surely in these days of
+systematic philanthropy something more might be done to brighten the
+lot and welfare of third-class passengers. Is it, for example, quite
+impossible to supply them with that not uninteresting development of
+the musical-box--the megaphone? Of course it should be quite
+possible; but antiquated, even antediluvian, in its arrangements, the
+Castle Company cannot initiate anything which has not yet been adopted
+by the other lines of ocean shipping. And yet I have been told by
+numerous merchant captains that it is the steerage which provides the
+profits, making lucrative the business of carrying cargoes of goods
+and human freight from our shores to more distant lands. But that also
+is the way of the world; yet when a rude prosperity enables the
+emigrant Jew and Gentile to throng the saloons, making them altogether
+impossible for the gentler classes, we shall find the economy of the
+third class appealing to an ever-increasing and ever-superior body of
+people until these "superior" people will not endure the dirt,
+unwholesome surroundings, and fetid atmosphere of the steerage
+accommodation of ocean-going steamers, but will cry to Heaven upon the
+niggard's policy which controls the vessels.
+
+As the days wore away, and Madeira came and went, even the flying
+fishes ceased to attract, and the noises of the ship grew more
+distant, the people less obtrusive. Moreover, I became at rest within
+myself, and the gaping, aching void which has filled my vitals these
+many days, became assuaged. It was then we began to inspect the
+passengers; to consider almost kindly the African Jew millionaire who
+ate peas with his fingers and mixed honey with his salad, thought not
+disdainfully of the poor lady his wife, who, suffering the tortures of
+the damned when at sea, shone at each meal valiantly and heroically
+until the menu was pierced by her in its entirety, and she made still
+further happy by the administration of an original preventative
+against _mal de mer_ of sweet wine biscuits bathed in plentiful and
+sticky treacle. It was her way of pouring oil on troubled waters. Oh,
+those were dreadful people, never ill, always eating, ever complaining
+of a curious dizziness which, nevertheless, occasioned them no loss of
+appetite. Surely they, of all others, were indeed of the specially
+select! Then there was Mr. Clarke, a friend of the two Presidents,
+who, undaunted by the most violent motions of the steamer, kept to the
+deck in a constant promenade, discoursing amicably the while, and
+punctuating his utterances, of a somewhat patriarchal order, with
+brief pauses, in which he stroked, with much dignity, a long white
+beard. He was a dear old man, and, unlike other Boers, he did not
+quote from the Scriptures, a concession which, to be properly
+appreciated, demands the lassitude and extreme prostration of violent
+nausea. There is something inordinately irritating about the man who
+proposes to soothe the irruptions attendant upon sea voyages by the
+assurance that such discomfiture is to be endured, since in Chapter
+i., verse 1, of a pious writer, the Lord hath there written that the
+ungodly shall be everlastingly punished. Personally I objected only to
+the form of punishment.
+
+The friend of the President, a fine specimen of sturdy masculinity,
+touching eighty-two years of age, was quite the most impressive figure
+aboard this particular Castle packet. He had been a sojourner in the
+Orange Free State for forty years, coming to it from Australia shortly
+after the riots at Ballarat goldfields. The old fellow had fought
+against the Boers, championed their arms against the Basutos, raided
+the blacks in Queensland, and tumbled through a variety of enterprises
+ranging from mining in Australia to successful sheep farming near the
+Fickersburg. I liked him, taking an intense anxiety in his future
+movements, and wondering whether this fine old specimen of life would
+also become our enemy. Who could tell! So much depended upon the
+situation, so much upon the action of the President and the will of
+Providence. He stood, as he himself was apt to remark, upon the border
+of the next world--looking back upon a span of four score years,
+possessing a knowledge of the affairs of these African Republics which
+had obtained for him the friendship of President Steyn and President
+Kruger; indeed, they had been comrades-in-arms, Oom Paul and himself,
+while he had seen Steyn spring into manhood from a stripling, and when
+his thoughts dwelt upon those days the voice of the old man became
+flooded with emotion. These tears of memory were a sidelight to his
+real character, and I was convinced that if he shouldered arms at all
+these earlier friendships were held by such ties as were too sacred to
+be violated. In his heart he hated fighting, yearning merely for the
+attentions of his children, the cool delights of his mountain home. In
+his domestic environment he was a happy man, since prosperity had
+brought him certain cares of office, much as the dignity of his age
+had brought him the respect of his fellow-burghers. And yet he figured
+as an illustration of countless hundreds, each one of whom was in
+close relationship with the crisis in the politics of the country.
+
+Morning, noon and night he strolled, the one figure of interest in
+the ill-assorted company of passengers which the good ship--to my
+nostrils an evil-smelling tub--was carrying to the Cape. There were
+few others of importance upon this journey. There was a colonel of
+the Royal Engineers, who had a snug billet in the War Office, and
+who was leaving Pall Mall to inspect the barracks at Cape Town, St.
+Helena, Ascension, and all those other places to which certain
+preposterous War Office officials devoted that attention which
+should so much more properly have been paid to the defenceless
+condition of the frontiers in South Africa. But then, after all,
+what is the destiny of the War Office unless to meddle and make
+muddle? If Colonel Watson might be said to have represented the
+Imperial Government among the passengers, Mynheer Van der Merure,
+Commissioner of Mines in Johannesburg, might be considered as
+representing the Pretorian Government. It seemed to me that these
+two worthies were quite harmless, representing, each in his own way,
+the acme of good nature, the gallant--all colonels imagine that they
+be gallant--colonel by reason of his advanced age; the worthy--all
+commissioners imagine that they be worthy--commissioner because he
+lived off the spoil of the mines. But even the spectacle of these
+three--the grand old man, the War Office _attach�_, the wealthy
+Randsman--did not suffice to break the hideous monotony of a most
+depressing voyage.
+
+With the peace of nature enveloping us in a feeling of security, it
+was difficult to realise that each day we drew a little nearer to a
+possible seat of war. There was much rumour aboard; the stewards
+hinted that the hold was filled with a cargo of munitions of war. The
+captain flatly denied it, even the War Office pensioner thought it
+improbable. "You must understand, sir," said he one morning, across the
+breakfast table, "that it is contrary to the custom of her Majesty's
+Government, and, if I may say so, sir, especially contrary to the
+custom of her Majesty's War Office, to squander the finances of our
+great Empire upon unnecessary munitions of war because the _Times_ and
+other papers choose to send half a dozen irresponsible individuals to
+South Africa. Now, sir--pooh!" When Colonel Watson broke out like this
+the friend of the President would intervene, suggesting in his kindly,
+paternal fashion that "the War Office--given half a dozen colonels,
+gallant or otherwise--might well afford to follow the lead of the
+_Times_ newspaper." "It has been my experience," the Colonel
+retaliated on one occasion, "that when people begin to interfere they
+cease to understand." It was always quite delightful to watch these
+two cross swords; the elder invariably took refuge in his age when the
+sallies of the War Office could not be directly countered.
+"Experience! You are only old enough to be my son." The Colonel
+spluttered--colonels do. By these means the elder man usually carried
+off the honours, replying, as it were, by a flank movement to the
+frontal attack of his superior adversary.
+
+The farmer from the Orange Free State talked much to me, giving me,
+towards the end of the voyage, an invitation to his home. It was a
+visit in which I should have found much pleasure, since the splendour
+of his years, his gentleness and nobility of character were
+attractive. It seemed to me that among all sorts and conditions of men
+this one was indeed, a man, and I do most sincerely hope that the end
+of the war may find him still living and enjoying his farm in his
+usual prosperity. He was so set against the war, and dreaded the
+consequences of hostile invasion into the Orange Free State, insomuch
+that he realised, if some immunity were not guaranteed, the ruin and
+desolation which would spread over the land. In August as we left
+England there was nothing known about the future action of the Orange
+Free State. The question was one of debate, altogether confused,
+almost intangible, and this man, knowing Steyn as he knew Kruger, was
+convinced that the Orange Free State would alienate itself from the
+Transvaal difficulty. But who can tell? We look to the sea for our
+answer, and it throws back to us only the echoes of the sighing waves,
+the pulsing throbs of the screws pounding the green masses of water in
+an effort to reach the Cape. Nevertheless, I am inclined to believe
+that there will be war. I hope that there may be, since it is to be my
+field of labour.
+
+The journey nears its end, and the weather breaks, for a few hours
+into grey cold; while the sea, where it laps the bay at Cape Town,
+darkening into thin ridges of foam, tumbling and tossing amid the
+eddies of the bleak water, looks menacing. A fog lies off the land,
+dense and weighty, impeding the navigation and impressing no little
+conception of the perils of the deep upon the minds of timorous
+passengers, and folding the surface of the ocean in its expanse. The
+weather threatens to be wild. All day the sea fog broke and mingled,
+merging, as the day wore on, into one conglomerate mass of cloud,
+impenetrable to the mariner and screening the signs of the sea from
+those who were upon land. Here and there, low down upon the horizon,
+the storm fiend from the shore had broken into the garland of mist
+which hung so drearily upon sea as upon moor, detaching parcels of
+cloud from the main and toying with them with the coy and heartless
+grace of Zephyr! But as yet the wind only came in minor lapses, and
+was followed by intervals in which there was no movement in the fog.
+From the waste of sea came a ceaseless, muffled roar which seemed
+loudest and most full of mystery when carried upon the wings of the
+wind. Then these echoes of mighty waters, tumbling upon the rocks off
+the land, seemed ominous and charged with deadly peril, and, as the
+fog belts lifted or dispersed before the gusts of the wind, the sea
+would look as though swept with growing anger, heaving in tremulous
+passion, until the great reach of quivering waves was flecked with
+white. Closer and closer lapped the tiny waves, until, under the
+pressure of the freshening wind they mingled their crests, rising and
+falling in foam-capped billows of growing volume and increasing
+majesty. Thus developed the storm; the wind beating on the face of the
+waters and breaking against the clouds until rain fell, in the end
+assuaging, by its raging downpour, the tempest of the ocean. Down came
+the storm in one panting burst of tempestuous deluge. The heaving
+waves threw sheets of foam from their rain-pierced summits, and the
+wind whistled and screamed as it swept through the rigging. Flashes of
+lightning and thunder claps parried one another in quick succession.
+The rain fell in torrents, the decks, shining in the lightning
+flashes, roared with rushing water. So that night we rode at anchor,
+rocking idly at our cables within the shadow of the mountain, and upon
+the morrow, beneath the light of coming dawn, we drew nearer through
+the cool greyness of the bounding ocean. At first the figures, the
+walls of the fort, the cranes, the shipping, and the scarred and
+crinkled facing of the mountain were silhouetted in black against the
+grey of early morning, but as the day broke more firmly across its
+slopes, the finer and more subtle light gave to everything its actual
+proportion. All kept growing clearer and yet clearer, and more and
+more thoroughly outlined, until the sun, shooting over the horizon,
+bestowed upon the coming day its first wink of glory.
+
+And so we landed, passing from a sluggish state of peace into a world
+where everything was lighted with martial glamour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A GLANCE AHEAD
+
+
+                          CAPE TOWN, _September 20th, 1899_.
+
+To be in Cape Town in September would seem to be visiting the capital
+of Cape Colony in its least enjoyable month; since, more especially
+than at any other time in the year, the place be thronged with
+bustling people, who plough their way through streets which, by the
+stress of recent bad weather, are choked with mud and broken by pools
+of slush and rain-scourings. The rain is falling with a determination
+and force of penetration which soaks the pedestrian in a few minutes
+and makes life altogether miserable. Moreover, there are signs of
+further foul weather. There is a white mist upon the mountain and a
+sea fog enshrouds the shipping in the harbour: everywhere it is cold,
+colourless and damp. Everywhere the people are depressed. It is as
+though the wet has drenched the population of the town to the bone and
+drowned their spirits in the cheerless prospect which the rainy
+season in Cape Town provides. If the sun were to shine the aspect
+might be brighter, a little warmth might be infused in the character
+and disposition of the constantly shifting streams of mud-splashed,
+bedraggled pedestrians who, despite the rain and mud and an air of
+general despondency, impart some little animation to the dirty
+thoroughfares.
+
+Other than this air of depression there is but little external
+evidence of the momentous crisis which impends. It may be that the
+Cape Town colonist has forgotten the responsibilities of his colony in
+the cares of his own office, and is become that mechanical development
+of commerce, a money-making man. Who can tell? Is it even fair to
+hazard an estimation of the man in his present environment? But it
+would assuredly seem that the troubles of the Government, the menace
+which is imposed upon the colony by the Bond Ministry, do not touch
+him, do not even stir his loyalty to the ebullition of a little
+doubtful enthusiasm. Just now, although there may be war upon his
+borders, although the spirit of disturbed patriotism be in the air,
+and although his neighbours may be thinking of joining some one of the
+Irregular Corps who are advertising for recruits, the ordinary
+inhabitant of Cape Town is unmoved. He is too lethargic, or is it that
+his loyalty is not of that degree which regards with concern the
+arming of the border republics, the near outbreak of bloody war? It
+would seem that each, after his own caste, be happy if he be left
+alone; the money grubber to gain more shekels, the idler and the
+casual to bore each other with their stupendous, even studied
+indifference to the propinquity of the latest national crisis. Within
+a few days, it may even be within a few hours, our questions with the
+Pretorian Government will have reached their final adjustment or their
+perpetual confusion, and it may be that we shall be at war. It may be
+also, although it be difficult to believe, that a peaceful solution
+will be derived. At this moment the services of such pacific measures
+as can be adopted should be utilised, since if war should come within
+a brief measure the position of the people of this country will indeed
+be grave--the utter absence of adequate defensive measures, the entire
+lack of efficient military preparations being factors which are
+calculated to incite to rebellion those who incline to the Dutch
+cause, and indeed, most positively, their name is Legion. There is, I
+think, the essence of revolt beneath this heavy and depressed
+condition of the people: it were not possible otherwise, to exist
+within such intimate proximity to a state of war and be unmoved; it is
+not possible either to find other explanation. It may be that in their
+hearts, as in their heads, they are weighing the consequences of
+revolt, succouring one another in their distress of mind and body with
+seditious sympathies, maintaining a spirit of antagonism to the
+Imperial fusion under pretence of the mere expression of a lip
+loyalty. And in their immediate prospect there is everything which may
+be calculated to disturb their equanimity, and to force upon them the
+consciousness of their impotency. It is perhaps this knowledge of
+their actual weakness which subdues them since they cannot afford to
+openly avow feelings which are inimical to us and which would betoken
+their own hostility. Nevertheless, Great Britain can do nothing which
+could encourage these people in their loyalty; nor can they
+themselves, in reality, assist to remove their unfortunate
+predicament, since they must needs sacrifice their possessions to
+substantiate their views, and to do this implies complete
+disintegration of their fortunes. This they will not do; since they
+cannot suffer it. They will remain discontented partisans, however;
+slaves of commerce, restrained by the possibilities of further
+aggrandisement from declaring their mutual connection, and manacled by
+the bonds of free trade and crooked dealings. They will be neutral, as
+indeed the greater proportion of the inhabitants of the towns along
+the coast and within the littoral zone will be, since with every
+feeling of unctuous rectitude in relation to the values of their
+trade, they will leave to the provincial areas, which lie between the
+borders of the Orange Free State and the metropolitan circuits, the
+onus of the situation, the work of supplying active and more potential
+supporters of the Republican arms.
+
+This is the middle of September, and I am assured that the crisis
+should not be expected before the middle of October, inclining to the
+first two weeks of the coming month. If this be possible, and the
+information is difficult to discount, our sin of indifference is the
+greater, our apathy the more criminal. Indeed, everywhere there is
+nothing doing--God forbid that the steady warlike preparations of the
+Transvaal Government should intimidate us, but let us at least be
+heedful and not over sleepy. If we can gauge the situation by the
+public press of the Empire it is most critical, and the time is rather
+overripe in which we also should indulge in a few military exercises.
+There is a situation to be faced which will tax all the resources of
+the Castle, and strain even the vaunted excellence of the home
+administration--that army for which Lord Wolseley has claimed such
+splendid mobilisation, such insensate volition. If these fifty
+thousand men were here now the turns of the political wheel would not
+be regarded with such intense apprehension, while in their absence
+there lies perhaps the answer to the rain-drenched dulness of the
+population. The land is naked; from Basutoland to Buluwayo and back to
+Beira, mile upon mile of smiling frontier rests without protection of
+any sort. We are inviting invasion, and it is impossible that such a
+movement will not be attempted. To invade our territory--it will sound
+so well round the camp fires of the Boer laagers--a mere scamper
+across the frontier, a pell-mell, hell-for-leather retreat to their
+own lines, and the manoeuvres would be executed felicitously and with
+every sign of success. But such a contingency is submerged under an
+accumulation of theories and official explanations each of which deny
+the possibility of the Boer taking upon himself the responsibility of
+rushing the situation. Moreover, it does not seem that the Boers
+require much instigation to attempt such an act. We have laid open our
+borders to such an enterprise, even taking the trouble to leave
+unguarded many towns whose adjacency to the border is singularly
+perilous. In many cases a Boer force need only make a short march to
+arrive in the very heart of some one of these border towns, when,
+should they appear, the turn of affairs could be said to be complex;
+and some emotions might be felt by those worthy and effete military
+noodles who so persistently shout down the "pessimists" who, knowing
+the country, the ambition and resourcefulness of the Boers, persist in
+declaiming upon the hideous neglect which characterises our frontier
+defences, and strenuously assert the probability of Boer invasion into
+those districts which superimpose themselves upon the borders of the
+Transvaal and Orange Free State Republics, and which, possessing
+values of their own, can be held as hostages against the slings and
+arrows of an outrageous fortune elsewhere.
+
+It is the duty of the Crown at the present juncture to bear this
+contingency in mind, to confront it with the determined resolution to
+repair the negligence of the past at once and at all costs, and to
+allow neither the opinion of the Bond Ministry, nor the ignorance of
+the existing military advisers to the Governor, to persuade the
+Executive from adopting the only course which remains to us, which is
+to push men and materials of war to the border with the least possible
+delay. If we do not take these steps now it will be too late in a
+little time, and the course of the war must necessarily be the more
+protracted. There are many who would have us delay lest our premature
+acts should expedite the despatch of the ultimatum, and we should lose
+the opportunity, which the next few days will give to us, of receiving
+delivery of the troops who are already upon the water. But the
+presence of these men means little and forebodes, in reality, a slight
+accentuation of the gravity of the actual situation. It is with the
+forces that we can control at this moment that we must count, and it
+is with them that we must deal. It does not suffice to have
+parade-ground drills in Cape Town as a preliminary flourish; we should
+at least show ourselves as ready as the Boers be willing. This of
+course we cannot do, since, with a handful of exceptions, we have not
+a modern piece of artillery in the country. Moreover we do not quite
+know what armaments the Transvaal Government possess; it is with a
+pretty display of pretence that we conceal the nakedness of our
+borders and bolster up the situation. There is Kimberley,
+Ramathlabama, and Buluwayo--what _is_ to happen upon the western
+frontier?--and although it be doubtful if the Boers would pierce the
+Rhodesian border and seize Buluwayo, it is not too much to expect that
+if they should inaugurate any movement into the Colony from the Orange
+Free State, even if their activity only should assume the shape of a
+demonstration against Kimberley, that this southern advance would
+receive sympathetic co-operation from a parallel movement in a
+northerly direction by which they might temporarily secure possession
+of our line of communication and menace Buluwayo by encroaching upon
+Rhodesia.
+
+Then there is the position of Natal, which must be more or less
+hampered by the war in the Transvaal if it does not become actually
+and potentially concerned. That Natal will play an important _r�le_ is
+elaborately evident from the Boer patrols who, even now, are reported
+to be in possession of all strategical points in the mountains, and
+who are also said to be busily engaged in fortifying the rocky
+fastnesses of the Drakensburg Mountains, and to dominate Laing's Nek
+tunnel as well as the line of railway which curvets through the chain,
+by having emplaced some heavy ordnance upon prominent and immediate
+commanding slopes. It would seem as though Natal may play a part, so
+distinctive and so vitally important in its own history as a colonial
+dependency, that the prospect of the war there may become a campaign
+in itself, and one which will be almost detached and isolated from the
+movements in the Orange Free State and Transvaal, where I have reason
+to believe there is some intention of formulating, what may be
+regarded as a dual campaign, which will avoid all invasion of the
+Transvaal territory until the Orange Free State has been completely
+pacified and the lines of communication effectively and securely held.
+In support of this scheme it is generally conceded that it will be
+impossible to carry war into the Transvaal until every provision has
+been made against the risk of local rising in the areas of the Orange
+Free State, and thus endangering our lines of communication, as well
+as our flanks.
+
+These, then, are the signs of the day, and in such signs do we read
+something of the terrible struggle upon which we are so soon to be
+engaged, and in appreciation of which, local opinion is in such marked
+contrast--I almost wrote conflict--with the opinion and views of the
+special service officers from India and England. To whom, then,
+belongs the honours of accurate estimation; to the man from home as it
+were, or to the man who has passed his life in South Africa and
+understands the Dutchman as the mere military interloper can never
+hope to understand him? There is, I think, no doubt as to what point
+of view be erroneous, and it is because we so persistently ignore the
+worth and reliability of the men who are upon the spot, that we shall
+have the falsity of our intelligence some day brought home to us by
+the tidings of a terrible disaster. South Africa is already the grave
+of too many fine reputations; but let us, at least, hope that we shall
+not add to the disgrace of the private individual any loss of national
+prestige. The wind soughs ominously just now, however, while there is
+a note in it which I do not like, and which I cannot understand. At
+the Castle they talk airily of being home by Christmas! If they be
+sailing within twelve months they will be lucky, and at Government
+House Sir Alfred Milner is beset with the difficulties of his very
+onerous position. For the moment he takes--I am glad to be able to say
+it, since I would have him upon the side of sound common sense--a
+somewhat depressed view of the general outlook. Kimberley and
+Ramathlabama were his especial concerns when I called there to-day,
+insomuch that they extend an especial invitation to the mobility of a
+Boer commando, while it is quite beyond his powers to save them from
+their fate. It seemed to me that he despairs of these towns in
+particular, but I will withhold his remarks upon them until I myself
+have been there. Yet it may be taken as granted that, should Sir
+Alfred Milner be concerned for their immediate and eventual safety,
+the gravity of their situation is extreme, pointing even to the
+closeness of the danger which would arise from a Boer invasion into
+those areas.
+
+But in this hurried letter I am dealing with the colony, and
+singularly enough we have to consider how our colonists will behave,
+what may be their attitude, and how near are we to rebellion? It is of
+course an all-important question, and one which, in relation to a
+British colony, is untoward. If I were asked to localise the possible
+area of revolt I should decline, since the question be so serious and
+infringes so much upon the life and existence--the central forces--of
+the colony that it would be difficult, definitely and evenly, to
+demarcate any zone of loyalty, as opposed to any area of disaffection,
+without unduly trespassing upon the sentiments of less favoured
+districts. But I do think that the possibilities of this question are
+enormous, emanating as it does from the life teachings and doctrines
+of the people of the country, and however much we try to draw a line
+between what constitutes due loyalty and what infringes the spirit as
+well as the letter of the individual's allegiance, we must
+unconsciously perpetrate much injustice either upon the one or upon
+the other side of the question, which, owing to the dualistic
+temperament and inclinations of no small majority of the people, it is
+impossible to avoid, and which will have to be endured by individuals,
+loyal or disloyal, as their penalty. The spirit of the Dutch pioneers
+still impregnates much of Cape Colony; its presence south of the
+Orange Free State and in the actual territory of the colony receiving
+direct support and sympathy by the increasing numbers of the Dutch
+population in these African Republics; an increase which, being
+unrestricted in its development, has spread far and wide until it has
+created a partial exodus from the recognised centres of Dutch
+influence and Dutch population into those areas from which the traces
+of the earliest Dutch occupation were rapidly vanishing--if they have
+not altogether disappeared--and which has been the medium of
+resuscitating a feeling of sympathy and clanship which, augmented by
+still closer ties of commerce, has promoted the functions of matrimony
+and friendship and gradually released a current of feeling throughout
+the district which was avowedly Dutch, and, equally avowedly, in
+silent and semi-subdued opposition to the instincts and ideals of the
+Anglo-Saxon colonist. And it is against the rapid spread of this
+feeling which we have to contend, much as we must guard against the
+conversion of these prejudices into tacit support and effective
+co-operation with the armed burghers of the sister Republics should
+their arms secure any initial successes. With this danger in our
+midst, in itself an almost insurmountable obstacle, no precaution
+which could render the safety of these districts the less precarious
+should be omitted; and to effect this--and it is quite essential to
+our temporal salvation--men and materials of war should be in
+readiness to forestall, or, at least, to circumvent, the consummation
+of the Boer operations. If we can accomplish even so little, it maybe
+possible to prevent the no small proportion of the colonists
+discharging their obligations to the Crown by combining with the Boer
+forces. To this end our efforts will have to be seriously directed,
+and the sooner this simple fact is realised by the authorities in
+South Africa as in London, the more convincing will the scope and
+measures of our policy become. At present it is chimerical, and we
+hesitate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+ON THE ORANGE FREE STATE BORDER
+
+
+                                           THE CAMP, DE AAR,
+                                     _September 23rd, 1899_.
+
+Africa was streaming past the dusty windows of the railway carriage,
+presenting an endless spectacle of flat, depressed-looking country,
+with here and there a hut, here and there a native. I am in the
+earliest stages of a journey which should lead to Ramathlabama, and
+the command of Colonel Baden-Powell. Slowly and with much effort the
+train drags itself along; the road is steep, the carriages hot and
+uncomfortable, and there is nothing to attract attention, nothing to
+fill the emptiness of the mind. I slept at intervals, to awaken at
+some roadside station where fussy people were struggling to eat too
+much in too short a space of time. There, for a moment, was the
+scamper of bustling, hurrying passengers, who pushed and menaced one
+another in a thirsty rush to the refreshment room; with a cloud of
+officers, orderlies, and troopers I stood apart, listless, bored, and
+travel-stained, feebly interested, more feebly talking in disconnected
+phrases, until, with shrill blasts of his whistle, the guard signalled
+the departure of the train. Then off again, the jerking, swaying
+flight of eighteen miles an hour--the rumbling monotony of express
+speed which was conducive to drowsiness and nothing more. The
+landscape faded in the distance, a raucous voice sang of 'Ome, while,
+in a monotonous buzz of nothingness, I slept again.
+
+The train was slowly thrusting itself forward as, with much panting
+and purring and some screaming, it cut the borders of the Great Karoo.
+Slowly the wheels clenched the metals as the waggons rocked in a
+lullaby of motion, and the passengers were fanned with draughts of
+scented air. The Great Karoo, lying in the shades of evening,
+hearkening to the secret calling of mysterious voices, heeding not the
+ravages of time, wearing majestically the massive dignity of its
+grandeur, threw back its barriers of resistance to our intrusion and
+delighting our senses with ever-changing and oft-recurring glimpses of
+its beauty. But the picture faded with the passing of the train, the
+golden and crimson delights of the overgrowing flowers gave place to a
+soulless expanse destitute of beauty.
+
+I stopped at De Aar, which is the junction where the Orange Free State
+and Transvaal lines connect with the Cape Colony system. At De Aar I
+was anxious to observe the press of traffic. From Cape Town for
+Kimberley, Borderside, Fourteen Streams, and Mafeking, truck loads of
+horses and mules, waggon loads of general military stores were passing
+northwards to the front. In the interval, there were Imperial troops
+and men of the Cape Mounted Police. Indeed, the scene upon the
+platform was animated by martial spirit. If the train from the south
+was loaded with war material, the trains from the two Republics were
+packed with fugitives, among whom were many men who, in the hour of
+necessity, will, it is to be hoped, consider flight as the least
+satisfactory means of procedure. However, no goods are going through
+to the two Republics from Cape Colony, unless Mr. Schreiner has passed
+more ammunition over the Cape lines to the Transvaal. But things are
+working more satisfactorily down in Cape Town since it became known
+that the Cabinet would be discharged by the Governor, unless----and to
+a discerning politician of the Bond, whose income depends upon his
+salary from the House, a blank conveys many wholesome home truths.
+
+Travelling, even with the variety of emotion which the Karoo excites,
+is no great comfort in South Africa. One lives in an atmosphere of
+dust and Keating's. If the trains go no faster to Cairo when the rails
+be through, than they do to Buluwayo, the steamers will still retain
+the monopoly of passenger traffic. It takes a "week of Sundays" to
+reach railhead at Buluwayo, but there is some small consideration in
+the fact that such a journey has been made. It will become a feature
+in our Sabbatarian domesticity some day, and among railway journeys at
+the present time it is unique. Where else do express trains arrive
+several hours in advance of their scheduled time? Where else do goods
+trains arrive several days late? These are but the manifold and
+maddening perplexities of railway travelling in Africa. Yet if one
+kicks against the uncertainties of the desert service, there is sure
+to be an Eliphaz somewhere upon the train, whose philosophy being
+greater than his hurry, recognises that the element of expedition,
+when his train does arrive, is greater than the prospect of moving at
+all where no train comes. Time passes somehow on these journeys, and
+the chance prospect of obtaining a good meal, when one is dead certain
+to get a bad one, is enlivening. If it were not for such trifles, the
+journey would have no interest. To look forward to luncheon and an
+afternoon nap, to anticipate dinner and then digest it, makes the day
+run with pleasant monotony into the night. And night is worth the
+inspection. The beds in the train are comfortable enough, but the
+night is vested with misty beauty, and its fascination woos the
+traveller from his rest. There is the roar of the engine, the rumble
+of the carriages, the buzz of insects, and the faint rustle of the
+night wind over the plains. Then, looking into the night, one falls
+asleep, tired and stunned by the spectacle of the never-ending desert.
+But, in the morning there comes a change. The stretches of the Karoo
+are past, and breakfast at De Aar is in sight.
+
+At De Aar--a sea of tents with here and there a man--there begins the
+outward and visible signs of preparation against the necessities of
+the coming struggle. There are men and arms at De Aar and munitions of
+war, comprising the Yorkshire regiment, a wing of the King's Own Light
+Infantry under Major Hunt, and a section of the Seventh Field Company
+of Engineers under Lieutenant Wilson; but their numbers are
+impossible, much as their supplies be limited and seriously
+insufficient; and, as a consequence, I must not talk much about the
+interior linings of the British camp which has sprung up at De Aar,
+and which, within a few days of what must be the turning point of the
+present crisis, is so little able to cope with the exigencies of the
+situation. It is a protective measure, this little camp at the
+junction of the divergence in the railway system of the colony, placed
+in its present situation to guarantee the safety of the permanent way,
+and to ensure a modicum of safety to the traffic which is crowding
+north over the points at the meeting of the rails. It is a gorgeous
+piece of impudence; this minute establishment of British soldiers, and
+if it be impressed with the might and majesty of our Imperial Empire,
+it is also beset with the innumerable difficulties and trials which
+attend an isolated State.
+
+We are guarding the lines of communication between De Aar Junction and
+Norvals Pont, the bridge across the Orange River which unites the
+territory of the Orange Free State with the land of the Colony,
+between De Aar and the Camp at Orange River, between De Aar and many
+miles to the south in the direction of Cape Town. I believe that the
+practical influence of this particular unit extends so far south as
+Beaufort West, where the custody and patrol of the line is handed over
+to the care of the railway authorities, whose men are detailed to the
+all-important duty of guarding the culverts and bridges of the system.
+The greatest menace to our weakness in the present situation springs
+from the vast lines of communication over which we must watch and
+which, although lying well within our own borders, are endangered
+through the contributary sympathy of the Dutch who, resident and
+settled within our own Colony, and boasting some sort of idle
+observance of the obligations entailed upon them by such residence,
+have seldom by word, and not at all in spirit, forsworn their entire
+and cheerful assistance to the cause of the Transvaal. In any other
+campaign these fatigues would be unnecessary, and the services of the
+innumerable small detachments delegated to the duty would be released
+for more active work, but with this war the safe maintenance of our
+lines of communication will become a problem of most vital concern,
+and will be necessarily imbued with absorbing interest. Moreover,
+whatever the nature of the scheme for efficiently guarding these lines
+may be, due attention must be paid and every consideration given to
+the superior mobility of the Boer forces to that of our own troops, an
+advantage which will increase their facilities and chances of success
+should they exert themselves to harass any particular section of our
+inordinately long lines of communication.
+
+With the formation of a camp at De Aar, the trend which our campaign
+may assume becomes more definite. De Aar is but a little removed from
+Norvals Pont, an important bridge into the Orange Free State, which it
+is proposed to protect from the immediate base of the troops at De
+Aar, or to hold altogether from an ultimate base in the same direction
+at Colesberg. I propose to visit there before the next mail departs,
+since it be rumoured here that the town of Colesberg has been left
+entirely undefended by the military authorities, and that the end of
+the bridge, remote from this border and within the limits of the
+Orange Free State, is in the hands of an armed patrol from that
+Republic. When these things happen, and De Aar becomes the centre of a
+big base camp, the position will constitute another link in the chain
+of towns which are to be occupied by the Imperial forces along the
+western and southern borders of the Orange Free State, and whose
+occupation, should the troops arrive in time thus to execute the
+initiative, indicates our probable line of advance to be from a
+number of points, so that General Joubert will be unable to
+concentrate his troops before any one force. Upon our side, also,
+those frontier detachments that may be in occupation of the towns,
+will harass Transvaal and Free State borderside, suppress any rising
+within our own border areas, and be entirely subsidiary to the main
+columns, which will be simultaneously thrown forward from these three
+or four special points on the same extreme line of progression.
+
+Moreover, this plan of operations accentuates the detached and
+especial character of the Natal Field Force, restraining them to
+service in that colony, and restricting their activities to that
+sphere. These troops will occupy Laing's Nek, the ten thousand men
+already assembled in that Colony being reinforced before hostilities
+are declared, until the Field Service footing of the Natal Field Force
+will equal that of an army corps. The critical points in the present
+situation are the western and eastern borders of the Transvaal, where
+the young bloods from the backwoods are mostly gathered, and in their
+present state eminently calculated to force the hand of Oom Paul into
+an impromptu declaration of belligerency. The movements of the Natal
+forces will be confined for the moment to holding Laing's Nek,
+maintaining communication with the permanent base at Ladysmith and
+Pietermaritzburg, and in occupying Dundee, Colenso, and all such towns
+as fall within the limits of its exterior lines.
+
+From De Aar a division will support the left flank of the advance of
+the First Army Corps, divided, for purposes of more speedy
+concentration upon its ultimate base, into two divisions, which will
+reunite at Burghersdorp, _vi�_ the railways, to Middelburg and
+Stormberg Junction from their immediate bases of disembarkation at
+Port Elizabeth and East London. The total force will then advance in
+exterior lines upon the Orange Free State, maintaining the railway
+system upon their individual western flanks, so far as possible, as
+their individual lines of communication.
+
+While the Second Army Corps supports the situation in Natal, it is
+hoped that our forces in the Orange Free State border will either
+crush or drive the Boers back upon their ulterior lines towards
+Bloemfontein, which, with the assistance of the De Aar flanking column
+traversing the watershed of the Modder River in the direction of
+Kimberley, and in possible co-operation with a force from that base,
+they should be in a position to occupy. The capital will be held by
+the De Aar and Kimberley divisions, upon whom will then fall the work
+of protecting the lines of communication of the Southern Army Corps as
+it advances.
+
+After supporting De Aar, Kimberley, and the lines of communication
+with defensive units, and maintaining a western column by employing
+the service of the Mafeking force, the First Army Corps will begin the
+move upon Pretoria, in collaboration with the Second (Natal) Army
+Corps, the former once again advancing in twin columns from a mutual
+base. The western border will probably be held from Kimberley to Fort
+Tuli by the forces composing the western column, while a flying column
+is to be in readiness lest a wider area be given to the theatre of
+war, and it become necessary to cross the Limpopo River. It would
+appear, too, that there is also some possibility of a column moving
+from Delagoa Bay. By this advance Pretoria becomes the objective of
+the campaign after the occupation of the Orange Free State, but this
+depends to a great extent upon the policy pursued by General Joubert
+and the nature of the Natal operations. If the Boers give way and,
+acting upon interior lines, fall back upon Pretoria, as General
+Jackson fell back upon Richmond in 1864-1865, the Transvaal capital
+will at once become the objective of the British forces advancing upon
+exterior lines, the object of the campaign, once the Transvaal has
+been invaded, being to force a battle upon the combined forces of the
+Boers or to beset Pretoria. It will thus be seen that the theory of
+the British advance favours the concentration of troops upon the
+Transvaal and Orange Free State frontiers so that the Boer forces may
+be dislocated, retaining the railways and their lines of communication
+and, leaving the actual protection and pacification of the frontier to
+the local mounted police and to the special service corps assisted by
+a few detachments of Imperial troops, while no progressive movement
+will be made from any one point until the exterior line, upon which
+the entire advance will be conducted, has been thoroughly established.
+For the nonce extraordinary precautions are being taken to conceal the
+movements of troops, and I have withheld from publication at this
+moment much which could be given in support of the lines by which I
+have suggested our advance will be governed. This plan of campaign
+reads very prettily, but it seems to me, that we are making no
+allowances for possible disasters, for possible defeats, for
+unavoidable delays, which, should they occur, will hamper the mobility
+of our advance and restrict the celerity of our movements to a great
+and most serious extent. Despite the fact that the massing of troops
+at the selected points between De Aar and Mafeking, between Cape Town,
+Port Elizabeth, East London, and the ultimate and interested bases
+will proceed almost immediately, the successful evolution of our
+plans, the wisdom or foolishness of which are so soon to be put to the
+test, demands much greater forces than are calculated to be available
+during the next few weeks. At present, and until the latter days of
+October, the combined strengths of the Regular and Irregular forces in
+South Africa will not equal twenty thousand men, and yet we are
+dabbling with and making preparations against a plan of campaign which
+requisitions two Army Corps at least, and will probably require the
+services of not less than one hundred thousand men. I dread to think
+of what may happen if war should come within a few days, but we can do
+nothing but face what is a most intolerable position, and one which
+most easily might have been avoided. The outlook in the absence of
+efficient men and stores is indeed disheartening.
+
+Since I arrived upon the Orange Free State border I have omitted no
+opportunity to discuss with the Boers the question of the war. A
+friendly Boer, hailing from Utrecht, suggested the probable direction
+which the Boer plans, so far as they concerned Natal, might assume,
+and while they appear to be feasible, they reveal how curiously
+predominant among them is the idea that their arms will again defeat
+the British troops. The Transvaal Boers from Vryheid and Utrecht
+propose to attempt raids upon Natal and Zululand as the preliminaries
+to a rush upon Maritzburg and the southern district of Natal, by
+Weenen and Umvoti; Orange Free State Boers from the border areas will
+harass our soldiers as they move towards Laing's Nek, and, thus
+drawing the attention of the British troops, the road will be clear
+for those marching south on their attack upon the capital of Natal.
+All approaches to Laing's Nek upon the Dutch side of the border,
+already alien, have been fortified, fourteen guns being actually in
+position at the more important points. The British troops soon after
+leaving Ladysmith will have the Transvaal Boers on one side, the Free
+State Boers upon the other, and long before the Imperial troops can
+occupy the extreme border a commando of Boers from Wakkerstroom will
+have concentrated upon it. In the opinion of the Boers the effective
+occupation of Laing's Nek by either force will decide the war. The
+Boers all seem convinced that they can sweep the British forces from
+South Africa. The procedure of a campaign which finds much favour in
+their eyes includes the rising of the Swazis, the Zulus and the
+Basutos, who will be permitted to devastate Natal and as much of the
+south as they can penetrate, and whom they claim will be easily
+stirred against the Rooineks. The Boers will then feint with a small
+force upon the centre of our military occupation, while their entire
+army marches down upon Port Elizabeth, East London, or Cape Town, or
+proceeds by railway if they can secure the lines. They will hold open
+no lines of communication, because by that time Imperial arms will
+have been defeated, and it will only remain for President Kruger to
+dictate peace from Cape Town.
+
+This is actually the opinion of a Boer who administers for the
+Transvaal Government an important district, and who is under orders to
+proceed to the Natal border without loss of time. Surely he must be
+consumed with delusion and impotent fanaticism; nevertheless, educated
+Boers from the border side and living in the Cape Colony, who have
+come to the camp to invite the officers to a cricket match or some
+buck shooting, have all expressed this view. At present I have not
+met the Boer who can conceive the defeat of his own countrymen, while
+both Imperial and Republican Governments count upon the assistance of
+the natives. Upon the other hand, however, I am informed that there
+are many Boers who do not wish to fight, since they recognise the
+futility of any effort which they can direct against British troops;
+but, at the same time, should they be called out upon commando, there
+is no fear of their declining to obey, while, so far as my inquiries
+go, they have failed to elicit anything which would show the Boers to
+be moved by any view so eminently sound as this would be.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+BRICKS OF STRAW
+
+
+                                     THE CAMP, ORANGE RIVER,
+                                     _September 26th, 1899_.
+
+Soldiers and sand--clouds of sand whirring and eddying through the
+air, drifting through closed windows, piling in swift-mounting heaps
+against barred doors. That is the camp here, stretching upon both
+sides of the railway line in orderly rows, flanked upon either
+extremity by a ragged outspan of waggons, empty to-day but soon
+creating work for numerous fatigue parties when the orders come to
+push forward the supplies. At present it is only a small cluster of
+tents, many more tents than men--this to confuse the friendly Boers
+who, visiting the railway station refreshment bar for the purposes of
+espionage, stop to drink in an effort to gauge the strength of the
+camp by counting the ranks of dirty white tents which flap and quiver
+in the breezes. Such an impossible little camp, but so impressed with
+the true spirit.
+
+Colonel Kincaid, R.E., commands at Orange River, and his force
+comprises a few companies of the Loyal Lancashire Regiment, a troop or
+two of the Cape Police District II., sections of the Field Company of
+Engineers, a composite field battery and a few stores--but a general
+numerical insufficiency of men and munitions. Major Jackson, with
+Major Coleridge, commands the companies of the Loyal Lancashires that
+were detailed with him from Kimberley, where his regiment lies, for
+duty at this camp. Surgeon-Major O'Shanahan takes care of the field
+hospital which has been attached to the camp, and Captain Mills, R.A.,
+controls the artillery. It is a happy family, this British camp in
+which the necessity for hard work is understood and the members of
+whose circle willingly endure the difficulties and privations of their
+situation. From the ends of the earth they have come together to be
+dumped down upon the Orange River flats, where for many days they will
+remain an important unit in the scheme of preparation, but one which
+stands alone and aside from the general hurry and scurry of our
+belated movements. There is a bridge across the Orange River at this
+point, and it is the duty of protecting it and guaranteeing it from
+the attentions of the Boers, guarding its approaches by cunningly
+contrived gun emplacements and enveloping its definite security in a
+network of defensive measures, which is, for the time, the sole
+objective of the various officers and detachments that compose Colonel
+Kincaid's command.
+
+The conformation of the country abutting upon Orange River presents
+those composite peculiarities of construction which contribute more
+generally to the setting of the high veldt. Orange River is broken by
+hills and river-beds, dry courses with rock-strewn banks, patches of
+sand, sparsely grassed and destitute of bushes. The land to the west
+rolls smoothly to the watershed of the river, breaking into bush and
+short rises about the banks of the stream. The water clatters among
+stones and rocks to the north-west, leaving to the south-west and due
+west the same barren open sand flats. Upon the east there is a slight
+contrast to the evenness of the pastureless country which meets the
+sunset; but the fall of the land due south, south-east, south-west, is
+unchanging, the compass shifting due east and north-east before the
+abrupt and rugged lines of the country are exposed. Then, and then
+only, does the face of the country reveal its uncouth and
+uncomfortable character. East, whence the waters stream beneath the
+railway bridge, the watershed is herring-backed, concealing, beneath
+rough folds of rising ground, stretches of bush veldt and stony
+patches. High ridges debouch at right angles to the stream, with
+uncertain contours and abrupt declivities; detached kopjes rise from
+upon the face of the country, claiming classification with the ages
+around them, but standing aloof with forbidding mien--a formidable
+menace to the chance of successful storming. Parallel hills and ridges
+distinguish the hinterland of this watershed so far inland as the
+areas of the Orange Free State, while the broken and dangerous
+character of the country east-north-east, continuing until the
+watershed of the Modder River, still further prolongates these
+disturbing features. The valley of the river, within a mile from the
+stretch of flats which rolls away from the bases of the hills,
+converges until the sides lie within a few hundred yards of each
+other. There the stream rushes and roars with some force, until the
+wider reaches of the plain give to the pent-up waters a greater space
+of revolt. From the mouth of the valley the river wanders with easy
+indifference across a broader course to the west; gathering its volume
+from the seasons, and leaving in the hot weather a margin of shining
+stones upon both sides of the river bed. The hills are in pleasant
+contrast to the even tenour of the veldt, and the cool waters of the
+river invite repose. Small game lurk within the cover of the scrub,
+mountain duck haunt the mountain cataract; cattle roam across the
+land, snatching mouthfuls of dry herbage, while just now the sides of
+the hills throw back the echo of the military occupation, the noises
+of the camp, the calls of the horses upon the picket lines, the heavy
+thudding of the picks, the shrill rasping of the shovels in the places
+where the men are throwing up the necessary field works.
+
+Everywhere is the spectacle of orderly bustle. The summits of the
+hills are crowned with earthworks, brown lines of trenches traverse
+the valley, block houses command the entrances of the bridge. These
+are the signs of the times, encompassed in an unremitting rapidity of
+execution. Colonel Kincaid rides from point to point, throwing advice
+here, praise there, and expressing general satisfaction over the
+labours of his men, as the scheme of defences runs to its conclusion.
+Out across the plain, upon Reservoir Hill, the sappers are
+constructing an entrenched position under the direction of Captain
+Mills, R.A., and especially designed to protect the water supply.
+Roads have been cut across the rear face of the hill, a breastwork of
+stones and earth encircles the Reservoir, and gun emplacements flank
+either extremity. It is a pretty work, carefully conceived, skilfully
+constructed, commanding the portion of the camp, and sweeping the
+approaches to the bridge. From the top of Reservoir Hill, no great
+eminence, the surrounding country is easily inspected, and the more
+one scans and studies the peculiarities of its formation, the more
+one becomes impressed with the fact that it presents the gravest
+obstacles to the British principles of military operations. A
+well-equipped and mobile force will hold the hills for eternity--but
+God help the troops who are launched against these awful kopjes which
+create the strength of such positions. The officers commanding these
+detached units along this border have received instructions to prepare
+extensive lines of fortifications round their bases, and at De Aar, as
+at Orange River and elsewhere, these commands have been complied with,
+until now the positions need only the service of some good artillery
+to be made impregnable. When cables be at the disposal of a possible
+enemy, it is as well to be reticent upon the cardinal weaknesses
+within our lines, but already there are signs of the extreme haste
+with which the troops have been despatched to the front. No unit would
+appear to be complete, despite the months of warning in which there
+has been ample opportunity to prepare. Everything is rushed through at
+the last, and although urgent orders be issued to make ready against
+attack, no artillery is available for the purpose. Everything is
+obscured in idle talk or deferred by empty promise, and the
+authorities appear to be continuing a policy which gives to the Boers
+some justification of their hopes of success. The Imperial
+authorities, in relying so much upon the moral effect of their
+artillery, appear to forget that the better it is, the more important
+the results it achieves; the more important the position to be
+defended, the better it should be. The Boers lose nothing by
+possessing modern weapons of defence. But with a wing only of the
+King's Own Light Infantry to occupy De Aar, and four companies of the
+Loyal Lancashires to hold Orange River, the need of strong artillery
+support is manifest. It has been laid down that the proportion of guns
+to men is as near as possible three guns to one thousand men, but this
+proportion must depend upon the nature of the service upon which the
+force is to be employed, the topography of the theatre of war and the
+quality of the troops. A force intended more for the occupation of
+strong positions, must have a larger proportion of guns than an army
+intended for offensive operations in the field. De Aar, as one base of
+operations toward the lines of least resistance to the western,
+southern, and south-eastern approaches to the Orange Free State, is
+even more important than our position at Orange River, which is
+intended, in the event of any campaign, to protect the railway bridge
+and the lines of communication with the north. But at De Aar the lines
+of railway, which converge upon it, link Pretoria and Bloemfontein to
+Cape Town, connect the north with the south, join Cape Town with the
+south and south-east by a stretch of line almost parallel with the
+southern border of the Orange Free State. Yet, so dilatory have been
+the efforts of headquarters to obtain the necessary artillery, that,
+having reduced South Africa to a condition of war, they split up
+between De Aar, Orange River, and other defenceless, but important,
+strategic positions along the western border, improvised field
+batteries drawn from any garrison lumber room which came handy.
+
+The artillery at present upon this border is, as a consequence, the
+seven-pound muzzle-loader which was obsolete when the passing
+generation of officers were at the "shop." The inadequacy of the
+artillery is a matter of the gravest concern, since, even if the
+troops at these places be sufficient to police the disaffected areas,
+and to hold in check the local disposition to rebel, in face of the
+weapons of precision with which the Boer forces be armed, it would be
+impossible, should they move forward, for the British artillery to
+maintain any position which was incumbent upon the possession of good
+artillery. So well is this realised by our Intelligence Department,
+that elaborate precautions are taken by that Bureau, as well as all
+commanding officers, to prevent the enemy from discovering that, in
+its main part, the strength of the batteries in opposition has been
+drawn from derelicts in the garrison stores. These improvised field
+batteries might be of service in maintaining the line of communication
+if any advance of British troops be made, but as an actual factor in
+any defensive or offensive movements which the forces may undertake,
+their restricted utility escapes all serious consideration, and puts
+our present artillery almost at once out of action. The physical
+configuration of the country urgently calls for the immediate despatch
+of modern weapons, similar to those which the Sirdar used in his
+Soudan campaign. In addition to this an exchange, piece by piece,
+between these seven-pounder muzzle-loading monstrosities and the
+converted twelve-pounders, breech-loaders and high-velocity quick
+firers, might be seasonably effected. Five-inch howitzers, too, should
+also be sent forward. But the lack of reliable artillery is
+scandalous, and the sooner that guns, of a calibre which is in a true
+proportion to the importance of the positions which they will command,
+arrive upon the scene, the less uncertain will be the results of any
+actual contact between our forces in their present deplorable
+condition and those of the African Republics with whom we are so soon
+to be at war.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+DIAMONDS AND WHITE FEATHERS
+
+
+                                        THE CAMP, KIMBERLEY,
+                                     _September 28th, 1899_.
+
+This usually dull and dirty mining station has now been occupied by a
+small detachment of British troops. The force arrived here from the
+camp at Orange River within the week, and include the 1st Loyal North
+Lancashire, with its usual complement of machine guns, No. 1 Section
+of the 7th Field Company of Royal Engineers, 23rd Company of Garrison
+Artillery with 2�5 seven-pound muzzle-loaders on mountain carriages
+(which are almost useless and certainly obsolete weapons), an
+organised Army Medical Staff, and a transport most indifferently
+equipped if it be intended for immediate and prolonged field service.
+Yet it is claimed that nothing has been omitted which could make this
+force an imposing factor in the chance of attack to which, from its
+exposed situation, the hapless Kimberley is threatened. The Loyal
+Lancashire Regiment is in full strength, but the battalions have been
+divided between the positions here and the camp just south of the
+Orange River. It is, of course, doubtful whether much be gained by
+splitting up our forces along the border into small units, but at the
+present juncture, when so few troops be in the colony, this policy is
+receiving its own justification. We are all urgently hoping for the
+arrival of troops, since if there were a general advance of the Dutch
+troops, a contingency not by any means altogether remote, upon any one
+of these well-defined but indifferently manned places, the task of
+maintaining the advanced lines would be a severe strain upon the
+efforts of the very limited number of men that are available at each
+point. It is surely only within the limits of the British Empire that
+a frontier line over 1,500 miles in extent would be kept absolutely
+without any defensive measures; while it is Boer activity during the
+past few weeks that has induced the Colonial authorities to adopt
+their present precautions. Our troops are now more or less efficiently
+prepared at certain points along this Western boundary, and, if no
+order has yet come for their mobilisation, the steps necessary to
+effect it have all been completed. At Kimberley, in the few days which
+have elapsed, wonders in the preparation of the town's defences have
+been worked, and the alarm which caused so much panic there before the
+arrival of the soldiers has now, in part, subsided.
+
+For many hours before the arrival of the troops at Kimberley crowds of
+interested spectators besieged the railway station and thronged the
+dusty thoroughfares of the town. The Imperial men detrained very
+smartly to the sound of the bugle, off-loading the guns and ammunition
+to the plaudits and delights of an admiring crowd. The actual
+detraining took place at the Beaconsfield siding, two miles from
+Kimberley, the men not making their camp in the town until the next
+morning. For the time the transport was stored in the goods sheds,
+and the troops arranged to bivouac beside the railway. The traffic
+manager had prepared fires and boiling water before the men came, so
+that soon after their arrival they were all served with dinner. The
+detailing of guards, posting of sentries, and other evolutions
+incidental to open camp, permitted Kimberley to indulge its taste for
+military pomp and vanities. Imperial troops have not been here since
+two squadrons of the 11th Hussars passed through from Mashonaland in
+November, 1890, and the presence of the troops has inspired the
+townfolk with a magnificent appreciation of the gallant men who have
+come up for their protection. It is hoped that special means will be
+taken to interest the troops in the few hours which they have free
+from work. At present all attention is being devoted to the
+construction of the defences of the town, to the formation of adequate
+volunteer assistance, to the arrangement of a complete system of alarm
+and rallying spots. Lieut.-Colonel Kekewich, in command of the
+Imperial camp here, is anxious to assist the people in rifle practice
+and field-firing; while the Diamond Fields Artillery and the De Beers
+Artillery are to be called out for temporary service in conjunction
+with the Imperial Artillery.
+
+The rumour that a Boer force is within the vicinity of Kimberley has
+done much to assist in the speedy formation of local forces, and now
+that the train mules and private bullock teams have been requisitioned
+for the Imperial service, there is much solemn speculation upon the
+date of hostilities. The fact is that no one here can, with any
+certainty, predict an hour. A shot anywhere will set the borderside
+aflame. Moreover, the Boers are daily growing more impudent. At
+Borderside, where the frontiers are barely eighty yards apart, a field
+cornet and his men, who are patrolling their side of the line, greet
+the pickets of the Cape Police who are stationed there with exulting
+menaces and much display of rifles. But if the Dutch be thirsting in
+this fashion for our blood, people at home can rest confident in the
+fact that there will be no holding back upon the part of our men once
+the fun begins. Seldom has such a determined and ferocious spirit
+animated any British force as that one which is now stimulating the
+troops in South Africa. Every man is sick of the Cabinet's delay, but
+they find consolation in the fact that the slow movement of the
+Ministerial machine is undertaken to avoid any precipitation of the
+crisis before the forces to be engaged have arrived upon the scene.
+Then it is every man's ambition to take his own share in "whopping"
+Kruger.
+
+I did not hurry to leave Kimberley; but the place where the diamonds
+come from, the least admirable of any town on earth, is no longer
+essential to my existence. It has neither charm nor elegance, and it
+is sufficiently irregular in its construction to be the most barbarous
+example of architecture in South Africa. It greets the traveller
+enveloped in the haze of heat, and it bids him farewell through a
+cloud of sand. But if one has once imagined what the appearance of the
+mining town may be, let him give it a wide berth. It is a conglomerate
+jumble of tin houses with dusty streets dedicated to modern industry,
+and palpitating with the mere mechanical energy of native labour.
+
+[Illustration: Major Lord Edward Cecil, C.S.O.]
+
+Kimberley, however, was a convenient immediate base between Orange
+River and Mafeking. Around these two places rumour was spreading a
+well-woven net of probabilities, intimate yet inherently
+impossible. War, bloody and fierce, was alternately looming large in
+the horizon just above their situations, so for the moment I tarried,
+watching the approach of impending battle from afar off. It was a fine
+feeling, the constant thrill caused by the mere vividness of martial
+rumours. They came from Buluwayo in the North, they came from Cape
+Town in the South, they were brought daily from Bloemfontein; and if
+they gave infinite zest to the passing hours, it was but the
+happenings of the hour that they were doomed to be misbelieved. To
+listen to the gossip and rumours of Headquarters at once became the
+most serious interest which our life contained just now. Spies are
+seen everywhere. Within the shade of every shadow there is said to
+lurk a Boer secret service agent, and, as a consequence, the attitude
+of the public is one in which each figuratively lays a grimy finger to
+his nose and breathes blasphemies in whispers to his confiding friend.
+The spy mania which swept through France but a few weeks ago has
+appeared here, endowed with magnificent vitality. At Mafeking it has
+dominated both the military and the public, and, as an illustration, I
+append the official notice, on page 46, in which many of these gentry
+are warned from the town by Lord Edward Cecil, Chief Staff Officer to
+Colonel Baden-Powell.
+
+    NOTICE.
+
+    =SPIES=
+
+    There are in town to-day nine
+    known spies. They are hereby
+    warned to leave before 12 noon to-morrow
+    or they will be apprehended.
+
+    By order,
+    E. H. CECIL, Major,
+    C.S.O.
+
+    Mafeking,
+
+    7th Oct., 1899.
+
+    THE NOTICE TO SPIES ISSUED BY COL. BADEN-POWELL.
+
+Kimberley has not yet gone so far as this notice, but a similar step
+is in serious consideration, and the notice will soon be promulgated.
+What with spies, war scares, reports of Boer invasion, and of active
+hostilities having commenced, the Western border is living in a seethe
+of excitement, and appreciating the crisis with but doubtful
+enjoyment, and many signs of such indisputable terror. Kimberley has
+called forth its volunteers, who in name are glorious, but in
+utility uncertain. The Town Guard, after fortifying itself with much
+Dutch courage, has taken unto itself a weapon of precision of which it
+knows nothing. Infantry and musketry drill have not existed for the
+town of diamonds; they are for the Cape Police, for the Mounted
+Rifles, for Imperial troops; but for those who are regular in their
+mining, but irregular in their drill, there is none of it. These
+heroes shake with terror in private, but they gnash their teeth with
+impotent valour in public; at heart they are rank cowards, for the
+most part leaving to the few decently spirited the duties of volunteer
+defence, and to the soldiery and constabulary the rigours of the
+coming battle.
+
+Nothing perhaps has been so discreditable as the hurried flight of men
+from these towns which are within the area of possible hostilities. It
+is perhaps different where they belong to the Transvaal, but one would
+expect Englishmen, who have seen their womenfolk to places of
+security, to proffer such service as could be turned to account in
+these hours of emergency. It is an unpleasant fact to reflect upon
+that the leaders of the general panic and consequent exodus from these
+towns are mostly Britishers. From sheer force of numbers the
+white-feathered brigade merits solicitous contempt.
+
+Such is Kimberley in the passing hour, and as I waited there to see
+whether the rumours would crystallise into actualities, the word was
+passed round that three commandos of the Boers were concentrating upon
+Mafeking. Heavens! how the specials skittled! By horse and on foot, by
+cab and cart, they dashed to the station. Lord! and the train had gone
+some hours! But, with the instinct of true war-dogs, they fled in
+special expresses to the scene where attack was threatened. They might
+have crawled from Kimberley to Mafeking on hands and knees, for Boers
+may camp and Boers may trek, but war is still afar off. Had we not
+travelled in such haste, the journey might have proved of interest,
+but impatience made the time speed quickly, and the frontier posts
+upon the road went by unnoticed. Just now these frontier stations are
+of public interest. At Fourteen Streams, at Borderside, at Vryburg,
+Boer commandos have laagered within a few yards of the frontier fence,
+and since human nature is ever prone to politeness, it has become the
+daily fashion for Boer and Britisher to swear at one another across
+the intervening wires. John Bosman, a Borderside notoriety, implicated
+in a late rising of the natives against Imperial authority, is in
+command of one hundred and fifty "cherubs," as the Boer captain dubs
+his gallant band. Matutinal and nocturnal greetings have enabled the
+two forces to become acquainted with one another, and it is held to be
+a sporting thing for men, from either force, to invade each other's
+territory, inviting blasphemies and creating some excitement, since at
+Borderside the friendly relations between the two countries be
+altogether gainsaid.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+TWO DAYS BEFORE WAR
+
+
+                                         THE CAMP, MAFEKING,
+                                        _October 9th, 1899_.
+
+Mafeking lies a day's journey by the train from Vryburg, and was once
+the terminus of the Cape railway system pending its extension
+northwards. Just now it is the embodiment of a fine Imperialism. There
+is the dignity of empire in the shape of her Majesty's Imperial
+Commissioner, Major Gould Adams, C.B., C.M.G.; the majesty of might,
+as suggested by Colonel Baden-Powell, of the Frontier Force; by
+Colonel Hore, of the Protectorate Regiment; by Colonel Walford, of the
+British South Africa Police; by Colonel Vyvyan, base commandant; and
+there are, too, the various strengths attached to the respective
+commands. For weeks this little place has been terrorised by Boer
+threats, until the presence of the military has reassured them. Now,
+however, the veldt beyond the town has been effectively occupied by
+the different commands, while within the town, or beyond its outer
+walls, noise and bustle everywhere embody the grim reality of war. It
+has not been possible to visit the different camps, in time for this
+mail, since the exigencies of war have interfered with the dispatch
+of the English letters from the more remote districts, and until the
+country is more settled the night train service is altogether
+discontinued. This week's mail is two days in advance of its usual
+fixture; but perhaps we are fortunate, since the mail coach to
+Johannesburg has discontinued running, its last journey from Mafeking
+being confined to taking back to the Transvaal the few things which
+belonged to it in Mafeking. The supplementary coach was behind, its
+harness was stored in sacks upon the top, and thus it made its
+departure. It had better have remained at Mafeking, for no sooner had
+the coach passed the border-line than its mules were commandeered for
+transport by order of the Transvaal Government.
+
+Mafeking has entered into warlike preparations with commendable zeal,
+but in reality men are uncertain whether to face the music or to skip
+with their women and children. Ostensibly they wish to bear the brunt
+of an attack upon their town, but as time wears on and the numbers of
+the Boer force concentrated upon the border increase, the number of
+men available for actual volunteer service grows beautifully less.
+Mines have been laid down, fortifications thrown up, the volunteers
+and local ambulance services have been called out, and an armoured
+train patrols the line. The staff officers are everywhere, a crowd of
+journalists drifts about smothered beneath a variety of secret
+reports. Every one wears a worried look, and still the expected does
+not happen. To break the monotony of false alarms, of the sound of
+armed feet marching anywhere, of bells by day and rockets by night, of
+irresponsible gossips chattering upon subjects they do not understand,
+of the plague of locusts thick as fleas on Margate Sands (a plague as
+great as the military bore)--there is lacking but one thing--WAR. The
+troops want it to prove their efficiency, the journalists demand it to
+justify their existence, the countryside approves since it has sent
+the price of foodstuffs and of native labour to a premium, the Boers
+want it as the first step in that great scheme by which they hope to
+reduce London to ashes and sweep the red-vests of Great Britain into
+complete oblivion.
+
+But if the path of glory lies in that direction for the Boer
+sharpshooter, Mafeking will present him with a splendid spectacle just
+so soon as the curtain rises upon the drama of mortal combat between
+Boer and Britisher. It is a straggling town this Mafeking, and covers
+an area wider than its dignity demands. But should Commandant Cronje,
+who is hovering upon the border at Louw's Farm with 6,000 Boers, come
+down, in that spirit of unctuous rectitude which epitomises the
+Scripture and so distinguishes the Boers, a bill will be settled by
+this little town against the man who, already the hero of many
+historical iniquities, baulked Jameson of his raid.
+
+Upon this point Colonel Baden-Powell's notice to the inhabitants is
+instructive:--
+
+     NOTICE.
+
+     DEFENCE MINES.
+
+     "The inhabitants are warned that mines are being laid at
+     various points outside the town in connection with the
+     defences. Their position will be marked, in order to avoid
+     accidents, by small red flags.
+
+     "Cattle herds and others should be warned accordingly.
+
+     "Mafeking: Dated this 7th day of October, 1899."
+
+If this throws a sidelight upon the situation here, the second notice
+paints in the background with gloomy shadows:--
+
+     "NOTICE.--It is considered desirable to state to the
+     inhabitants of Mafeking what is the situation up to date.
+
+     "Forces of armed Boers are now massed upon the Natal and
+     Bechuanaland Borders. Their orders are not to cross the
+     border until the British fire a shot, and as this is not
+     likely to occur, at least for some time, no immediate danger
+     is to be apprehended. At the same time a rumour of war in
+     Natal or other false alarm might cause the Boers upon our
+     border to take action, and it is well to be prepared for
+     eventualities.
+
+     "It is possible they might attempt to shell the town, and
+     although every endeavour will be made to provide shelter for
+     the women and children, yet arrangements could be made with
+     the railway to move any of them to a place of safety if they
+     desire to go away from Mafeking, and it is suggested that
+     some place on the Transvaal border, such as Palapye Siding,
+     or Francistown, might be more suitable and less expensive
+     places than the already crowded towns of the colony. The men
+     would, of course, remain to defend Mafeking, which, with its
+     present garrison and defences, will be easy to hold. Those
+     desirous of leaving should inform the Stationmaster,
+     Mafeking, their number of adults and children, class of
+     accommodation required, and destination.
+
+                                      "COLONEL BADEN-POWELL,
+                        "Colonel Commanding Frontier Forces.
+                                    "October 7th, Mafeking."
+
+One turns from this to learn that streets in the town are barricaded,
+that the houses are sandbagged, that the railway is patrolled by an
+armour-plated train, which is imposing if incapable of much
+resistance. It is fitted with Nordenfeldt and Maxim quick-firing
+machine guns, and provided with a phonophone and an acetylene
+searchlight which stands like a fiery dragon at one end of the car.
+The train is in three parts, the engine being placed between two
+trucks. Each of the vehicles is about thirty feet long, mounted on
+four pairs of wheels, and is capable of holding sixty men. The entire
+train is covered over with 3/4-inch steel armour-plate over double
+iron rails, but at some recent trial the bullets from Lee-Metfords and
+Martinis penetrated at 200 yards' range through all thicknesses of
+armour.
+
+Mafeking is situated upon a rise about three hundred yards north of
+the Molopo River, and from time to time its history has been
+associated with military enterprises. It is not an unimportant town,
+and in that day when it has been connected by railway with the
+Transvaal and its present system has been improved, its commercial
+importance will receive material increase. The present railway, which
+cuts through Mafeking in its journey to Buluwayo, is to the west of
+the town, running north and south and crossing the Molopo River by an
+iron bridge, at which point the trend of the railroad inclines to the
+west. To the west of the railway again is the native stadt, extending
+to both sides of the river, and commencing about half a mile from the
+railway. The stadt extends to the west from the base of a rise beyond
+the bed of the river which, at present, covers the exterior line of
+the western outposts. Near the railway the ground slopes gradually for
+a considerable distance, while the country around Mafeking is flat in
+general, but across the Molopo, to the south and south-east, it
+commands the town, while the ground to the west of the stadt commands
+the stadt. The native village rests upon this western face, and, owing
+to the rough character of the country upon which the stadt lies, this
+native town has received the name of "The Place among the Rocks."
+About a mile from the town, and slightly east, there is an old fort
+called Cannon Kopje, a hideous collection of stones, which is held by
+a detachment of the British South Africa Police. It has an interior
+diameter of some thirty yards. The native location lies between Cannon
+Kopje and the town, on the southern bank of the river. The native
+stadt consists of Kaffir huts. Further east, and between the native
+location and Cannon Kopje, on the northern bank of the river, extend
+the brickfields, while a little further in the same direction is
+MacMullan's Farm. Between the farm and the ground to the north-east is
+the racecourse and the waterworks, which are connected by a pipe with
+The Springs, a natural water-hole to the east of the town. Cannon
+Kopje is due south of the town, the cemetery north, the native stadt
+west, the racecourse east. Between these points there are a few
+buildings which serve as local landmarks. There is the Convent to the
+north-east corner, Ellis's Corner south-east, the Pound south-west,
+and the British South Africa Police Barracks west.
+
+[Illustration: Outpost and Entrenchments, Southern Front.]
+
+The town of Mafeking has been built upon a rock, the centre of the
+town being the market square. Buildings extend at all points from the
+square, running into the veldt, showing an irregularity of design and
+no architectural perfection. The town is principally composed of
+bungalows, built of mud-bricks, with roofs of corrugated iron. The
+population in time of peace includes some 2,000 whites and some 6,000
+natives. Just now there are perhaps 1,500 whites, 8,000 natives, the
+ordinary population of the native village being swelled by the influx
+of some native refugees from the Transvaal. The perimeter of the
+defences is between five and six miles. The armoured train protects
+the north-west front. Between the railway on the north-west and the
+Convent, there are some trenches, built with an eye to their future
+use. Upon the western and eastern bases of the town there are further
+trenches, manned by the Protectorate Regiment, the Town Guard, and
+other local volunteer corps. The town was garrisoned by the Cape
+Police under Inspector Marsh and Inspector Brown. Colonel Walford held
+Cannon Kopje with the British South Africa Police. Colonel Hore
+commanded the Protectorate Regiment, which was scattered about the
+defences of the town under its squadron officers. The western outposts
+were entrusted to Major Godley, while in this direction there were
+also the Women's Laager and the Refugee Laager in Hidden Hollow. To
+the south-west was Major Godley's headquarters. Below this, and
+further to the west, was Captain Marsh's post, upon the other side of
+which, along the eastern front of the town, there are many forts in
+process of construction. There are De Koch's, Musson's, Ellitson's
+Kraal, Early's Corner. These forts will be garrisoned by the Town
+Guard, and it is hoped that they will be provided with adequate
+protection from the enemy's artillery. The Railway Volunteers
+garrisoned the cemetery and controlled an advanced trench about eight
+hundred yards to the front. In the meantime, every effort is being
+made to press forward the work of constructing the defences, and every
+one appears to be willing to assist. The aspect of the town is
+gradually changing, and in the little time that is left to us we hope
+to ensconce ourselves behind something of an impregnable defence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE SKIRMISH AT FIVE MILE BANK
+
+
+                                         THE CAMP, MAFEKING,
+                                       _October 14th, 1899_.
+
+Early this morning a mounted patrol under Captain Lord Charles
+Bentinck reported the Boers in strong position to the north of the
+town, and engaging them at once a general fight ensued.
+
+Colonel Baden-Powell, upon receiving this information, instructed
+Captain Fitzclarence, D Squadron Protectorate Regiment, which is
+commanded by Colonel Hore, to cover the right flank of the armoured
+train, which had already moved out to support the patrol of A
+squadron, and which, under the direction of Captain Williams, British
+South Africa Police, drove the Boer artillery from two positions.
+
+It may be said that this movement began the more serious and certainly
+the more determined portion of the engagement. Captain Fitzclarence
+was accompanied by seventy men. Upon the termination of the fight he
+had twelve wounded, two dead, and two others wounded so seriously that
+they since died. The firing-line at no time contained more than two
+troops, who, in extended order, and having seized the little cover
+which was available, hotly contested the position against four hundred
+Boers. Upon the arrival of the squadron under Captain Fitzclarence the
+Boers again began to fall back, and withdrawing their right flank from
+its propinquity to the armoured train, they projected their entire
+force well beyond the right flank of Captain Fitzclarence. The two
+forces both in extended order, the one falling back upon the lines of
+a position which had been carefully selected and which was admirably
+adapted to their methods of fighting, the other pursuing, then
+prepared to settle matters between themselves. Had Captain
+Fitzclarence but realised it, and had this young officer not been so
+intrepid, he would have recognised in this Boer movement the ruse by
+which they hoped to entice the "Red necks" within range of a position
+from which they could be more effectually surrounded. The motive in
+their movement to the rear was to secure the ample protection which
+was offered to them by the low ridge covered with timber, scrub, large
+masses of rock, and cut up by many little sluits, which extended along
+the line of their retreat. When once the Boers had gained this ridge
+they faced about, though it must not be imagined their retirement was
+in any way a mad gallop. They fell back in as good order as our
+squadron advanced, but so soon as they had lined up upon the ridge it
+could be seen how very greatly the Boer detachment out-numbered the
+men opposed to them. Moreover, in a little their artillery again spoke
+for itself, impressing the situation with still greater gravity. When
+the Boer guns opened fire Captain Fitzclarence very wisely availed
+himself of the shelter of three native huts, for the better protection
+of the horses and any wounded that might come on. Leaving his horses
+here, he advanced with his men in extended order, until he had secured
+a line of front immediately adjacent to the Boers. Indeed, our
+firing-line was at first only four hundred yards from the ridge; but,
+after a short experience of such close quarters, it was found to be
+wiser to take up a position some four hundred yards further off. The
+action of Captain Fitzclarence in endeavouring to meet the Boer
+commando was one of those inopportune acts of gallantry where loss,
+should the fight be successful, is overlooked. Technically speaking,
+of course, the strategy was all at fault, and it soon was seen how
+very serious the situation of Squadron D had become. By good luck I had
+joined this squadron in its move to the front, and it was very
+interesting to observe how a force, whose composite qualities were
+quite unknown, showed itself to be worthy of the utmost respect, and a
+corps upon which every reliance could be placed. Our men did not seem
+to mind the formidable odds against which they contended. The only
+disconcerting thing at the outset of the action being the position of
+the artillery on the Boer side, but for some reason the Boers ceased
+their shell fire very shortly after the action had begun. This again
+is another of those extraordinary blunders which creep into most
+fighting. The Boers might have wiped Squadron D out of existence by
+playing their nine-pounders upon our position. As it was, the Boer
+commandant withdrew his artillery from the fight and relied solely
+upon his rifles. From the little ridge, which, when our own
+firing-line had fallen back, was barely five hundred yards distant,
+there came a shower of Mauser and Martini bullets. The direction from
+which the fire came at first suggested that the Boers were undecided
+as to the area of the position which they would occupy, since shortly
+after the action began the enemy's line of fire expanded until it
+extended beyond our front. For the moment the firing-line developed,
+continuing to expand until it became evident that the fire of their
+either flank was here most effectually enveloping the rear of our
+position, and endangering our line of retreat as well as those who had
+been sent to the improvised hospital in the native huts. But it was
+impossible to avoid such a contingency with the numbers against which
+we had to contend. Indeed, there was no point from which this
+enveloping movement could be escaped, since the men with Captain
+Fitzclarence were already unduly extended. The rifle fire was very
+heavy.
+
+From the ridge of the Boer position our complete formation and the
+situation of each unit could be seen. It merely required a little
+sharpshooting, keen sight, and sufficient energy to cause a disaster.
+Our men lay upon the ground seeking cover where they could find it,
+but they had neither the trees, nor the low-lying shrubs, nor the
+rocks, nor the sluits which had lent themselves to the Boers' shelter.
+They simply lay, a determined body of men, individually keen for
+distinction, and individually keen to put the Boers out of existence.
+The firing became hot and so rapid that in a very short time the heavy
+drain upon our ammunition was beginning to have effect. This again
+establishes the position of D Squadron. There were no supplies, nor
+was there any artillery support until too late. There was no
+ambulance, and no effective preparation for retirement. The horses
+behind the huts, the men in the front, were each in a position from
+which it certainly seemed that escape was impossible. The Boers, upon
+the contrary, had a train of supplies and an excellent line of cover
+for retreat.
+
+The first Boer shell killed two horses and reduced to ruins a hut from
+the group which had given some protection to the wounded. The second
+shell fell wide, exploding, with no effect, into a sand heap. Between
+the intervals of shelling, the fire from the Boer Maxims whistled
+across the open spaces between the two firing-lines with a discord
+which was altogether out of harmony with the calmness and coolness of
+our men who, so soon as they had settled down to the serious business
+of the engagement, did not seem at all to mind the firing.
+
+Two cousins, Corporal Walshe and Corporal Parland, Irishmen, were shot
+dead very soon after the engagement opened, but the absence of
+ambulance arrangements prevented those who were wounded in the
+advanced position from falling back to the rear. With a quiet and
+unsuspected courage they just stopped where they were shot until they
+could muster sufficient strength to drag themselves to the rear. Each
+wounded form became, as it crawled along, the objective of the Boer
+rifle fire, and no few of those who had been hit in action were hit
+again as they made their way to the field hospital. Here Major
+Anderson, with whom I remained from the moment of my arrival until we
+retired--who told me afterwards that it was a mere chance which caused
+him to accompany the squadron to the field, since in the confusion and
+din no one had thought to give him his orders--was busily dressing the
+men as they came in. The total area of the improvised dressing station
+was perhaps half a dozen yards; into that crowded six or seven horses,
+seven or eight wounded men, the Surgeon-Major, his orderly, and all
+those others who made their way through the firing-line from time to
+time. There seemed to be indescribable confusion in this little spot.
+The wounded men lay between horses' legs, rested upon one another,
+crouched against the walls of the huts, each recognising that the
+situation was one of gravity, and endeavouring to assist so far as he
+was able; those who were not too severely wounded helped to undress
+those who had been less fortunately hit, and to each as he fell back
+from the firing-line to have his wounds dressed, there was thrown a
+merry jest from his comrades. The nature of the wounds created no
+little interest among the men, since it was the first time that any
+one had seen the effect, upon human beings, of the Mauser bullets. One
+man as he came back was advised not to sit down; another man, with
+extraordinary coolness in seeing the nature of his wounds, which were
+seven, exclaimed with a quaint blasphemy, that it still might be
+possible for him to enjoy the functions of a married man. But if this
+were the scene at the hospital base, the scene at our firing-line and
+at that upon the Boer side was very different. We possibly occupied a
+line of front some eighty yards in extent, and as the Boers saw that
+the hospital hut was becoming the centre of our position, so they
+extended their lines until a direct cross fire from the extremities of
+the two flanks were added to the direct fire from the centre; each
+man, therefore, was under a converging fire from three distinct
+points, and had it not been that the Boers' aim was not so good as
+their range our losses would have been much more serious than has
+happily proved to be the case. We could see the Boers sitting in the
+branches of the trees; we could see them crouching beneath bushes; we
+could detect them, from the fire of their rifles, in the shelter of
+the rocks and in the depths of the sluits. It soon became the first
+serious consideration with our men to try to hit them as they sat in
+the branches of the trees, and it was because Private Wormald caught
+sight of a piece of a paper as it dropped from a tree that he was able
+to shoot the Dutchman who was known to have shot the two cousins. It
+was almost a unique method of warfare. Anon and again our fellows
+enjoyed a little Boer potting among the foliage of the trees. Here and
+there a body was seen to fall heavily from a branch, or to spring up
+and fall heavily into a bush; that was as much as we could gauge of
+the effect of our own handiwork. Those who were behind the stones were
+possibly as safe as those who were in the sluits, but through the lack
+of any effective support our shooting, good as it may have been, was
+not sufficiently strong for us to maintain our position. If D Squadron
+were to save itself from an unfortunate disaster it seemed that it
+would have to fall back. The wounded men had come in so rapidly from
+the front, and ammunition had been so heavily expended, that many of
+those situated upon the extreme flanks of our position were completely
+without ammunition. In one case five men had no ammunition left, and
+one volunteered to go to the rear to obtain some from those who had
+been wounded, and were consequently out of action. He successfully
+accomplished this errand, sustaining, however, such wounds as must
+prove fatal.
+
+Captain Fitzclarence maintained his splendid isolation as long as
+possible, and just as every one was wondering why, in the name of
+Heaven, no artillery had been sent to support the squadron in a
+position it was never intended to occupy, a gun detachment was seen
+to gallop into action on the extreme right flank. Between our men and
+the gun perhaps a mile stretched, and when we could see that they were
+preparing to fire, each for a brief moment stopped to congratulate his
+fellow upon the succour at hand. In this they didn't think of
+themselves, but they hoped that with the aid of the gun they might
+still be able to maintain their position and give the enemy a hiding.
+
+Suddenly a cloud of smoke hung over the gun and a shell shrieked
+through the air. We rapidly speculated upon the amount of damage it
+would make, when, with noisy force, it burst among us. We thought at
+first that the shell had fallen short, and we hoped the next would
+reach the enemy, but when Lieutenant Murchison, who was in charge of
+the gun, dismissed his second shell, and it was so well directed as to
+fall upon one of the three huts behind which we were sheltering, the
+luckless position of D Squadron received unmerited but instantaneous
+aggravation and aggrievement, since it was turning the tables with a
+vengeance upon the enemy when the guns coming to our support set,
+forthwith, to shell us. The menace which our own artillery had thus
+unconsciously become to one portion of our wounded men about these
+huts had to be immediately removed, and I was one of two who were
+permitted to carry intelligence of his mistake to the officer in
+charge of the seven-pounder. In galloping across to the position of
+the gun, the third shell thrown in this direction burst just past my
+horse's head, the force of its wind almost lifting me from the saddle.
+The moment was of interest, and I only realised my escape when, upon
+returning, I found the base of the shell and my helmet lying quite
+close to each other. When a new direction had been given to the guns,
+and their fire brought to bear upon the position which the Boers
+occupied, the rifle fire from the front of the ridge gradually
+slackened, while, under cover of the very excellent work which this
+gun was executing, our men fell back upon the hospital. Here an order
+had just arrived instructing Fitzclarence to send back his wounded to
+the armoured train, those uninjured covering the movement. While the
+squadron was engaged in completing this order, no shots were fired
+from the position of the Boers, and we concluded that they also were
+engaged in withdrawing at discretion. Captain Fitzclarence, Lieutenant
+Swinburne, and myself were the last to leave the line of action,
+tailing off ourselves in the same open order that the remainder of the
+squadron had been ordered to preserve. As we retired Captain
+Fitzclarence put three wounded horses out of their misery, leaving
+their bodies for the vultures that were already wheeling in circles in
+the realms of space above us. These were the last shots fired in this
+action, although through mistake, the Boers had fired upon the
+ambulance train, mistaking it for a new instrument of destruction.
+Subsequently we heard that the Boers buried their dead at
+Ramathlabama, and we also have heard that all the houses in that place
+have been seized as accommodation for the 107 Boers who were wounded
+in the fight. These numbers may probably be exaggerated, but there is
+no cause to doubt that their loss was much greater than ours, since
+the proportion of their men to ours was greater than twelve to one.
+Saturday thus initiated the Boer war along this frontier, and after
+the morning's excitement the rest of the day passed without incident.
+Colonel Baden-Powell, Colonel Hore, and Colonel Walford, the one as
+the colonel in command, the others as the commanding officers of the
+Protectorate Regiment and the British South Africa Police,
+congratulated their men upon the stand which they had made in the
+morning, and the courage which they had displayed. Brevet-Major Lord
+Edward Cecil, C.S.O., described Captain Fitzclarence's movement as
+brilliant. It is a question whether this movement was not, at least,
+characterised by an equal amount of foolhardiness. However, the
+officer himself showed such coolness in this his baptism of fire as to
+deserve much congratulation upon his individual gallantry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE FIRST DAY OF BOMBARDMENT
+
+
+                                         THE CAMP, MAFEKING,
+                                       _October 22nd, 1899_.
+
+There was some sign that the engagement of Saturday between the
+Protectorate troops and the Boer forces investing Mafeking would have
+been the precursor of a series of minor fights, which, if not of much
+importance in themselves, yet would have been of interest and
+encouraging to the command generally.
+
+As it happens, however, the engagement of Saturday is the first, and,
+up to the present, the only action of any importance, of any interest
+whatsoever, that has been brought about between the two forces.
+General Cronje is evidently a man of some humanity, though it is
+perhaps possible that the motives which direct his present policy of
+exceeding gentleness towards the "Rooineken" that he be besieging in
+Mafeking, aims at procuring for himself, when the inevitable does
+come, terms perhaps not quite so extreme as would have been the case
+had the Boer commandant not conducted his operations in accordance
+with the articles of war.
+
+During the progress of the Sunday following the engagement at Five
+Mile Bank, Commandant Cronje made a curiously sincere, but not
+altogether unhumorous demand for our unconditional surrender. Colonel
+Baden-Powell very properly felt he was unable to comply with any such
+demand, and with the exchange of notes of a courteous character this
+incident closed.
+
+During Sunday the town put the finishing touches to the earthworks,
+lunettes, and to the gun emplacements, which will form a more or less
+complete chain of fortifications around the town. So much as possible,
+and so far as it lay within the knowledge and experience of the Base
+Commandant, Colonel Vyvyen, and Major Panzera, each distinct earthwork
+was made shell-proof.
+
+From the outside the town looks as if a series of gigantic mounds had
+been suddenly created. At different points tiers of sandbags, several
+feet high, protect the more exposed places, and to these again has
+been added, as an exterior facing, banks of earth. Within such a
+position as I am now describing there is a deep trench, which is of
+that depth which enables a man standing upright to fire through
+loopholes between sacks of sand. Behind the trench is a low shelter of
+deals with an upper covering of sandbags, intending to serve the
+garrison of the fort as protection against shell fire.
+
+To those points which are exposed to the more direct attack of the
+enemy, a Maxim has been detached or a seven-pounder emplaced. The Town
+Guard man these positions: the work of patrolling, of forming Cossack
+posts, of maintaining the outer lines of sentries, being undertaken by
+the Protectorate troops and the Bechuanaland Rifles.
+
+[Illustration: Headquarters, Bomb-proof Shelter.]
+
+An elaborate system of signals has been arranged. A red flag will
+fly from Headquarters should the Boers be coming on, and an alarm will
+be rung in the centre of the town. The streets have been barricaded
+with carts, and all open places protected by traverses of a useful
+character. Mines have been placed within and without the town, and an
+improvised field telegraph or the telephone has been connected with
+every point which lies beyond the immediate precincts of the defences.
+Every possible precaution that human ingenuity can devise and the
+resources of the town supply for the protection of the place, is in
+order.
+
+Thus did Mafeking prepare for the Boer bombardment, and upon the
+Monday following this took place; but it is perhaps no exaggeration to
+say that nothing so ludicrous in the history of modern warfare has
+been propagated as the gigantic joke which Commandant Snyman, who
+directed the fire of the artillery, played off against us that day.
+For many weeks we, along this frontier, had heard what the Boers
+proposed to do once war should be declared. These forecasts had indeed
+been sanguinary; the heads of the English people, had we believed in
+these rumours, were to lie upon the veldt like the sand upon the sea
+shore.
+
+The bombardment as such was totally ineffective, and so curiously
+amateur, so wholly experimental, as to move one to astonishment rather
+than derision. It began at 9.15 a.m., and the first shell fell blind.
+The second and the third also pitched short, but once the bombardment
+had been initiated, the feelings of those who had dreaded such an
+event, more on account of their women and children than on account of
+themselves, were unperturbed. When the shells began to fall into the
+town it was found that they were of such poor quality as to be
+incapable of any explosive force whatever. Judging from their effect
+the area of damage was not three square feet.
+
+Shortly after the first few shells had been dropped the Boers found
+the range, and from Signal Hill, their position to the east of the
+town, threw several shells at the hospital and monastery. Strange as
+it may seem our most grievous cause of complaint against the Boer plan
+of war is that they do not respect sufficiently our Red Cross flag.
+Commandant Snyman had given us no time in which to remove our women
+and children, and, as a consequence, we established somewhat hurriedly
+a laager, in which they were confined and which it was hoped would be
+beyond the fire of the Boer, since we afforded it the protection of
+the Red Cross flag. This, so far as the laager was concerned, luckily
+proved to be the case, since on the occasion that Commandant Cronje
+sent in to apologise for the firing upon the Red Cross by his younger
+roughs during the Five Mile Bank fight, Colonel Baden-Powell took the
+opportunity of pointing out to him the precise significance of this
+flag, and the exact whereabouts of the buildings which enjoined its
+protection. In the absence of direct evidence of the enemy's intention
+upon this day, in the repugnance with which one would charge them with
+wilful abuse of the Red Cross, it is good to believe that Colonel
+Baden-Powell's letter was not communicated to Commandant Snyman
+previous to this action, for from the moment that this officer opened
+the bombardment until his artillery ceased fire for the day, each
+individual missile was thrown directly across the hospital and
+monastery. It was unfortunate that these buildings should have been in
+the line of fire, and it was a fact greatly to be deplored that the
+hospital should be filled, at such a moment, with women and wounded,
+the former magnanimously devoting themselves to the work of looking
+after those who had been disabled in Saturday's engagement. It was
+perhaps unavoidable, with such a line of fire, that the shells should
+not drop upon the hospital and monastery. Fearing this as we did, the
+garrison was filled with consternation when, so abruptly that we had
+scarcely realised what had been the actual object of the nameless
+dread by which the camp was suddenly depressed, the inevitable
+happened and we knew that a shell had burst within the hospital
+itself. Had this shell been of the quality and explosive character
+that we had been led to expect, one entire side of the hospital would
+have been reduced to ruins; as it was, however, the area of
+destruction most remote from the point of penetration was not three
+feet in circumference. A little of the masonry was destroyed, a few
+boards of the floor ripped up, and that was all. Dust and dirt,
+however, covered everything.
+
+Two more shells penetrated the same building in the course of the
+attack--the one burst in the principal waiting-room, the other played
+havoc with the children's dormitory. Fortunately no one was injured,
+and it was a happy omen for future shelling that throughout the whole
+of the first bombardment no human life was lost in Mafeking. There
+were no casualties, and three buildings, the hospital, the monastery,
+and Riesle's Hotel, alone were struck. The dead comprised one chicken.
+There were many narrow escapes. My horse was fastened to the
+hitching-post outside Riesle's Hotel at the very moment that a shell
+burst against the steps of the verandah, but this animal would seem
+to enjoy a happy immunity from shell fire, since at the Five Mile
+Bank engagement there was a shell which burst within three or four
+feet of him.
+
+Our guns made no return whatever to the fire of the Boers, beyond a
+chance shot which exploded by accident. After this very ineffective
+and amusing bombardment had continued for some hours the enemy ceased
+firing, and from their position only 2,000 yards from the town, and to
+which they had moved from Signal Hill, where the attack had begun, the
+usual messenger, half herald, half spy, was despatched to our lines.
+It has become quite a feature of the Boer operations against Mafeking
+for them to enjoy at every few hours a cessation of hostilities under
+a flag of truce, and, I regret to say, that these constant messages in
+the middle of an action, from the Boer Commandant to Colonel
+Baden-Powell, are sent with an ulterior motive. The Boer Commandants
+would appear to lack that experience of the conditions of warfare
+which should enable them to perceive the folly and futility--if not
+the guilt--of such procedure as they have been following since
+operations against this town began. It was, perhaps, as much through
+our own ignorance of the character of the enemy whom we were fighting
+as anything, that they secured any profitable information by these
+tactics, since we had expected that they would observe the unwritten
+regulation which restricts the progress of a flag of truce to a point
+half-way between the lines of the two forces. Upon no occasion at this
+period in the investment did the Boers recognise this custom, but
+securing cover where they could they crept down to our lines under
+protection of the white flag. By these means they secured valuable
+intelligence.
+
+The Boer emissary was allowed safe conduct into our lines, and was
+escorted by Captain Williams, of the British South Africa Police, who
+was in command of the armoured train, and Lieutenant the Honourable
+Hanbury-Tracy of Headquarters Staff, who had been sent out to meet
+him. The messenger was conducted to Colonel Baden-Powell, who received
+through this medium a second demand for unconditional surrender.
+Commandant Snyman presented his compliments to Colonel Baden-Powell,
+and desired to know if, to save further bloodshed, we would now
+surrender. Colonel Baden-Powell received this message with polite
+astonishment, and while not telling the deputy of Commandant Snyman
+that his shell fire had only spilt the blood of a fowl, and knocked
+small pieces out of three buildings, replied, that so far as we were
+concerned, we had not yet begun. While the Headquarters Staff were
+deliberating upon the reply to such a momentous message, the messenger
+was regaled with beer and bread and cheese. He was escorted back at
+4.45 p.m., and for the time being shell fire ceased.
+
+On Monday the armoured train took up a position in advance of the
+town, and in such a manner that it was completely sheltered from the
+Boer position. It so happened that the Boer messenger came directly
+upon this train, which was patiently waiting for the enemy's line of
+fire to be advanced a few hundred yards further, before opening its
+artillery. The little ruse which we had so carefully planned was thus
+forestalled, and to prevent further disclosures being made the herald
+was therewith blindfolded. It was a strange spectacle to see this Boer
+being brought through our lines with a somewhat soiled handkerchief
+across his eyes. His flag of truce comprised three handkerchiefs tied
+to a bamboo, and as he came forward it waved with a motion in which
+fright played as great a part as dignity.
+
+The Boer Commandant had evidently determined to shell Mafeking from
+three positions, but force of circumstances, and the undesirability of
+throwing up earthworks under the telling fire which would have been
+poured into him from our own trenches, prevented him bringing his
+heavy artillery into position. He had stormed Mafeking from Signal
+Hill with a twelve-pound Krupp, but when he advanced into a range of
+2,000 yards he fell back upon a seven-pounder, and a nine-pound
+high-velocity Krupp. These guns were quite unprotected by earthworks
+and could be easily seen from the town. Indeed it was the possibility
+of their being put out of action by our guns which instigated the
+Commandant to secure a cessation of hostilities by despatching his
+messenger upon some fatuous errand to Colonel Baden-Powell while he
+and his entire force busied themselves in erecting breastworks about
+his field pieces.
+
+The Boer emissary arrived at 2.30 p.m., and no sooner had he been
+received by us than the Boers began to work with pick and shovel,
+continuing their labours throughout the conference. By the time that
+their herald had returned two emplacements had been prepared and their
+locality partially concealed by a quantity of small bushes and scrub
+with which they had been covered.
+
+It may be that Commandant Snyman was unaware of the breach of faith he
+was committing in working upon his trenches under a flag of truce. It
+is our hope that this should prove to be the case, since we would not
+willingly believe that the Boers be so lost to the sense of fairness
+which should underlie the provisions which prevail during any
+cessation of hostilities as to promote a condition of truce for
+interests of their own. But should this be, indeed, the extent of the
+ignorance of the Boer Commandant upon the conditions governing war,
+let us trust that he may soon furbish up his knowledge upon these
+especial points.
+
+When the messenger returned to his lines, the Boers proceeded to
+advance in force upon the waterworks, and, driving in our outposts,
+they have since maintained a control over our water supply. The town,
+therefore, is wholly without water from this source, although we be
+not in any way frightened at the loss of the springs, since many wells
+have been opened out and many promising springs have been located
+within the radius of the town, some of which watered the troops of the
+Warren expedition. When we consider that to the majority this is their
+first experience of war, and that the length of the siege is unknown
+and more than likely to be protracted, it must be admitted that
+Mafeking is bearing itself wonderfully well. The few women and
+children who remained here show a dauntless front, while the men are
+only too anxious, and indeed too willing, to indulge in some sniping
+on their own account.
+
+Nevertheless, the position of Mafeking at the present moment is one
+which, if giving no cause for alarm, is at least unsatisfactory. Our
+wires are still cut to north and south. Our line is up, and all around
+us the Boers are supposed to be encamped, yet as the days go on it is
+becoming harder and harder to realise that we are seriously engaged in
+war, and we are more inclined to believe in the cheery optimism of
+Colonel Baden-Powell. It is very like some gigantic picnic, although
+it may doubtless be food for disquieting reflection. Occasionally we
+sleep out at night, and are in the trenches all day, but upon the
+whole it is quite impossible to believe that we are engaged in
+repelling an enemy who already are investing us.
+
+To get away from the hotels, to get more into contact with the spirit
+of the siege, I have been camping out for some days at the most
+outlying position upon the west facing of the town, but even by such
+means it is infinitely difficult to find much that is instinctive with
+active and actual campaigning. We perform the duties of a vedette,
+watching by day and night, sleeping at oddly-snatched moments, ever
+ready, and straining our vision in wild efforts to find trace of the
+foe. But it amounts to but little in the end.
+
+Since Monday we have seen small detachments of the Boers daily, we
+have even exchanged outpost fire with them, while we have on three
+different occasions turned our guns upon their position at the
+waterworks; but these occurrences are purely incidental and not wholly
+relative to the main features of the situation. It has become quite
+necessary for us to justify our own existence, and since there be but
+such vague signs of war around us, this desire has become infinitely
+more difficult of fulfilment. As the time passes we receive messages
+daily from different units in the Boer commando to friends in
+Mafeking, which are sometimes amicable, sometimes impudent in
+character; but to increase the irony of our situation, if we be
+engaged in the press of battle at dawn, it is certain that at dusk we
+shall be dining with no small degree of luxury at the hotel.
+
+At present there has been no misery, for there has been no war, and
+apart from the five lives that have been lost already, Mafeking to-day
+is as it was a month ago. It would seem as though this gigantic war,
+which so many people have been urging upon the Government, in relation
+to the operations of the enemy along this frontier may develop into a
+series of cattle raids by armed Boers. But if there be little in the
+immediate situation to alarm us, there is behind the rose and silver
+of the clouds a dark spot, a spot which growing bigger, ever bigger as
+the days go by, implies that signs of the times are not wanting to
+prove that our official optimism, forecasting the siege as but of
+three weeks' duration, is based upon anything less secure than the
+imaginings of a man who, knowing the hollowness of his words in his
+own heart, seeks but to cheer the hearts of the garrison. There was
+little sign of readiness in the Imperial troops, little to show that
+they can relieve Mafeking before the year dies out in the birth of the
+closing twelve months of the nineteenth century. But it were heresy to
+say so now. The idle singer of an empty day dares not pronounce the
+denunciation of his country in her hour of danger. Nevertheless, if
+Mafeking be not relieved before the Christmas season, the hour of our
+existence will be an hour of travail, impressed with the echoes of
+much suffering and saddened by the memories of many who will be dead.
+But for the time we will ignore the gravity in our situation, mock at
+our splendid isolation, our scanty resources, since to dwell too long
+upon the guilty splendour of the naked truth is to beget an
+earnestness which will depress our spirits, allowing us to read out
+the future of the siege in words of deadly omen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE ADVENT OF "BIG BEN"
+
+
+                             MAFEKING, _October 25th, 1899_.
+
+To-day is the third day of the bombardment by which Commandant Cronje
+is attempting to realise his threat of reducing Mafeking to ashes. Up
+to the present it has been impossible to consider very seriously the
+attempt of the Boers to besiege Mafeking. The earlier bombardment and
+the series of events which have occurred during the interval have not
+augmented the gravity of the situation. The Boer Commandant
+endeavoured to carry out his word by opening the second bombardment of
+Mafeking upon the day which he had notified Colonel Baden-Powell. We
+had been incredulous at the threat of the Boers to send to Pretoria
+for some siege guns. Monday, therefore, was a day of some anxiety for
+us, and each was curious to know what result the enemy's fire would
+produce. Upon this occasion, however, the townsfolk had reckoned
+without taking into account the intentions of Colonel Baden-Powell,
+and it was a very pleasant surprise to find that the bombardment of
+Mafeking by the Boers had been converted into the bombardment of the
+Boers by Mafeking. At a very early hour, two guns, which had been
+placed near the reservoir, opened fire upon the enemy's artillery in
+position at the water springs. The artillery duel which was thus
+started continued for some hours, and if it did not do much damage to
+either side it made manifest to the Boers that the defences of
+Mafeking were not altogether at their mercy. About noon, however, the
+Boers, who had been observed to place some guns in position upon the
+south-west side of the town, threw shells at Cannon Kopje. Here again,
+fortunately, no material damage was done.
+
+Somewhat early in the afternoon, the look-outs reported tremendous
+activity in the Boer camp. Across the veldt, those who cared, might
+have seen the enemy engaged upon some enormous earthwork, which the
+general consensus of opinion very quickly determined to be the
+emplacements for the siege guns. They were about three miles away from
+the town, and in a position different from that from which the guns
+had shelled the kopje in the morning. The frequency with which shells
+had exploded within the limits of Mafeking, had rendered the people
+somewhat callous of the consequences, and despite an official warning
+which was issued to the town, a large number of people stood
+discussing, in excited groups, the value of this news, while no small
+proportion of the population had gathered upon the west front to watch
+with their glasses the completion of the enemy's earthworks. It was
+three miles across the veldt, a mere black shadow upon the skyline,
+distinguished by its proximity to a local landmark, the "Jackal Tree,"
+where the Boers had intrenched their Creusot gun. It was not so much
+that there were no other guns around us which had drawn the crowd, as
+the morbid curiosity to see for themselves what perhaps in a few
+hours they might never see again. At different points upon the eastern
+and western heights the Boer guns had been stationed. To the
+south-east there was a twelve-pounder at a very convenient range, and
+so placed as to act as a flanking fire to the direct onslaught of "Big
+Ben." Upon the extreme east there were two seven-pounders, one in
+position at the water springs, the other covering the entire front of
+the town. Upon the west and to the north the enemy had similarly
+placed their guns. There was a seven-pounder emplacement, with a
+Nordenfeldt support due west, 1,400 yards from the native stadt. Below
+that, and between it and the north, the Boers had a Maxim. It is,
+perhaps, somewhat extraordinary that an enemy who has procured the
+best available artillery advice, should proceed to attack the town in
+such a fashion, and much of the failure which has distinguished the
+Boer bombardment is due to the fact that, instead of concentrating
+their fire upon a series of given spots, they have maintained
+simultaneous shelling from isolated points. As their shells fell, the
+damage which they caused was scattered over a wide area, and confined
+to a building here and there. Indeed, the greater portion of the
+shells had merely ploughed up the streets. However, it was not to be
+confirmed that afternoon. An hour after noon on the following day the
+alarm rang out from the market place, the red flag was seen to fly
+from headquarters, and the inhabitants were warned to take immediate
+cover. Within a few minutes of the alarm, the proceedings for that day
+began, and the first shell thrown from the Boer battery burst over our
+camp. Presently on the distant skyline a tremendous cloud of smoke
+hurled itself into the air. The very foundations upon which Mafeking
+rests seemed to quiver, all curiosity was set at rest, and there was
+no longer any doubt as to the nature of the new ordnance which the
+Boers had with them. With a terrific impact the shell struck some
+structures near the railway, and the flying fragments of steel spread
+over the town, burying themselves in buildings, striking the veldt two
+miles distant, creating a dust, a horrible confusion, and, an instant,
+terror throughout the town. For the moment no one seemed to know what
+had happened, when the sudden silence which had come upon the town was
+broken by the loud explosion of the shell as it came in contact with
+some building. It was a scene of unique interest, the rush of air, the
+roar of its flight, the final impact, and the massive fragments of
+steel and iron which scattered in all directions, gave no time for
+those who had been exposed, to realise the cause of the disturbance.
+Much as people throng to the spot where some appalling catastrophe has
+occurred, so, a minute after the shell exploded, people appeared from
+all directions to run to the scene, and although the shell had caused
+no very great damage, the noise which it had made, its unusual size
+and explosive force, did not tend to pacify people. Many were
+convinced that Mafeking was doomed, and although no loss of life
+occurred, there were few who did not think that their days were
+numbered. In the course of the afternoon, after a rain of seven-and
+nine-pound shells, the Boers opened with this gun again, and although
+happily no loss of life occurred, the missile wrecked the rear of the
+Mafeking Hotel, falling within a few feet of Mr. E. G. Parslow, the
+war correspondent of the _Chronicle_. The force of the explosion
+hurled this gentleman upon a pile of wood, blew the walls out of
+three rooms, set fire to a gas engine, and effectually littered the
+yard of the hotel. With the curious inconsequence which has marked the
+Boer proceedings in their investment of Mafeking, the enemy threw no
+more of these heavier shells during the afternoon, contenting
+themselves with discharging at odd moments those of lesser calibre.
+
+The two shells which had been fired during the afternoon gave the
+inhabitants of Mafeking some little ground by which to judge the
+nature of the bombardment on the morrow. After the cessation of
+hostilities word was passed round that the two shells which had been
+launched at Mafeking were a 64lb. howitzer and a 94lb. breech-loading
+siege gun, and that it might be reckoned that these were but the
+preliminary shots by which to measure the range. Officially it was
+notified that every precaution must be taken to remain within the
+bomb-proof shelters which the inhabitants of Mafeking had been advised
+to construct. It is the presence of these pits which explains the
+slight loss of life that has occurred during the Boer bombardment of
+Mafeking. Up to to-day the effect of the terrible hail of shells which
+has poured into the town has been but a few slight wounds. But there
+could be no doubt that the more serious fighting was at last to take
+place, and it seemed to us only natural to expect a general advance
+upon Mafeking in the morning. The night passed with every man sleeping
+by his arms and at his post. The women and children had been removed
+to their laager, the horses were picketed in the river-bed, and once
+again all preparations for defence, and all those measures which had
+been taken to secure immunity from shell fire were, for the last time,
+inspected. Firing began very early on Wednesday morning, a gun
+detachment under Lieutenant Murchison opening with a few shells from
+our position to the east of the town. When the light had become clear
+the Boers brought their new siege guns once more into play. We
+estimated at nightfall that the enemy must have thrown rather more
+than two hundred shells into Mafeking, and if Mafeking be saved for
+future bombardment its salvation lies in the fact that it is,
+relatively speaking, little more than a collection of somewhat
+scattered houses with tin roofs and mud walls. Any other form of
+building would have been shaken to its foundations by the mere
+concussion of these bursting shells. Where bricks would have fallen,
+mud walls simply threw down a cloud of dust. But if Mafeking be still
+more or less intact, it can congratulate itself upon having withstood
+a most determined and concentrated shell fire.
+
+It is difficult to defend the action of the Boers in laying upon
+Mafeking the burden of these siege guns. We have heard no little from
+Commandant Cronje upon the rules of warfare, as set out by the Geneva
+Convention, by time-honoured practices, and by that sense of custom
+and courtesy which at the present day still brings back some slight
+echo of the chivalry which distinguished the wars in dead centuries.
+Nevertheless, there is a grim and ill-savoured travesty in the Boer
+bombardment of this town. We do not complain, and we must be forgiven
+if we find some ironical and melancholy interest attaching itself to
+our situation. Three times has Colonel Baden-Powell pointed out to
+Commandant Cronje the buildings which enjoy the immunity of the Red
+Cross flag, yet these buildings are still deliberately made the
+objective of the Boer artillery; twice have we received flags of truce
+from the Boers, ignoring altogether the fact that they were but the
+clumsy subterfuge by which an unprincipled enemy secured to itself
+some new and advantageous position for its guns; then, as a crowning
+act of mercy, we have this Boer Commander, so blatant a gentleman that
+he is by sheer force of his aggressive impudence worthy of our
+attentions, training upon a defenceless town a 64lb. howitzer and a
+94lb. breech-loading siege gun, pieces whose action is relegated by
+these self-same observances of civilised warfare to towns who possess,
+in the first place, strong fortifications; in the second, masonry and
+concrete in their construction.
+
+After the early morning hours had been whiled away Commandant Cronje
+made preparations for a general advance upon the town under the
+protection of his cannon fire. This was the moment which each of us
+had longed for. As the Boer advance seemed to be concentrated upon the
+eastern side, I proceeded to the redan at De Koch's Corner under Major
+Goold-Adams, and, later on, to another a little lower down in the same
+quarter of the town under Captain Musson. At this time, any one who
+can, is supposed to bear arms to defend our position, and, so as to
+more completely identify themselves with the movement for protection
+of this place, the correspondents that are here are each carrying
+their rifle and bandolier, and taking up their stand in some one of
+the trenches. The correspondent of the _Chronicle_, Mr. E. G. Parslow,
+the correspondent for Reuter's, Mr. Vere Stent, and myself, requested
+Captain Musson, a local dairy farmer, who has been placed in charge of
+one of the redans upon the east front, to allow us to assist him in
+the protection of his earthwork, and it was from there, as a
+consequence, that I watched the bombardment of Mafeking, taking an
+active part in any rifle practice which Captain Musson permitted to
+his men. At Major Goold-Adams's there had been stationed a Maxim
+detachment, and it was not long before its sharp rat-a-tat-tat was
+heard speaking to the enemy. The warm reception which was accorded to
+the Boers from this redan soon began to draw their fire. With "Big
+Ben" discharging its 94lb. shells in every quarter of the town, and a
+12-pounder from the north-west dropping shrapnel with much
+discrimination over that quarter, the enemy upon the east side soon
+followed the example so shown them and discharged shells at the redans
+along their front. The range was singularly good, and in a very few
+minutes shells were dropping over and in very close proximity to our
+two redans. Between the two, and but a little removed from the line of
+fire, was the building of the Dutch Reformed Church, and several of
+the shells intended for the Maxim in Major Goold-Adams's fort found
+lodgment in its interior. The front of this church had been penetrated
+in several places by the shells, when the gun was slewed suddenly
+round upon the hospital and a shell fell in an outhouse attached to
+the monastery with disastrous effect. When the smoke had cleared away
+little was left of the building beyond a pile of smoking ruins. Above
+Captain Musson's redan our untimely visitors constantly burst and
+scattered, and we began to realise fully the value of the bomb-proof
+shelters. In a little while, however, the Boers relaxed their shell
+fire, and beyond maintaining sufficient fire to cover their advance,
+the heavier guns were for the time silent. With this, the Boers began
+to open out in extended order upon the east side of the town,
+advancing on our west to within 900 yards of our defences. At each
+point the Boer advance was protected by the guns, the heavy artillery
+to the south-west seeming to be the centre of a circle of armed men,
+who were advancing slowly upon this gallant little town. At no time
+did the enemy, however, beyond the few upon the west side, come within
+effective range of our rifles or our Maxims, contenting themselves
+with taking up positions at 2,000 yards, and dealing out to us
+prolonged rifle fire with some intermittent shelling. The firing was
+very rapid, very general, and more or less impotent. Indeed their
+expenditure of rifle ammunition and their extreme prodigality in
+shells was as much playing into our hands as reaping them any
+advantage.
+
+By night we reckoned that over two hundred shells had been fired
+alone, though it was very doubtful whether there be two hundred pounds
+worth of damage to credit to them. We have had two men wounded, while
+here and there it is believed that certain of the enemy received their
+quietus. Whether we beat them off or whether they lacked the spirit to
+attack us it be impossible to determine, and it is enough to say that,
+whatever may have been their intention, Mafeking remains as it was
+before the first shot was fired. At night, after the attack, Colonel
+Baden-Powell issued a general order congratulating his forces and the
+people in Mafeking upon their calmness during the heavy fire to which
+they had been subjected.
+
+As we are situated at present, it is impossible for us to leave our
+trenches in order to give battle to the enemy, but we are still buoyed
+up by the hope of being able before long to take in our turn the
+offensive. In the meantime, most of us live with our rifles in our
+hands, our bandoliers round our shoulders, existing upon food of the
+roughest kind, peering over sandbags at the distant position of the
+Boers, or crouching in the shell-proof trenches as their shells burst
+overhead. There is much gravity in our isolated position; there is the
+danger that, by good luck more than by skill, Mafeking may be reduced,
+but there is no reason to fear that the determination and courage of
+the town will give way. Above all else that may be calculated to
+endure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+A MIDNIGHT SORTIE
+
+
+                             MAFEKING, _October 28th, 1899_.
+
+Last night there occurred one of those isolated instances of gallantry
+by which the British sustain their high reputation. For some days, in
+fact ever since the Boers secured their siege guns from Pretoria, the
+enemy has been building a circlet of trenches around Mafeking. At the
+least distance they are perhaps 2,500 yards, unhappily beyond the
+reach of our rifle and Maxim fire. We have seen them lounging in their
+breastworks, we have seen them gathered around their camp fires, and
+the inability of Mafeking to shake off these unwelcome intruders has
+been daily a source of irritation. We have not, of course, allowed
+them to enjoy, undisturbed, the seclusion of their own earthworks,
+and, as a continual goad in their side, little expeditions have been
+despatched to make night fearsome to our besetting foe.
+
+Another of these midnight sorties was undertaken last night, proving
+in itself to be the most important move on our side since Captain
+Fitzclarence and his men engaged the Boers two weeks ago. The same
+officer, 55 men of D Squadron Protectorate Regiment, with Lieutenant
+Murray and 25 men of the Cape Police, were the prime movers in an
+attempt to rush the first line of earthworks of the Boer position.
+Shortly after 11 o'clock Captain Fitzclarence, Lieutenant Swinburne
+and their men started on the perilous undertaking. In the faint light
+of the night we could see their figures from our own redans, silently
+hurrying across the veldt. In the blue haze of the distance a black
+blur betokened the position of the enemy, and it seemed that at any
+moment the hoarse challenge of the Boer outpost would give the alarm.
+The men crept on in slightly extended order, holding themselves in
+readiness for the supreme moment. Nearer, and yet nearer, they drew to
+the Boer entrenchments. The silence was intense. The heavy gloom, the
+mysterious noises of the veldt at night, the shadowy patches in the
+bush, all seemed to heighten the tension of one's nerves. In a little
+while our men were within a few yards of the enemy; then furtively
+each fixed his bayonet to his rifle, and as the blades rang home upon
+their sockets the gallant band raised a ringing cheer. Instantly the
+Boer position was galvanised into activity, figures showed everywhere,
+shots rang out, men shouted, horses stampeded, and the confusion which
+reigned supreme gave to our men one vital moment in which to hurl
+themselves across the intervening space. Then there was a loud crash,
+for, as it happened, many of our men were nearer the entrenchments
+than had been anticipated, and their eager charge had precipitated
+them upon some sheets of corrugated iron which the Boers had torn from
+the grand stand of the racecourse for protection from the rain. With
+our men upon the parapet of the trench, a few rapid volleys were fired
+into the enemy, who, taken completely by surprise, were altogether
+demoralised. Those in the first trenches seemed to have been petrified
+by fright. Where they were, there they remained, stabbed with bayonet,
+knocked senseless with the rifle's butt, or shot dead by the fire of
+their own men. Captain Fitzclarence himself, with magnificent
+gallantry and swordsmanship, killed four of the enemy with his sword,
+his men plying their bayonets strenuously the while. This was the
+first trench, and as the fight grew hotter, some little memory of
+their earlier boasts, inspired the Boers to make a stand. They fought;
+they fought well. Their vast superiority in numbers did not enter into
+their minds, since Commandant Botha told Lieutenant Moncrieff, who had
+charge of the flag party that arranged for an armistice upon the
+following morning, that he thought that at least a thousand men had
+been moved against his position. The long line of front held by the
+enemy flashed fire from many hundred rifles. Houses in the town caught
+the bullets, the low rises to the east of the position threw back the
+echo of the rifle shots. Our men became the centre of a hail of
+bullets. The Boers fired anywhere and everywhere, seeming content if
+they could just load their rifles and release the trigger. Many
+thousands of rounds of ammunition were expended in the confusion of
+the moment, the enemy not even waiting to see at whom, or at what,
+they were aiming.
+
+After the first fury had been expended, our men charged at the bayonet
+point right across the line of trenches. It was in this charge that
+the Boers lost most heavily. So soon as the squadron reached the
+extremity of the Boer position they retreated independently, their
+movement covered by the flanking fire of the Cape Police, which added
+still further to the perplexities of the enemy. The galling fire of
+the Cape Police disturbed them for some time longer than was required
+in the actual retirement of the force.
+
+The Boers had been completely unnerved by the onslaught of the
+Protectorate men, and a feature of the hours which elapsed between the
+final withdrawal of our force from the scene of conflict, and the
+advent of dawn, was the heavy firing of the enemy, who still continued
+discharging useless volleys into space. The loss to us in this
+encounter had been 6 killed, 11 wounded, and two of our men taken
+prisoners, but the gravity of the loss which the enemy sustained can
+be most surely measured by the fact that, until a late hour this
+afternoon, they could not find the spirit to resume the bombardment.
+It is said in camp here that one hundred Boers will have reason to
+remember the charge of the Protectorate Regiment.
+
+The way in which these respond to the duties asked of them is shown by
+their conduct during this night attack. Nevertheless, when the
+enrolment of the Protectorate Regiment began in August, 1899, any
+practical opinion upon the future value of its individual units, as
+upon its possible mobility, was the merest hazard. When Colonel Hore
+accepted the command of the regiment, and endeavoured, by every means
+in his power, to promote its development, there were many who
+expressed, after witnessing the preliminary parade of the recruits at
+Ramathlabama Camp, the verdict that the short space of time which was
+allowed to the officers to knock the squadrons into shape would not
+permit the men attaining any proficiency whatsoever. In those early
+days of the war volunteers came from near and far, from Johannesburg
+upon the one side, from Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, and East London
+upon the other, to enlist in the service of her Majesty. Time-expired
+men threw up their billets when the opportunity presented itself of
+rejoining the colours, and while enlistment was proceeding, the
+immediate vicinity of Ramathlabama and the roads from the Transvaal
+into Mafeking presented the appearance of a district which has been
+made the final destination of some mining rush. Pedestrians from the
+Transvaal humping their swags, passengers by train from the south,
+well-to-do youngsters from different parts of the Protectorate or from
+the back-lying areas of the colony, all made their roads converge upon
+Mafeking. At that time, however, when the work of enlisting was in its
+infancy, and the services of able-bodied men were much required, the
+Colonial Government, at the instigation of Mr. Schreiner, whose
+dubious policy was cheerfully endorsed by his colleagues, refused to
+allow her Majesty's soldiers, who were in process of enlistment for
+that special purpose, to afford Mafeking the moral value of their
+presence. No sooner had word reached the ears of the Colonial Cabinet
+that the work of recruiting was proceeding around Mafeking, than the
+recruiting officers were ordered to withdraw immediately from the
+precincts of the colony so long as they continued to act in a way
+which might give some possible offence to the dear friend, guardian,
+and patron saint of Cape Colony, Paul Kruger. After a very decorous
+and manly remonstrance, Colonel Hore withdrew his headquarters and his
+men sixteen miles across the border to Ramathlabama Camp, from which
+point the enlistment of the Protectorate Regiment was continued.
+
+The Protectorate Regiment is strictly an irregular soldiery, composed
+of men drawn from every rank of African life, many of whom are gentle
+by birth and education and possessed of no little means. In the ranks
+of the regiment there are those who have been at the university and
+public schools; there are also mechanics, miners, farm hands, and men
+who have known office life. The nationalities of the men are as varied
+as their occupations in peace times are diffuse. There are a few
+Americans, some Germans, and Norwegians, although for the most part
+the regiment is British; as a whole, perhaps, it is an ill-assorted
+assembly of adventurers, animated with the same love of fighting and
+the glories of war, of lust and bloodshed which characterised the
+lives of the buccaneers of old. In other days, and in other lands,
+they would be sailing the sea for treasure, or combining in the quest
+for gold in some hidden extremity of the world's surface. The prospect
+of free rations, of uniform, and allowance of pocket money, was of
+course sufficient to draw a few; but, as a body, the idler upon the
+farm, the bar-loafer from the town, and the thoroughly incompetent are
+as distinguished by their absence, as the general tone of the regiment
+is suffused with martial ardour. It is quite impossible to treat these
+men with the cast-iron regulations which enthral the Imperial soldier.
+He does not understand the petty exactions, the never-ending restraint
+which would be imposed upon him had he accepted the conditions which
+govern and regulate life in our army. He experiences and gives voice
+to a very genuine aversion to fatigues of every description, and it
+has required the exercise of much tact and no little personal
+persuasion to induce the men to become reconciled to the labours of
+their calling. They have accepted with some diffidence the fact that
+it is necessary for them to fulfil, at the present moment, many
+irritating, but essentially important fatigues which may not have
+entered into their original forecast of the duties which would be
+allotted to them. They frequently indulge in outbursts of choice
+expletives, at the expense of their non-commissioned officers, while
+they do not hesitate to correct, or at least to argue about what they
+imagine to be wrong in the execution of some order.
+
+The conditions under which these men were enrolled were supposed to
+admit those only who could ride as well as shoot, and before the
+initial tests were applied the standard of the regiment upon paper was
+exceptionally high. After the first parade, however, it was seen that
+by far the great majority of the regiment was incapable of managing
+their horses. Upon parade, when horses and men were put through
+cavalry exercises, detached and riderless steeds would be seen
+galloping and bucking in all directions. However, those who were
+unproficient did not propose to allow their cattle to hold the mastery
+for any longer than was absolutely necessary, and many was the tough
+fight fought to a bitter end between the raw recruit and his unbroken,
+unmanageable mount. After many days and an inordinate amount of hard
+work, the troop officers managed to lick their men into a very
+presentable appearance until, with the beginning of the war, the
+squadrons of the Protectorate Regiment were as capable and efficient a
+body of irregular mounted infantry as any that had been enrolled by
+local movement in South Africa. During the siege there has been no
+chance to continue those early exercises, and it is not at all
+unlikely that when they become mounted once more the former
+difficulties will again assert themselves and, bearing this in mind,
+it is difficult to conclude that as a fighting force they will not be
+more at home upon their feet than in the saddle, since they will find
+their attentions occupied as much by the management of their steeds as
+with the handling of their weapons.
+
+If they be not quite so mobile in the field as more experienced
+troops, there is no doubt that they present a determined front to the
+fire of the enemy. They have a keen relish for any preparation which
+appears to lead to some immediate collision, while they profess an
+equally profound disgust at their enforced inactivity. How these men
+might act if, through the smoke-filled air, they saw an array of
+sparkling bayonets, or heard the serried ranks of hostile lines
+advancing to the charge, it is impossible to say; but in the few
+fights which we have had the personal element has been strong, and the
+individual courage high. We have lacked the spectacle of the
+many-coloured, steel-edged columns impelled forward by the impulse of
+some dominant power, with the dusty faces of the men, the stumbling,
+sore-stricken feet, the gasping breath of the stragglers who tired,
+dead beat, and thirsty, limp to the rear; but the play of human
+passion in our little fighting force has not been absent. We have had
+the wager of life against life, the angry, turbulent crash of
+fierce-blooded men, fighting under the shadow of death, with their
+emotions strained as they struggled in the very atmosphere of passion.
+And it has done us good to see how reliable the force has been about
+which so much doubt existed. Unlike the Imperial service, these
+irregular corps act as much for the unit as they do for the mass, as
+animated by terror or by valour, by a fatal despair, or by a blooded
+triumph, they fight for an individual supremacy. That is the moment
+of their triumph, and it is these splendid qualities of savage and
+physical animalism which makes it more easy to treat them with a wider
+latitude than is usual. Their magnificent hardihood, their splendid
+fighting gifts, their lurid blasphemy, their admiration for officers
+who are men, their appalling debauchery, gives to them the ideal
+setting of the rough but very gallant soldier of fortune, who,
+scorning his enemy and hating a retreat, has played so omnipotent a
+part in the history of the universe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+CANNON KOPJE
+
+
+                             MAFEKING, _October 31st, 1899_.
+
+Cannon Kopje is in itself a hideous cluster of stones, perched upon a
+rocky ridge, which commands the town, a mile across the veldt. It is
+impossible to conceive any more positive death-trap than that which
+was contained in this kopje, and whatever may have been the
+determining element in its original construction, it is infinitely to
+be regretted that the possibilities of its being under shell fire were
+never very seriously contemplated. It was thrown up during the Warren
+expedition, and much as these things go, was neither removed nor
+replaced until Monday's bombardment established its complete
+uselessness under shell fire, and the folly of which Colonel
+Baden-Powell was guilty in leaving it unprotected. It is too late to
+say much now, but we have paid a heavy price for our neglect and
+carelessness. We found it here when we came; we put men into it, we
+are maintaining men there, and it is essential to the safety of our
+town that we should still hold it. Since the action an effort has been
+made to improve it; a splinter-proof shelter has been thrown across
+the trench, and traverses have been thrown out, but the work of the
+past few days has perhaps prepared the kopje for further shelling at
+the enemy's convenience. As a _pi�ce de r�sistance_ in the defence of
+Mafeking, Cannon Kopje is the most strategically important position
+near Mafeking, and we may reckon that, at the moment when these
+wretched shepherds who are besieging us, secure this fort, to Mafeking
+itself there remains but a few hours.
+
+Colonel Walford had under his command at the fort forty-four men with
+a Maxim detachment from the Protectorate Regiment. The fairest
+estimate of the men against him would place the Boer forces at no less
+than eight hundred with four guns. Sunday night, the look-out from
+Cannon Kopje saw a body of Boers making their way to a point somewhat
+nearer the town than had hitherto been their custom, and our
+expectations having been aroused by this movement we were inclined to
+believe that the enemy might attack upon the following morning. Our
+anticipations were further grounded upon the fact that the Boers to
+the south-west of the town, had by no means despised the claims of
+Cannon Kopje upon their attentions, and to every three shells which
+their guns had thrown into the town during the days which the siege
+had lasted, one, in a proportion of one in three, had been fired at
+Cannon Kopje. It has gradually come to be considered, therefore, that
+Cannon Kopje was a point against which the Boers would, sooner or
+later, direct an attack, since its capture was necessary to the
+successful execution of any general movement against the town.
+
+[Illustration: Cannon Kopje.]
+
+The detachment of Police, who formed the garrison at Cannon Kopje,
+upon this day performed a most brilliant service for the town by
+their determined and gallant stand. Perhaps in war more than in
+anything else, chance is a greater arbiter than we like to consider,
+and if it had not been for the chance attack against Cannon Kopje,
+which resulted in the defeat of the Boer forces, it is not improbable
+that Mafeking itself would have been invaded by the enemy. The
+subjugation of this point, in reality the turning point in the siege,
+was, however, of vital concern to Commandant Cronje, since it had been
+his intention to bombard the south-east portion of the town, and to
+carry it with a large force which he had assembled during the night in
+the adjacent valley of the Molopo River. When day had dawned, the
+look-out from Cannon Kopje had already reported to Colonel Walford
+that there was unusual activity in the Boer camp; at the moment this
+was stirring news, and indeed the fatigues for the night had been
+barely dismissed when an experimental shell from the Boer artillery to
+test the range, opened the action. During the night, and about the
+close of Sunday, the enemy's artillery had taken up their position,
+and as the grey of dawn ushered in the fatal day, a large force of
+Boers moved out from their laager and occupied any point by which they
+might command the area of the fort. It seemed to me, as I witnessed
+their disposition, that at least a third of the forces before Mafeking
+had been concentrated upon Cannon Kopje, and if so great a tragedy had
+not attended the action, we could have afforded to laugh at the
+efforts of an enemy so hopelessly incompetent as the Boer force has
+proved itself to be. Against a mere gun emplacement and forty-four
+men, shell fire from four guns was directed, and the services of eight
+hundred men utilised. In the extreme west there was "Big Ben" and a
+seven-pounder; in the extreme east there was a twelve-pounder. Within
+a circle from these two points, and within effective range, a
+seven-pounder and quick-firing Maxim-Nordenfeldt had been stationed.
+The big gun took no part at all in this attack upon the kopje, but at
+every moment that the enemy's shell fire lapsed, the Boer marksmen
+opened with their Mauser rifles. Their rifle fire stretched from the
+extremities of either flank and enfiladed the interior trenches of the
+kopje. Nothing perhaps in the history of their operations along this
+frontier, was so calculated to prove successful as the Boer attack
+upon Cannon Kopje. They had the guns, the men, and they held all
+commanding points, while they themselves were snugly ensconced behind
+cover almost impervious to shell fire. With these advantages it would
+seem morally impossible that forty-four men could withstand the
+unceasing stream of shells, the mist of bullets, which comprised the
+zone of fire of which the kopje was the centre. Had these men wavered,
+such a thing is easy to explain; had they fallen back upon the town,
+their movement would have been in order. But by preference they
+stopped at their posts, the mark for every Boer rifle, the objective
+of the enemy's shell fire, until so great had been our execution upon
+the enemy that the Boers themselves proclaimed an armistice under the
+protection of the Red Cross flag. When this was decreed one-fourth of
+the detachment in the kopje were out of action, and eight of these
+were killed. But the lamentable list of fatalities had been piled up
+only at great cost to the enemy, since around the circle of the fort,
+and not four hundred yards away, we could see the Boer ambulances
+picking up their dead and wounded. It has been stated that they lost
+one hundred men, and that a further fifty were seriously wounded, but
+this is preposterous; while if we err at all towards our foe it is in
+the computation of the losses which we claim to have inflicted upon
+them. It is almost impossible to kill a Dutchman on the field, since
+they are as pertinacious and industrious as beetles in seeking cover.
+We saw two waggon loads pass from their firing-line to their laager,
+but I am inclined to doubt if we killed and wounded forty of the
+enemy. To have scored that number in the face of the most remarkable
+fusilade of bullet and shell which was directed against the fort is a
+wonderful feat, since it should not be forgotten that to every shot
+which we fired, there were at least four hundred barrels emptied at
+our marksmen in return. Such was the unfortunate construction of
+Cannon Kopje, however, and the gross neglect with which it has been
+treated to prepare for the present war, that it was not possible for
+our men to use their loopholes, and as it was most necessary to hold
+the fort each man who fired stood to his feet, and exposed himself
+above the breastwork to the full force of the Boer rifles. The enemy
+had carried out their movement so well, that under cover of their
+guns, and the great annoyance of their enfilading fire, they had made
+it almost impossible for the defenders of the fort to pay much
+attention to their advance. They compelled men to take cover, since if
+anything were seen to move behind the parapet of the fort, the Boers
+swept the area of the position with most cruel and deadly volleys. But
+cover was sought only at intervals, and when the hail of shells became
+too tempestuous, since the brave little garrison were impressed with a
+courage which scorned the fire which was turned upon them. When they
+manned the defences and maintained a sturdy front the Boers were
+nonplussed. They had expected to carry the position whereas they were
+losing men more rapidly than they were killing them. We fired by six,
+we fired independently, and whenever it was possible, the Maxim swept
+the front of the enemy, but, relatively speaking, nothing could
+prevail against the Boer numbers. It was easy enough to hold them in
+check, since the first well-directed volley made them fall back some
+few yards, but the heavy shell fire would sooner or later have told
+its tale. It had already claimed the majority of those who were hit,
+since if the shells did not burst and strike some one of those who
+were lying near, they splintered upon the stones which composed the
+defences of the fort and these splintered in their turn, coming into
+contact with any one who was crouching behind them for shelter. Cannon
+Kopje in itself was a terrible lesson; but it was also a magnificent
+example of gallant conduct in the field. Captain the Hon. D. Marsham
+who was killed, and Captain Charles Alexander Kerr Pechell, who died
+in the course of the morning from wounds received, were individually
+setting as fine an object lesson to their men as could be conceived,
+yet it must not be imagined that the standard of their bravery was
+much finer or much greater than that of their comrades. Colonel
+Walford and Colonel Baden-Powell have each expressed their high
+appreciation of the conduct of the men who survived the attack, and
+although, as befits their rank, the example of the officers was
+admirable, it was no better in reality than the action of the men over
+whom they were commanding. Captain Marsham was struck by a rifle
+bullet in turning to render some assistance to a wounded comrade. As
+he attempted to do this a second bullet passed through his chest, and
+a moment later he was dead, just as a third bullet passed through his
+shoulder. It was as fine a death as any soldier could perhaps have
+chosen, and it had the crowning mercy of being instantaneous.
+
+Captain Pechell was busying himself in directing the rifle fire from
+the fort, and thereby directly drew the attention of the enemy. He,
+with a detachment of six men, ranged up from time to time, and picked
+off the enemy with well-aimed volleys. They had taken up their
+position behind the eastern wing of the kopje, engaging a body of the
+enemy whose flank fire enfiladed our position. The first shell which
+came at these six men fell short, and the second and the third
+bursting in the same place, scattered the outer covering of the
+breastwork. Pechell ordered his men to retire from the direct line of
+shell fire, when just as they were shifting their position a shell
+struck the stone parapet, and burst among them. Private Burrows was
+killed at once, just as he had been admiring the shooting of a
+comrade. Sergeant-Major Upton and Captain Pechell received some
+terrible injuries; poor Pechell died of injury extending from the
+thigh to the shoulder. No one regrets, so much as his comrades,
+Captain Pechell's gallant act, since had he not been endowed with most
+magnificent courage he would have preserved discretion in the method
+by which he exposed himself to the enemy, and by the death of these
+two officers, Captain Marsham and Captain Pechell, her Majesty loses
+two officers of exceptional promise and soldierly qualifications.
+
+The casualties of this action alone were eight killed and three
+wounded, four being killed upon the spot, four dying of their wounds
+within twelve hours of the action. Captain Marsham, Sergeant-Major
+Curnihan, Private Burrows, and Private Martin were killed in the fort;
+Captain Pechell, Sergeant-Major Upton, Private Nicholas and Private
+Lloyd died of wounds; Sergeant-Major Butler, Corporal Cooke and
+Private Newton were wounded.
+
+That night the garrison paid its farewell duties to those gallant men
+who were killed at Cannon Kopje. Their interment took place at six
+o'clock, and as we followed in the wake of the _cort�ge_ we felt the
+shock which brought home to each of us the bitter fact that we should
+henceforth know them no more. The attack of the Boers upon Cannon
+Kopje had been so sudden, so utterly unexpected, and the manner in
+which these men of the British South Africa Police had met their
+death, had been so valorous that the sympathies of the entire town had
+been most keenly aroused and overcome by the appalling swiftness of
+the tragedy; there was no one who did not feel that in some way he was
+himself a mourner even though the men who had been killed were quite
+indifferent to him. Doubtless before the siege terminates we shall
+become accustomed to our situation, and realise that after all it is
+but the natural issue to a condition of belligerency that no one can
+quite tell what sorrow the day will bring forth. But at present these
+tragedies come upon us with a vivid freshness which is almost
+unnerving and which stimulate disquietening fancies in the minds even
+of the most callous.
+
+The cemetery here is in close proximity to the Boer lines, and lies to
+the north of the town. It is a small enclosure banked by white rough
+stones, and set amid green trees, where gentle fragrance imparts a
+balminess to the breeze. It is as quiet and peaceful, by force of
+contrast to the dried-up veldt around, as some oasis in the desert.
+There is a winding path from the hospital to the cemetery; a road
+which at the present moment is flanked in two places by the forts of
+the Railway Division, and kept well defined by the footsteps of those
+who bear their burdens to the tomb. Since the siege began we have lost
+twenty-five, and with one engagement following rapidly upon another,
+nightfall usually ushers in a scene in which a small body of men may
+be seen gathered round an open grave, waiting irresolutely to take
+some share in the rites of the burial service. We paced slowly and
+solemnly along this veldt track, depressed not so much by the fate
+which had befallen them, as by the hideous realism with which the
+appalling uncertainty of war had been brought home to us. In the
+darkness of the evening we could see across the veldt the fires of the
+enemy's position, and as the _cort�ge_ wound its way from the hospital
+we marched to the boom of the Boer artillery, while passing bullets
+sang the notes of our evening hymn above our heads, and dropped about
+us in the sand. Along the eastern front of the town as it lay behind
+us, an occasional blaze of light in the sky told us where the shells
+of the enemy were bursting, and to many came the thought that perhaps
+even of those who had remained to do their duty in the trenches, there
+were some who, less fortunate than others, might have already kept
+their last vigils. In time we reached the grave side, then as we
+gathered round the open spaces which had been so quickly prepared,
+those who felt their loss the keenest, those who had been comrades and
+close friends of the killed, paid their last homage to their memory
+by placing some little trinket, some slight token of personal
+friendship and affection, upon the winding sheet. At this juncture,
+when war is all around us, when every able-bodied man is standing to
+his arms, it is not possible to provide the dead with anything better
+than a simple sheet. The men who fall in these days are interred in
+their blood-stained uniforms, since there be no time in which to dress
+their bodies. Those upon whom the funeral service was about to be read
+lay in two waggons, silent shrouded witnesses to the fleeting vanity
+which attends all heroes. Around the entrance to the cemetery the
+officers of the staff, the commanding officers of the outposts,
+representatives of every corps and every troop had foregathered,
+following closely upon the heels of those who, bearing the grim
+burdens upon their shoulders epitomised in their action the horrors of
+war. It seemed as we stood there waiting, listening to the solemn
+words of the service, punctuated now and then as they were, by the
+screams of shells, by the angry snap of the Mauser, and the droning of
+the Martini bullets, that these men who were now dead had achieved the
+full honour of their calling. Indeed, many were there who would have
+given gladly their own lives in exchange for that of their friend,
+while there was not one who did not feel that the manner in which
+their end had come to them was impressed with all that was most noble.
+
+For a moment after the service had concluded, we stood listening to
+the strains of the Last Call. As its solemn notes died away, and we
+retraced our steps to the various trenches and earthworks which, for
+the moment, gave us shelter, we little imagined that within a few
+hours, those of us who were correspondents would follow the body of
+one from amongst ourselves once more upon this road. The following
+night Lieutenant Murchison, who was in charge of the guns, wilfully
+shot with his revolver Mr. E. G. Parslow, war correspondent of the
+London _Daily Chronicle_. The horror of such a crime still hangs over
+us, and is not in any way diminished by the fact that an officer who
+had already distinguished himself by his career, should now be
+awaiting the verdict of a Field Court Martial upon the gravest charge
+in the criminal calendar. Poor Parslow had endeared himself to
+everybody by the genial sympathy which he extended to those who were
+themselves in trouble. He had won the admiration of many by the
+calmness with which he conducted himself under the heaviest fire.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+A RECONNAISSANCE
+
+
+                             MAFEKING, _November 7th, 1899_.
+
+A short canter from Mafeking across the sloping expanse of the veldt
+and the interior lines of its western defences lie before one. It can
+be said that Cannon Kopje to the south-west and Fort Miller to the
+north-west are the two most outlying extremities of the outposts on
+this front. Between them there is an almost unbroken chain of
+earthworks, manned by detachments from squadrons of the Protectorate
+Regiment, from the British South Africa Police, from the Cape Police,
+and even from the Native stadt. These men live the lives of soldiers
+whose every moment is engaged in watching a foe that might at any
+opportunity which is given them charge down upon our lines. Unlike the
+Boers, we do not despise the native interests, and much of the
+weakness of our position emanates from the fact that we have
+incorporated within the mystic circle of our armed defence the most
+outlying areas of the native reserve. These, indeed, can very properly
+be considered the exterior lines of the western outposts. It would
+have been a very simple thing for Colonel Baden-Powell to have
+ordered the destruction of the Native stadt, compelling its
+inhabitants to seek what protection they could from the inclemency of
+the elements, from a benign Providence, and the rapacious Boer.
+Mafeking, without the Native stadt, could have been much more easily
+defended, since the base of the slopes, across which our advanced
+trenches now extend, would have been defended from the ridges of the
+acclivities which rise from them. This would have given to the
+advanced outposts some commanding heights from which the western
+plains could have been more easily swept. As it is, however, the
+policy which Colonel Baden-Powell is adopting towards the native
+tribe, whose huts were here many generations before white men ever set
+their feet in this part of the country, is one which extends to them
+the same Imperial protection as he has extended to the colonists in
+Mafeking. Where the Native stadt had been included in any portion of
+the defences, the Baralongs have been assisted to defend, and have
+been instructed in the means by which they might secure immunity for
+themselves and for their stadt.
+
+The entrenchments of the Boers rise like mole-hills from the surface
+of the plain, although there is a curious regard for what has been
+humorously termed "three mile limit." The valley of the Molopo River
+sets a background to the Boer position, the placid waters of the
+stream wind through their lines, while their chief laagers have been
+constructed upon the ridges of its watershed. From Cannon Kopje a
+commanding view of the whole country on all sides of Mafeking may be
+obtained, the Boer laagers giving to the expanses of the valley the
+aspect of a mining camp. From different points of observation the
+daily life of the enemy can be noted. In the early morning the smoke
+of many fires swings in thin spirals to the sky, and the silence of
+the plain is broken by the echoes which echo back the noises of the
+camp. It would seem that they are as regular in the ordering of their
+camp life as we are. When the sun has warmed the air, and evaporated
+the morning dew from the grass, we can see them out-pinning their
+horses, driving their cattle to fresh pastures, and endeavouring by
+the establishment of sentries and Cossack posts to take the siege of
+Mafeking as a very serious element in their lives. Everywhere there is
+the green of early summer covering the plain with the sheen of
+Nature's youth. Between the lines of the two camps graze herds of
+cattle, in themselves affording tempting bait to the predatory
+instincts of the Boers, who, if they did not lack the courage of their
+desires, would have already attempted to raid the browsing oxen. So
+far as our own outposts are concerned, along this line there are many
+days in which nothing whatever happens, just as there are others in
+which the dawn of day is made hideous by the scream of shells, the
+singing of the Mauser, the angry rustle of the Nordenfeldt and Maxim.
+The Boers have many guns along this side, and from time to time they
+treat us to bombardments, lacking both purpose and any definite
+result, beyond the expenditure of much ammunition. When the shells are
+falling every one who can seeks cover, watching with some impatience
+their passing, and could we in these moments but give existence to our
+wishes, it would be that opportunity might come at once to turn the
+tables upon our enemy. It is neither very honourable nor very pleasing
+to have to preserve discretion as the better part of valour, but,
+while we remain the objective of their fire, our pent-up energies are
+developing a fine hatred against the foe. Colonel Baden-Powell has
+some hope of giving indulgence to the spirit which animates his men,
+and, even if the moment be somewhat uncertain, no small contentment is
+derived from such belief. Morning and night we gird our loins for the
+attack, but night and morning we awaken to a sense of infinite
+disappointment, yet when it comes they may expect an avalanche, and,
+in result, an overthrow.
+
+Day is dreary, sun-swept, dusty, teased with insects, and infinitely
+wearisome, but with the coming of night, the fragrant coolness of the
+air, the soft lisping of the evening breeze bringeth contentment. Each
+evening, when the peace of the camp be settled and the men resting,
+there is always an outpost standing within a few hundred yards of the
+Boer camp. If the night be fine, he lies behind the stones of a
+neighbouring kopje; but whether it be fine or wet, the guard is
+posted; the safety of the camp depending upon his vigilance. Sometimes
+he is relieved hourly, sometimes his watch is of four hours' duration.
+It depends upon the proximity of his post to the enemy's lines, but,
+lying there within earshot of the Boers, it is just possible to
+realise the full gravity of our situation. The element of danger is
+greater in these nocturnal hours, and men go to rest, their spirits
+buoyed up with the infinite zest which comes from anticipating a night
+attack. They sleep beside their arms, their posts are doubled, and the
+officers of the watch make hourly rounds. In the distance, across the
+plain and enveloped with the darkness of the veldt, the difficulty of
+seeing intensified by shadows, the outline of the Boer laagers can be
+demarcated. Their camp fires die down one by one, and presently,
+beyond the restless moving of their cattle, no sign of life animates
+their position. It is in such moments that those who lead us deplore
+the paucity of the numbers under their command, since, were it
+possible to spare the men, there have been several occasions, when a
+midnight dash, after the fashion of Captain Fitzclarence, or the
+repetition of the reconnaissance at daybreak such as Major Godley so
+gallantly led, could have been organised with equally satisfactory
+results.
+
+[Illustration: Major A. J. Godley of the Western Outposts on the
+Look-out.]
+
+However, within the last few days, Colonel Baden-Powell has taken
+advantage of the enemy's position upon this front to order the western
+outposts to spend some few hours in worrying the enemy. It was a very
+pleasant little outing for us, and eminently beneficial, since the
+excitement attendant upon such a manoeuvre was as wholesome as a
+bumper of champagne. Word had already reached me of this contemplated
+move upon the enemy, and Lieutenant Paton, of C Squadron, was good
+enough to offer the hospitality of his hut for the night in question.
+We dined, not with the guilty splendour of the Trocadero or amid the
+sombre magnificence of Prince's, but in the rough-and-ready fashion
+which falls to those who, carrying their lives in their hands, have at
+most but a moment to spare for such unimportant incidents as breakfast
+and dinner. As a humble offering to the board I had drawn from the
+Army Service Stores a tin of canned mutton, and procured
+somewhere--which may or may not have been a private garden--a luscious
+marrow, and with these I hied myself to Lieutenant Paton's quarters.
+Along this western front there are many delightful and very genial
+officers. There is Major Godley, who is in command of the whole line;
+Colonel Walford, who commands Cannon Kopje; there are Captain
+Vernon and Captain Marsh, who, with Major Godley, are Imperial special
+service men; Lieutenant Holden and my host. The distances between
+their quarters are but slight, and perhaps the most entertaining
+moment in the siege is that which enables us to foregather at Major
+Godley's, chatting with eagerness and charming frankness upon the
+possibilities of the war as they are suggested by our immediate
+environment. By the time that I had arrived Lieutenant Paton's boy had
+prepared a savoury stew, and such was the scarcity of fresh meat that
+we had no hesitation in dedicating the canned mutton to some other
+meal. We ate, and pleasantly indulged in lime juice and water, smoking
+with contented elegance some choice cigarettes. After we had dined a
+short conference was held at Major Godley's, and then to rest,
+perchance to spend the night in sleeping, or perchance, to scratch;
+for fleas and flies, the parasitic mosquito and the insidious ant,
+make both day and night a source of irritation.
+
+The men of C Squadron under Captain Vernon, the Bechuanaland Rifles
+under Captain Cowan, and three guns under Major Panzera and Lieutenant
+Daniels, of the British South Africa Police, were engaged in the
+movement, and distinguished themselves in what they did as well as can
+be expected. At a quarter to two we turned out. Greatcoats had been
+left behind, men slinging their waterbottles and bandoliers upon their
+shoulders. We were to meet at the base of a hill rising a few hundred
+yards across the veldt from Major Godley's. Night hung heavily upon
+us, the sky was dark, and everything seemed to point to the wisdom of
+choosing such a night. We stepped out briskly, although to our
+strained nerves the soft tread of the men sounded as the rumble of a
+juggernaut. However, we proceeded very quietly, and the sheen of sand,
+the white lustre of the road, the rustle of the thorn bushes were
+presently left behind as we took our stand in the rear of Major
+Godley's troop. In the valley at the base of the hill we halted.
+Before us, a scarcely perceptible rise silhouetted against the sky,
+the bushes lining the summit throwing themselves into prominence
+against the grey, black, background, while here and there trees tossed
+their arms silently and warningly in the breeze. All around us there
+was the hum of insect life, that monotonous dead level buzz of
+countless insects and the baying of the bull frogs. And we waited,
+when out of the darkness came Major Godley, a tall, thin figure
+impressed with energy and determination, inspecting the lines.
+
+The squadron was dismounted, and had fallen in by troops, the dull
+khaki of the Protectorate Regiment scarcely showing up against the
+grey-blackness of the night; and at either end of the line there was a
+squad of Bechuanaland Rifles and a contingent of natives. As they
+stood there, there were nearly one hundred men, and, though the order
+had been given to be in this position at 2.30, and the hour had come,
+we were waiting for the guns. Presently, as we waited, barely a mile
+from the Boer laager, there was the rumble of artillery in the
+distance. As we heard it officers and men believed that at any moment
+the Boer camp would sound the alarm. We could hear the guns rising
+over hillocks, falling heavily upon stones, or crushing back upon some
+boulder. Indeed there was noise enough to wake the dead themselves.
+The rattle of the limber was only a little more acute than the tension
+on our nerves. Men swore silently at the guns and showed their
+restlessness as the noise grew louder. In a little the Major bustled
+up all eagerness and fluff and worry, and then as the guns trailed
+behind us and the little column moved on, it seemed that every step we
+advanced further would have brought the Boers tumbling about our ears.
+Much as one creeps about a house at night treading on every board
+which creaks in preference to those which do not creak, so was the
+march of the column. As the guns came on they seemed to find stones
+everywhere. Wheels fell into snug hollows, jammed in ragged holes, and
+bumped with such heaviness that the night was made hideous by the echo
+of their rumble. Occasionally we stopped, as though to allow the peace
+of night to settle. Then we moved forward once again and in a little
+we halted for the final stage. The guns took up their position to the
+left of the column, the hundred men lying in extended order across the
+veldt. Before us there was the ridge of rising veldt and scrub, and so
+we rested, fretting with curious impatience at the signs of life which
+began to animate the enemy's camp. When we stood up we could see the
+dull white of their waggons bent in position for their laager; we
+could see the fires within, we could hear in the still silence of
+early dawn the chopping of wood as the axe fell upon the logs. The
+sides of the valley threw back the noise until, echoes echoing back,
+the sound caught our ears, and so we watched and waited until
+gradually dawn came.
+
+The dull-black beauty of the night passed, slipping into grey and
+leaving the uncertain mystery of an early morning sky. A red streak
+across the east threw glimpses of light into the canopy of heaven,
+when, as a signal of its birth, there came the words to fire; then
+the line of creeping figures which had gained the ridge pressed their
+rifles through the scrub and bush which hedged the top, and, crouching
+to the ground, opened the reconnaissance. The objective of the night
+attack which Major Godley was commanding had been to effect a
+reconnaissance in force against the western laagers of the Boers. In
+respect to the constant increase of the force that surrounds Mafeking,
+almost the one means of temporarily checking their advance which
+remains to us is through the medium of these attacks. Information had
+been brought into headquarters that the Boers were massing upon the
+east side of the town, the small laager on the west being temporarily
+evacuated. The night dash would both surprise and annoy the enemy, and
+anything which combined such benign ends was very welcome. The guns
+were to throw a few shells, the men were to fire a few volleys; when
+the squadron would fall back by troops their reconnaissance completed.
+We opened by volleys poured incontinently into their camp, but so soon
+as the guns had discharged the first shells into the laager, the
+little signs of order which had animated the natives disappeared, and
+although they maintained their line they began an independent
+practice. It was the first time that native arms had been incorporated
+with our men, and it is to be hoped, before the next experiment is
+repeated, they will have been got more under control. Excellent as
+they may be on their own account, they are almost altogether useless
+when removed from the immediate spheres of utility. Our fire at first
+was high, and many rounds of bullet and shell fire were absolutely
+wasted. Presently Daniels secured the range for the guns, and shells,
+prettily planted, ruined many waggons. The sortie, so far as we were
+concerned, proceeded merrily, doing no material damage, but making a
+hell of a lot of noise. The glories of the early morning were soon
+enveloped in the heavy smoke from the rifles of the natives, who still
+continued blazing independently and indifferently at the enemy's
+position and who also generally struck the earth a few yards short of
+their own front of fire. The opportunity which was thus afforded of
+both surprising and annoying the enemy was very welcome, and the night
+dash was entered into with infinite zest. So soon as the guns had
+discharged their first shell our men began to fire by volleys, but the
+sortie had not progressed very far when the activity in the Boer lines
+showed that they were preparing to repel a force much larger than the
+mere reconnoitering party which was actually before them. In the
+uncertain light of rising morn a body of 600 Boers could be seen
+riding from the main laager upon the western front to the support of
+the minor camp. We have hitherto thought the Boers timid at close
+quarters, but in this case there was every sign of haste and eagerness
+on the part of the reinforcements to arrive upon the scene of action.
+We could see them dismounting as they came up and run to the laager,
+some of them firing as they ran, others of them forming into detached
+parties and firing from isolated positions. After volleying for some
+minutes our men fulfilled the object of their morning excursion and
+were preparing to retire by troops, when, owing to the presence of the
+reinforcements, firing became general. Our rifles replied to their
+rifles, our two seven-pounders replied to their guns, but beyond this
+nothing was permitted to interfere with the successful completion of
+our work. It mattered very little to us how fiercely the enemy's
+Nordenfeldts spat out defiance or what their rifles said, for we fell
+back steadily, the different troops doubling fifty, one hundred, and
+one hundred and fifty yards each time. The fire as the various troops
+took up the retirement became very hot, the enemy cheerfully Mausering
+into space. For some hours after our men had gained the security of
+their own trenches the enemy maintained a heavy fire upon the several
+outposts along the western front. During the retirement of C Squadron
+Major Godley had ordered Captain Cowan to occupy Fort Eyre, a rifle
+trench, with a detachment of Bechuanaland Mounted Rifles, so that he
+might check any signs of advance which the enemy might display. In
+consequence of this, Major Godley, Captain Cowan, Lieutenant Feltham,
+and their men experienced as severe a fire as any which has, at
+present, been received from the Boers. The enemy made a determined
+rifle attack upon the work, but lacking the courage to charge, after
+some few hours' rifle firing, they withdrew.
+
+These little encounters are all that the outposts have with which to
+pass their time, and the success with which they have been conducted
+has been sufficient to check the enemy, and to cause him to reflect
+upon the relative value of the means at our command. The defence of
+the western front lies wholly in the hands of men from the
+Protectorate Regiment and a few native contingents. The Town Guard is
+not _en evidence_ upon the west side, the area of their exertions
+being confined to the more immediate precincts of the town. And by
+this it does not seem that the Town Guard will have much opportunity
+to distinguish itself, since, unless its members volunteer to take
+part in any sniping expedition, those manning the interior line of our
+trenches, which are those occupied by the Town Guard, have received
+positive orders to withhold their fire until the enemy is upon the
+point of rushing the town. Several times it has been thought that this
+was going to happen, and the local defensive force had hopes of
+justifying its existence, but hitherto the valour which underlies the
+good intentions of the Boers is not sufficient to inspire them to
+convert an excellent suggestion into a practical experiment. Thus
+despite the Boer telegrams to Europe there has been no battle round
+Mafeking; a few slight skirmishes upon our part, much proud boasting
+upon the part of the Boers is the limit of mutual operations which
+have centred around Mafeking. We are waiting, and in the interval,
+preparing. That is all which can be said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE TOWN GUARD
+
+
+                            MAFEKING, _November 15th, 1899_.
+
+The straits of a beleaguered city are only just beginning to come to
+Mafeking. A retrospect of the history of the Franco-Prussian war
+reveals how very great were the sufferings of those unfortunate people
+who were unlucky enough to be besieged by the Prussian armies. Their
+difficulties, the dangers to which they were constantly subjected,
+their constant struggle against the extortionate demands of the few
+who had been able to "corner" the provisions can perhaps be taken as
+conveying a general impression of the hardships of a siege. Yet,
+however, when we come to consider the siege of Mafeking in its more
+elemental details, the picture is not unlike those presented by the
+farcical melodrama. It is now nearly six weeks since Mafeking was
+proclaimed as being in a state of siege, and, although there has been
+no single opportunity of any commercial reciprocity between ourselves
+and the outside world, the ruling prices are at present but very
+little above normal, distress is wholly absent, danger is purely
+incidental, and, indeed, it would seem, as Colonel Baden-Powell said
+in a recent order, that "everything in the garden was lovely." This
+somewhat happy state of things is, of course, to be attributed to the
+extraordinary foresight and sagacity which characterises the
+arrangements that the well-known firm of contractors in South Africa,
+Julius Weil, concluded for provisioning the town. Immense stocks of
+foodstuffs had been stored in the town before the war, and it is the
+knowledge of the valuable stores which are lying here which has
+inspired the Boers to court us so assiduously. The tale might have
+been different had the Colonial Government been permitted to arrange
+for any such emergency as a siege. In this respect, so completely
+opposed to any preparation were Mr. Schreiner and his Cabinet, that it
+was not even possible to procure through such an agency any adequate
+means of defence, much less to obtain the essential food supplies.
+When Kimberley appealed to Mr. Schreiner for permission to send up
+from Port Elizabeth some Maxims which had been ordered by the De Beers
+Company, the licence was refused on the ground that there was no cause
+to strengthen the defences of that town, nor any reason to believe
+that the situation demanded such precautions. The Colonial Government
+repeated their policy in relation to Mafeking, and when urgent appeals
+were sent to Mr. Schreiner, to the Castle authorities, and to Sir
+Alfred Milner, the influence of the Cabinet was such that no notice
+was taken of their request.
+
+Nothing perhaps can excuse such an obstructive policy as that which
+was followed by the Colonial Government upon the very eve of
+hostilities. It is only when we come to deal with the situation which
+their neglect has created that we can adequately measure the full
+extent of their culpability. The claim of so important a centre as
+Mafeking upon their attention was wilfully ignored with a persistence
+which is positively criminal, and when taken into consideration with
+the repeated warnings which were sent to them by leading members of
+the community of Mafeking it is difficult to believe that the Colonial
+Cabinet, by so flatly contravening the spirit of their loyalty to the
+Imperial Crown, were not directly conniving with a hostile oligarchy
+for the downfall of this colonial town. Had Mafeking been anything but
+Anglo-Saxon at heart, had it possessed that proportion of debased
+Dutch and renegade British colonists which is to be found in Vryburg
+and those other hostile areas in our own colony, the story of Mafeking
+would have been a story of treachery and deceit, of broken allegiance,
+and of palsied faith. As it was, when the petition for extra armaments
+was ignored, the town, disdaining the danger which confronted them,
+proceeded to stand their ground, and to show, at any rate, a firm
+front to any enemy that might assail them. While Colonel Baden-Powell
+organised the defences of the Western Border, the men of Mafeking,
+under the supervision of Colonel Vyvyen, base commandant, strongly
+entrenched the position of their town, which hitherto had been open to
+every corner of the earth. In times of peace Mafeking is a collection
+of buildings placed upon the veldt, lacking both natural and
+artificial protection, the centre into which all roads come and from
+which all classes of people go. It is a thriving mid-African township
+which, more by good management than by good luck, has become at the
+present time an important outpost of our Empire. In these days, when
+the boom of cannon destroys the silences of our splendid isolation,
+and the scream of shell disturbs the harmony of night, Mafeking rests
+with patient steadfastness behind its hastily improvised earthworks,
+seeking shelter when the shells of the enemy press too hotly upon one
+another, yet always ready for work at the outposts, prepared for the
+fitful turbulence of our invading foe. Possibly from the Boer trenches
+Mafeking may look an armoured citadel. Possibly it is the sturdy
+appearance of our ramparts which have caused the Boers to bring their
+heavy artillery to bear upon our mud brick walls. Yet there is humour
+in this situation, since the gravity of our position accentuates the
+grim travesty of our defences. We have not so much as appears, and it
+would be unfair to give such a moment as the present the correct
+estimate of dummy camps which have been built, dummy earthworks which
+have been thrown up, of dummy guns which are in position. The
+situation between the Boers and ourselves may be likened to a game of
+poker, Mafeking possessing no hand, yet retains the privilege of
+bluffing. In the end it will be seen that the dignity of our impudence
+has swept the board, although we may be excused from wishing to renew
+the game. But there is perhaps a finer spirit in the tribute which
+this place has paid to Queen and country than mere courage. We have
+the faith of our affections, the steadfastness of a duty which, if
+inspired, is equally impressed with reverence. Such strain as the
+siege has put upon the loyalty of the colonists of Mafeking has been
+welcomed by reason of the opportunity which it has given for the many
+who have never seen the Queen to show, their honourable allegiance to
+her Majesty.
+
+From time to time Colonel Baden-Powell has issued orders
+congratulating the townspeople upon their spirit, and commiserating
+with them upon their unfortunate predicament. They are indeed
+deserving of great sympathy, since the manly way in which they have
+come forward in support of the situation has very materially aided the
+successful resistance given by Mafeking. The forts upon the eastern
+facing of the town are manned altogether by the Town Guard; these are
+particularly warlike when beneath the protection of their bomb-proof
+shelters, and it would be almost a pity should the siege close without
+any opportunity arising of testing their efficiency. Throughout day
+and night they are compelled to remain idle in their trenches, and
+from 9 till 6, and again from 6 till 9, they are not permitted upon
+any pretence whatever to leave their posts. The life they are leading
+is of the roughest description, and it certainly appears that by far
+the greatest proportion of the hardships of the siege has fallen to
+the share of the Town Guard. At the beginning of the siege, when,
+according to official reports, there was no ground to believe that it
+would be of long duration, few people were animated by anything but
+the plain determination to enjoy any actual hostilities which might
+eventuate. Now, however, as the fifth week of the siege draws to an
+end the rigours of the confinement to which the townspeople have been
+subjected are beginning to tell. The work, the most laborious, the
+least interesting, and totally without compensation, is that performed
+by the Town Guard, and as a body this defence force presents strangely
+contrasting features as the siege progresses. Their hours are early
+and late, they stand to arms at 4.30 in the early morning, and at
+intervals during the day the full strength of the fort is mustered.
+There is nothing with which these men can occupy their minds, and if
+their inactivity is beginning to irritate them, if the poorness of
+their food is affecting them, it is to be hoped that the work which
+they are doing now will receive full and satisfactory acknowledgment,
+both at the hands of the staff, and of the Government. As a body, the
+Town Guard is a medley of local salamanders, and if it be possible, by
+the force of their surroundings, they should become inspired with
+soldierly instincts, and although after their fashion they may be
+expected to fight, their greatest wish at the present moment is to
+obtain from the Government, imperial, colonial, and military, some
+adequate explanation of the causes determining their present
+situation. They feel that they have been neglected by Mr. Schreiner
+and I am quite certain that if that political chameleon were here now,
+he would suffer as much by reason of his own sins, as for the trouble
+and worry he has caused the industrious, if benighted, citizens of
+Mafeking. For the most part the Town Guard is a collection of
+civilians, who are accustomed to the full enjoyment of comparative
+affluence, and who, through the exigencies of the siege, are at
+present living under conditions which would test the endurance of the
+most experienced soldier. They are penned up within the limits of
+Mafeking, unable to move with any degree of safety, and condemned to
+an inactivity which is very irksome to those who have been pressed as
+volunteers into the defences of the town. They did not expect, in the
+early days of the crisis, to be actively engaged in defending their
+town, since, with some hope of having their views adopted, they
+repeatedly urged upon the general staff the fallacies which
+distinguished the official forecast of the situation, but the staff
+was incredulous and Colonel Baden-Powell was impressed with an
+optimism which now seems strangely at fault. If one is to believe
+important respected members of the community here, it would seem that
+they made special and very urgent overtures to the colonel commanding
+upon the defenceless condition of Mafeking, and now, as they stand to
+their posts, throughout the heat of an African summer, beneath the
+deluges of the rainy season, they cull but little satisfaction from
+the Ministerial refusal adequately to protect their town by sending
+troops and armaments to it. They say that they were derided, that no
+notice was taken of their request, that their petition was overruled,
+leaving to them the work of warding off from the town such a day of
+bitterness, of exceeding danger, of very genuine disaster, as might
+have been expected to result from the unprotected condition of the
+place. The irregular soldiers of the Protectorate Regiment do not,
+perhaps, deserve so much commiseration, since in all probability their
+present circumstances are little worse than those which they
+anticipated when they were enlisting. But there is some force in the
+case which the inhabitants of Mafeking can bring against the Colonial
+Government, and it is to be hoped that the work which they are now
+doing will receive full and satisfactory compensation at the final
+adjustment. But there exists little possibility that they will be
+given any compensation which will be in any way commensurate, since to
+those who have followed the history of such Ministerial compensation
+as comes within the region of political economy it will be known that
+the accidents of war put a somewhat close limit upon the accidence of
+compensation. Their businesses have in many cases been absolutely
+ruined, those who were farmers upon the outskirts of the town have had
+the melancholy satisfaction of seeing their homesteads set fire to by
+the enemy and their cattle raided. These facts are the simple home
+truths that do not tend to make them appreciative of the honour and
+glory which falls to them by playing so prominent a _r�le_ in the
+defence of their town. They expect, however, to receive medals. Those
+who were local merchants, men of peace for the most part, with no very
+keen enthusiasm for martial glory, have seen the industry of a
+lifetime completely wrecked by the diffidence of the general staff and
+the unwillingness of the Government to take such precautions as would
+have placed the town beyond the probability of attack; but, although
+every one recognises the worthlessness of the material which was
+placed at the disposal of Colonel Baden-Powell, there exists no reason
+which can defend the absence of efficient military stores in the town.
+Upon the termination of the war let us hope that Colonel Baden-Powell
+will be asked to explain, but for the present the townspeople of
+Mafeking are singularly unanimous in their desire to co-operate with
+the military authorities.
+
+Under their direction the Boers have been repulsed for seven weeks,
+just as without the walls of Mafeking an almost impregnable defence
+has been constructed. It is perhaps a detail if our defenders be armed
+with Sniders, Enfields, a few Martinis, and a still less number of
+Lee-Metfords. Moreover, we have none too much ammunition, our
+seven-pounders are incapable of sustaining the brunt of an action
+without being sent to the repairing shop upon its termination, and if
+our Maxims be beyond reproach, our Hotchkiss and Nordenfeldt are both
+obsolete and unreliable. These are the more material elements of our
+defences, and to them may be added the strength of the Protectorate
+Regiment, Cape Police, British South Africa Police, Railway Division,
+the Bechuanaland Rifles, and the numerous native contingents
+numbering, with the Town Guard, some fifteen hundred men. Against this
+we must place an enemy whose tactics are surprising everybody, whose
+artillery fire is admirable, whose guns are numerous and first class.
+They stand off five miles and shell the town with perfect safety,
+while under cover of their fire they project their advanced trenches
+daily a few feet nearer the town. We have endeavoured with our
+artillery and by night sorties to check their progress, but the
+sapping of Mafeking continues, and is, at once, a very serious, if not
+our sole, danger. Should their trenches advance much further it will
+be impossible to move about during daytime at all, and, although we
+have thrown up bales of compressed hay and sacks of oats to act as
+shields against the enemy's bullets, and the flying splinters of
+passing shells, there is no hour in the day in which the streets of
+the town are not sprayed by Mauser bullets. It is not possible for us
+to advance very far from our own lines, since, as eagles swoop down
+upon their carrion, so would the Boers from other quarters attempt to
+rush the town. Yet there is no doubt that such movement would be very
+welcome, affording as much keen pleasure to the volunteers of the town
+as to the newly-raised units of the garrison. We nurture a wild desire
+to attempt to spike "Big Ben," and it may be that before long
+Providence will turn from the side of the enemy by presenting us with
+some such golden opportunity. The big gun is hedged around by barbed
+wire, guarded in front by mines, flanked upon the one side by a
+Nordenfeldt-Maxim and upon the other by a high-velocity Krupp. Truly,
+they could deal out a very warm reception to those who chanced their
+luck, but a little novelty these days atones for many hours of tiring
+inactivity, and if the Colonel chose to put a price upon the task
+there would be no trouble in enlisting for the venture some five
+hundred volunteers. The siege, as it progresses, seems to give fewer
+opportunities for coming into positive contact with the enemy; such
+occasions as there have been are few and far between, and, although
+Colonel Baden-Powell holds out the promise of such a venture, it has
+been so constantly deferred that we are for the most part becoming
+incredulous.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+WASTED ENERGIES
+
+
+                            MAFEKING, _November 22nd, 1899_.
+
+Within a few weeks of Major Godley's daybreak attack upon the western
+laager, it was decided to repeat the experiment against the main
+position of the Boers upon the east side. Had this but come off, from
+the estimate of the men and guns engaged, the movement would have been
+as important as any which have taken place. It had been arranged to
+open a general fire upon the emplacement of the hundred-pound gun and
+the advanced trenches of the Boer position a short time before sunset,
+since the closing of day would make it impossible for the enemy, in
+the absence of aiming-posts and clinometers, to train their artillery
+upon the town. Now that the enemy have begun to sap Mafeking by a
+system of advanced galleries, the military authorities here have been
+waiting for them to come within a certain radius of the town so that
+we might counter-gallery their position and enfilade their trenches.
+From their entrenchment at the brickfields, rather more than fifteen
+hundred yards from the town, Boer sharpshooters have been sniping the
+town with comparative impunity. When this plan was first projected,
+natives, under Corporal Currie, Cape Police, were sent up the
+river-bed, which runs at this particular point within three hundred
+yards of the Boer flank, to build a trench as near as possible to the
+position of the snipers in the brickfields. With the successful
+execution of this piece of work the first steps towards the
+contemplated reconnaissance had been taken, since this new post, which
+was constructed under cover of night, completely outflanked the
+advance trenches of the Boers. When they began to fire upon the town
+in the morning they were somewhat surprised at receiving a volley from
+what appeared to be little more than a mud heap. Corporal Currie and
+his natives drove back the Boers from their advanced post in the
+brickfields to the first line of trenches in their position, and so
+long as we retained the river-bed post the brickfields ceased to give
+shelter to the Boer sharpshooters; moreover, when the Boers had been
+effectually quieted in the brickfields a little more of the original
+conception was carried out. Captain Lord Charles Bentinck and A
+squadron and Captain Fitzclarence with the Hotchkiss detachment were
+sent to support the native outposts, while a seven-pound gun under
+Lieutenant Daniels moved into an emplacement in the river-bed. Major
+Panzera took command of the gun which was to support the Maxim under
+Major Goold Adams in the north-east corner of the town. In conjunction
+with this, the extreme eastern flank of the town was defended by a
+detachment of the Cape Police with a Maxim, and a supplementary force
+of the same police, under Inspector Marsh, were entrenched across the
+eastern front of the native location. Thus upon Monday night were the
+plans arranged. Shortly before midnight Major Panzera, who has charge
+of the artillery, gave me a courteous permission to accompany
+Lieutenant Daniels to his emplacement in the river-bed, from which
+point it was possible to move to our advanced trenches further up the
+stream. Mafeking had gone to rest when the gun started, and although
+the wheels were padded and every precaution taken to muffle the noise,
+it seemed that at any moment, the town would have been aroused. In a
+little the immediate precincts of Mafeking had been left behind, and
+the challenge of the last sentry answered. As we moved down to the
+river-bed the gun detachment hung upon the rear of the gun straining
+to prevent the shake and rumble of its descent. Silently we crept on;
+no murmur of human voices, no steel rang a "care-creating" clatter, no
+rumble of tumbril or gun broke through the darkness to the sentries of
+the enemy; in about an hour the gentle lapping of the river told us
+that the journey was at an end, and as we crossed the stream and
+reached the party working upon the emplacement there was much feeling
+of relief that the enemy had not sounded the alarm. While Lieutenant
+Daniels arranged the emplacement of the gun, he permitted me to try my
+hand at superintending native labour. There were thirty of them, who,
+commencing about midnight, were to have completed by daybreak, the
+task upon which they were engaged. It reminded me of the days at
+college when the house whips stood over the team urging them and
+coaching them in their game. There was every necessity for speed, and
+as the night was cold one made the most of the opportunity. The
+working party was divided into those with picks and those with
+shovels--the one breaking up the ground, the others heaping up the
+earthwork. In addition to the natives who were digging there was a
+small party filling sacks with sand which, when they had been filled,
+were piled up around the rapidly-rising parapet of the gun. As they
+worked they sang, droning a war-song which seemed to give zest to
+their labours. As an experience it was rather fine to feel that even
+in this perfunctory fashion one was attempting work of some
+importance. About the scene there was the usual feature of the veldt
+by night: there was the subdued murmur of the waters tumbling gently
+over stones or causing stray groups of bullrushes to shiver; then from
+the bank there spread the veldt, rising in soft-clad hillocks, or
+falling in snug hollows, the green expanse tinted with the silvery
+light of the moon. Beyond ourselves and our cordon of sentries there
+should have been no one, although occasionally we thought that, just
+above the skyline, lights played about the shadowy outline of the Boer
+gun. But if they heard us they took no notice, and as dawn broke
+across the east the finishing touches to the gun were quickly given.
+Brown earth was strewn upon the whitened patches of the bags which had
+not been properly covered, the humidity of the fresh-turned soil
+mingling with the fumes of working natives. For the night's work, as
+we gathered our tools together, the best evidence of our labours was
+the grim muzzle of the gun which leered through its embrasure. It
+spoke defiance, and as the day which then was breaking, drew to its
+close we should know whether its sense of might had been effectually
+established. And so we returned to town talking upon the strength of
+the emplacement and upon its strategic value. As we left the gun we
+were alone, when suddenly, without a sound, the figure of the Colonel
+was seen coming across the veldt. He passed us quickly, and as we
+followed him we wondered what he knew, but before noon those who had
+been informed of the contemplated attack had learned the news. As he
+had crept up the lines he had passed detached parties of Boers
+withdrawing from the extreme rear of their position. The explanation
+was obvious, but he stayed until daybreak to make certain of his
+ground, and by the light of early dawn the trenches which we were so
+shortly to fire upon were found deserted. Thus do the spies work
+within our camp, taking to the enemy news of everything which
+happened, and thus does the Colonel circumvent them. However, if we
+did not attack them with our guns, for the remainder of the day the
+advanced squadrons in the river-bed justified their position by
+keeping down the crew from the big gun. They poured in volleys at
+1,400 yards, and, for the first time in the siege, no shells were
+thrown. As they retired from their trenches, so they withdrew their
+gun, and we had a day of peace.
+
+But how wearily the time passes; moreover we are still enduring the
+straits of a siege and the torments of a bombardment. For almost seven
+weeks we have defied an enemy who encircle us upon every side, and who
+has summoned to its aid, for the purposes of breaching our trivial
+earthworks, the finest guns from their arsenal in Pretoria. The Boers
+outnumber us in men and in artillery, and not a day has passed since
+the siege began that they have not thrown shrapnel and common shell,
+omitting minor projectiles, into the town. And still we live, with
+just sufficient spirit to jeer across our ramparts at the enemy. They
+Mauser us, and shell us; they cut our water off, and raid our cattle;
+they make life hell, and they can do so, so long as it may please
+them; but no one was ever so deluded if they think that by such means
+Mafeking surrenders. From time to time we have given them a taste of
+our quality, and if on occasion we have lost some few, it is a source
+of melancholy satisfaction to know that their loss has been the
+greater. It is not long since the Boers attempted to blow the town to
+atoms through the agency of dynamite, though, _similia similibus
+curantur_, they went to heaven prematurely by an undesirable
+explosion. It was night, and the town was just about to rest, when it
+was shaken to its foundations by a most deafening roar; sand and
+stones, fragments of trees came down as hail from the skies, the whole
+place being lighted with the lurid glow of blood-red flame. To the
+north of Mafeking, and so close to the cemetery that it might have
+been a pillar of fire coming to earth to claim its own, an immense arc
+of fire and smoke was ejected out of the ground. After it there came
+silence, broken here and there by the rattle of the _d�bris_ upon the
+roofs of the houses, and by the shouts and shrieks of a town in the
+confusion of a panic. That night those who slept had dreams of the day
+of judgment, while those who lay awake were restless, quaking with an
+insidious terror. In the morning the cause explained itself, since
+barely half a mile up the line was an enormous rent in the ground, the
+line itself being strewn and scattered with the rubbish of an
+earthquake. The Boers, with much ingenuous enterprise, had despatched
+upon a purely friendly mission a trolly load of dynamite;
+unfortunately, where they had started their infernal machine the
+declivity of the line had precipitated the truck backwards toward
+their own camp, and having very foolishly lighted their time-fuse
+before they had surmounted the crest of the rise, they had not the
+courage to stop the progress of the somewhat novel engine of
+destruction. Apparently it had rolled slowly downwards, tracking the
+instigators of such a deed with very fatal persistence, until the
+time-fuse met the charge, and powder and dynamite went off together.
+Upon the morrow there was much sadness in the Boer camp, and much
+silence.
+
+Dynamite has played a not unimportant _r�le_ in the history of our
+siege. Cronje has heard from native spies, and from his friends in our
+camp, that Mafeking is set within a circle of dynamite mines, and he
+has protested against its use in civilised warfare. Since then,
+however, he has not only discharged dynamite by trolly loads into the
+town, but he has threatened, in his vague and shadowy fashion, to send
+to his capital for some dynamite guns. It would seem, then, that a
+warm time is coming to Mafeking; the pity of it being that we are kept
+so long and in such unnecessary suspense. If Cronje were the gallant
+warrior whose dignity he assumes in addressing the garrison, he would
+have either taken or abandoned Mafeking some weeks ago. As it is,
+however, with occasional letters of regret for such untimely
+procedure, he still elects to bombard an inoffensive and unoffending
+township. The other morning, after the usual series of dull days, the
+activity in the Boer camp suggested to us that the town was about to
+be attacked. From the south-west the big Creusot opened fire at
+intervals of twenty minutes, the intervening periods being pleasantly
+filled in with Mauser and Martini fire and shells from two nine-pound
+high-velocity Krupps. In a very short space of time the list of
+fatalities included a native dog, a commissariat mule, and many
+buildings. After such a bloodless bombardment the Boer legions
+gallantly rode round to the east with the apparent intention of
+attacking the town. Then we thought that, in that moment, our defence
+would be justified, but he is wisest who determines what is to be the
+nature of the Boer movement when that movement has taken place. Down
+the serried lines of armed Dutchmen old Piet Cronje, as his friends
+call him, or General Cronje, as a sycophantian Boer press describe
+him, rode. He was a gallant sight--albeit we could only just see him
+some two thousand yards distant. After a temporary and casual
+inspection of his force, General Cronje turned his head towards
+Mafeking, and waving violently one arm in the air, cantered with much
+solemn apprehension towards our trenches. He had covered in this
+desperate effort some thirty yards, when perhaps a natural
+superstition caused him to turn his head. Was there a man dismayed in
+the Boer lines? Not one; but nevertheless, they were not taking any
+such manoeuvre just then. Cronje stopped and cantered back again,
+seeming to hold an indaba with his petty officers. They gathered round
+him, they talked to him, pointing towards their lines, and shouting at
+one another; but there it ended. In a little while we saw a silent
+figure, moody and taciturn, guarded by two orderlies, ride slowly
+around from the east front to the headquarters of the executive on the
+south-west. Thus Cronje failed, not through any fault of his, but
+because the idle braggarts who form his army have not the spirit of
+whipped curs. Since then Cronje has made no effort to storm Mafeking,
+and it is very much to be doubted whether until the siege be raised
+the attempt will be renewed.
+
+One must sympathise a little with Cronje since he has not been able to
+sustain in his attack upon Mafeking the high reputation which he
+enjoys among his countrymen. Now that he has been recalled to Natal,
+we here hope that he may be able to find some opportunity to
+distinguish himself. His force without Mafeking is a raw, lawless body
+of Western Boers, the majority of whom have followed him on his march.
+We say Natal, but there is no very positive ground for believing that
+it is in that direction that the new field of his activity lies. It
+may be that he has gone South, and if such should happen to be the
+case, it will not be long before he will come in contact with men who
+will test his mettle to the utmost. There have been many rumours of
+reinforcements: some people, addicted with a greater faculty of
+imagination than power of veracity, have even seen the advanced
+outposts of the relief, which, of course, is ridiculous. They mistake
+some scattered party of Boers for advanced scouts. We do not think
+that there is much real chance of the siege of Mafeking being raised
+before the New Year, since such would be opposed to the stately and
+insular procedure of the Imperial and Colonial War Offices. Hitherto
+it has apparently ignored the claims of Mafeking. All conditions of
+people here united in their efforts to secure some more or less
+reliable armament from the Government, but the reason, above all
+others, which made this impossible was that the Imperial authorities
+at home, in their fatuity, could not bring themselves to believe that
+the war, which South Africa knew to be imminent, would come to pass.
+Nevertheless, in face of their neglect, we are snug in Mafeking,
+although our artillery be hopeless; and since the war began we have
+gradually added to our defences. After many days' bombardment a
+breach was effected in one only of the town's earthworks. That was
+very quickly repaired, so quickly indeed that before nightfall it had
+already been restored.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+SHELLS AND SLAUGHTER
+
+
+                                      _November 30th, 1899._
+
+The Boers continue to shell Mafeking daily, and to concentrate upon
+the streets of the town their customary rifle fire. At first we
+experienced a terror of the dangers of shell fire, but the daily and
+constant presence of exploding shells has brought about an unusual
+degree of familiarity with its attendant feeling of contempt; people
+now are too careless, seeming to rest under the delusion that, one and
+all, enjoy an absolute immunity. The folly of it is that occasionally
+the error of their way is illustrated by a longer list of fatalities
+through one shell claiming half a dozen victims. Europeans perhaps,
+are less careless of the consequences of shell fire than is the native
+population, and it is a pity that it has not been found possible to
+impress into the mind of the Kaffir a better appreciation of the
+possible result of their intrepidity. We have had many more natives
+killed than whites, and the element of tragedy in this becomes the
+greater and more acute since, as a rule, the native, employed in
+building bomb-proof shelters for the whites, lacks the energy to turn
+to his own profit his knowledge of the manner in which shell cover
+should be constructed. They lie about under tarpaulins, behind zinc
+palings, wooden boxes, and flimsy sheds of that description, and
+perhaps for days their shelter may escape the line of fire; but there
+comes a moment made hideous by the scream of shell as it bursts in
+some little gathering of dozing, half listless natives. At such a
+moment their bravery is extraordinary--is indeed the most fearful
+thing in the world. The native with his arm blown off, with his thigh
+shot away, or with his body disembowelled, is endowed with extreme
+fortitude and most stoical resolution. Unless he is seen, he lies
+where he is struck, not caring to take the trouble to make his wounds
+known to some one who could sympathise and assist him. When the gaze
+of the curious is turned upon his mangled and wounded form he attempts
+to laugh, makes every effort to assist himself, and even if he knows
+that his injuries be fatal, he makes no sign. There is thus much to
+admire in these natives, but for the most part, people are quite
+indifferent to their sufferings.
+
+A few moments ago, indeed as I was writing the concluding words of the
+last sentence, a terrific explosion, a shower of gravel and leaden
+bullets upon my roof, foretold the fact that somewhere near at hand
+one of these untimely instruments of destruction had burst. As I went
+to the door a crowd of people could be seen running towards the Market
+Square, the air was filled with the strong perfume of the bursting
+charge. I ran with the throng to where the shell had first struck in
+Market Square before delivering its full effect upon the windows of
+the local chemist. Amid the splintered glass and the consequent
+disorder of the chemist's shop lay the writhing figure of an unhappy
+native. As an illustration of the appalling wounds which these shells
+inflict, I am purposely dilating upon this very pitiful scene. As the
+shell rebounded from the ground leaving a hole many feet long, narrow,
+and arrow-headed, it had come in contact with a native before it
+wrecked the apothecary's store. Mingled with the fragments of glass
+and the contents of the shop were shreds of cloth and infinitesimal
+strips of flesh, while the entire environment of the scene was
+splashed with blood. The poor native had lost an arm, a foot lay a few
+yards from him, and his other leg was hanging by a few shreds of skin.
+In an angle of the wall formed by the junction of the shop-front of
+the chemist and the tin protrusion of his neighbour's building,
+something was sticking. For the moment it had escaped the gaze of the
+sordid few, who, drawn by idle curiosity, were standing about without
+the inclination to help, or even a smattering of the first aid to the
+injured. When the bleeding body was put upon a stretcher, and the
+mangled extremities gathered together, the Hospital Orderly caught
+sight of the bunch which was clinging to the recess in the wall. As he
+went forward to seize it, the trickling streams of fluid which escaped
+from it revealed only too plainly its true character. So great was the
+force of the shell, and so near had its unfortunate victim been to the
+galvanised iron wall, that as body and shell met, the terrible
+violence of the impact had wrenched away the lump to hurl it, in the
+same moment, through the exterior wall of the adjacent premises.
+Despite his fearful injuries, which were beyond the scope of human
+power to aid, he was not dead, feebly exclaiming as they put him in
+the stretcher, "Boss, Boss, me hurt." The ruin of the building had
+scarcely been realised, and the vapour of chemicals from the shell,
+mingling with the scattered perfumes of the shop, with the scent of
+the ploughed-up earth, and with that curious, insidious scent of a
+wounded body dissipated--when a second shell screaming its passage
+through the air hurled itself with a terrible velocity against the
+other window of the same building. In effect it added a little more to
+the ruin of the premises, escaping by a miracle five men who had been
+standing in the interior of the premises, but killing an unfortunate
+corporal, who had gone from the scene of the death of the native to
+get a "pick-me-up" from the adjoining bar in Riesle's Hotel. In such a
+manner does the death roll pile itself up--with the impending slowness
+of a juggernaut and the haunting persistency of fate. If these were
+the actual numbers of the killed upon this date, there were also two
+who were wounded, one of whom has since died, thus giving to one day a
+terrible trio. With such a sad lesson before one it would seem that,
+beyond those who were compelled to be out and about, no one would
+venture in the streets under shell fire, much less employ their
+leisure in endeavouring to unload those of the enemy's shells that
+might have fallen into the town, yet, but two days ago a local
+wheelwright blew himself and two other men to an untimely end by the
+explosion of a shell from which, with a _steel_ drill, he was
+endeavouring to extract the charge. One of these men was killed almost
+instantaneously, another had his leg blown off, while the third
+sustained terrible wounds upon his body. There is not a day now
+without fresh victims being claimed in different parts of the town.
+Almost the first question asked as the shell bursts is for the name of
+the unfortunate owner of the wrecked house, and the number of the
+killed and wounded. In the early part of the siege when people were
+thoroughly scared by the introduction of this new element of
+destruction, bomb-proof shelters became quite popular, but lately with
+the good luck which the people in town have enjoyed, the shelters have
+been rather abandoned, but there is no doubt now, that the number who
+have been killed in this past week has somewhat unnerved the town. If
+it induces people to stay beneath their shelters, from out of the
+fearful misfortunes which have fallen upon the few, may be derived
+almost universal salvation.
+
+[Illustration: Effects of Shell Fire. 1. Before.]
+
+The hospital in these times, is the centre of melancholy interest to
+the town. It is perhaps a quarter of a mile beyond the outskirts of
+the town, but so situated that apart from the flag under whose
+protection it should lie, it would be impossible for the enemy not to
+be unaware that it was a natural shelter for the sick and wounded.
+Much as the town in general, the Convent which adjoins the hospital,
+and the hospital itself show the stress of the bombardment. The walls
+of the hospital have been riddled with Martini and Mauser bullets,
+while shells have perforated the galvanised iron roofing, torn holes
+in the walls of the ward, wrecked outstanding buildings, and in brief,
+played such direful havoc as would be considered impossible in a war
+with any nation that has subscribed to the articles of the Geneva
+Convention. Only the most strenuous opposition from Colonel
+Baden-Powell, who threatened the severest pains, penalties, and
+reprisals upon Commandant Cronje and Commandant Snyman, for their
+neglect of the Red Cross flag, has saved the building in its entirety.
+Nevertheless that degree of consideration, which we secured from the
+Boers for our hospital was denied by these infamous barbarians to the
+Convent and its gentle inmates. Their home has tumbled about its
+foundations, the wall which faces the enemy's fire has been hit in
+numerous places. Shells have ruined the children's dormitory, burst
+with a magnificent effect in the interior of what would have been the
+operating room, shattered a corner stone to pieces, and rendered
+rotten and wholly impossible for any further habitation our subsidiary
+hospital. The sisters, however, still stick to their posts and
+minister the comforts of religion, though seeking their share in the
+task of nursing, and setting, by their subdued heroism, an example to
+the entire community. Never has any hospital been saddled with such a
+work as the local one in Mafeking. War had taken every one so suddenly
+that like everything else in Mafeking at the crucial moment, it was
+wanting in much which was cardinal to its existence. The corps of
+nurses was made up of those ladies from the town who were willing to
+volunteer, and if there was an absence of the professional nursing
+service, there were equally a dearth of dressers, of surgical
+appliances, of medical comforts. The Victoria Hospital in times like
+these possesses no Rontgen Rays, and many times indeed have the
+medical staff regretted that so important an instrument should not
+have been sent in good time. Indeed all that the Director-General of
+Hospitals has done for Mafeking was to send Surgeon-Major Anderson out
+from England, and had it not been that this gallant officer supplied,
+at his own expense, a large quantity of medical stores which he
+believed to be necessary, with the best intentions in the world, it
+would have been impossible to cope with the requirements of the
+wounded.
+
+It has been interesting, however, to observe from the point of view of
+the medical profession the nature of the wounds caused by the Mauser
+and Martini rifles and shell-fire. The Mauser perforates, the Martini
+splinters, the shell pulverises. The point of entry of the Mauser
+bullet is somewhat smaller than the circumference of a threepenny
+piece, and if it passes through the bone it does not appear to set up
+any undue amount of splintering. The hole through which it emerges is
+usually, except where the path of the bullet has been deflected, as
+small as the point of penetration. The Mauser does not, as a rule, set
+up in the body, and in the greater number of cases passes clean
+through. It is a humane wound, and infinitely less injurious than the
+Martini and Dum-dum. A Martini destroys a large internal surface
+making beneath the point of contact a wound between two and three
+inches in diameter, with an even greater area of exit. It sweeps
+everything before it, shredding arteries, shattering the bones, while
+its process of recovery is, in consequence, the more protracted. I
+have already described the wounds from shell-fire, adding to that
+account, however, the fact that the merest fragment of a shell is as
+capable as the shell itself, of making most terrible injuries.
+
+[Illustration: Effects of Shell Fire. 2. After.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+A SOFT-WATER BATH
+
+
+                             MAFEKING, _December 6th, 1899_.
+
+As compensation to the inhabitants of beleaguered Mafeking for the
+many dull days we have had lately, yesterday was replete with
+incidents and crowded with a constant succession of events of more
+than ordinary interest. We have had our days of activity, when the
+boom of artillery and the rattle of musketry have impressed into a few
+brief hours the full measure of martial excitement, we have endured
+our days of lonesome and tiring idleness when the hot winds of the
+Kalahari Desert have swept eddies of whirring, biting sand across the
+trenches, when the pitiless sun has spent its energies upon the
+heat-stricken garrison. But yesterday we experienced the effect of a
+combination between that Providence which the Boers claim as their
+special and benign guardian and the elements themselves. It was a
+reconnaissance in force by nature. A union of extreme subtlety and one
+against which it was impossible to contend. It came, it swept
+everything before it, and it left us drenched with rain, surrounded by
+small lakes of mud, streams of water, and without dry garments to our
+names. When the mischief was complete the deluge ceased. The general
+physiognomy of the scene can be described at once. When dawn broke in
+the morning across the sky there glowered the haze of heat, which in
+Africa, as elsewhere, denotes a more than usually tropical day. To
+those, however, who knew the signs of the sky, the fleeting masses of
+black cloud, low down upon the horizon, foretold a day of evil
+tempest. Slowly the rising wind drove them together until, shortly
+before noon, clouds were bunched high up across the sky and over the
+Boer laager. From where we were in the town it was quite apparent that
+the temporary centre of the storm was almost above the emplacements of
+the enemy's artillery. Before the breeze had increased the Boers had
+thrown a few shells into the town, but presently, as the force of the
+gale struck us, it was evident that the rain-filled clouds were
+discharging their contents upon the extreme limits of the veldt. For
+an hour or two the Boers received the full effect of the storm, and
+but few drops of rain fell into the town, as the wind swept before its
+path the _d�bris_ of the veldt, portions of broken trees, of scrub,
+and bushes. The deluge quickly left the south-east, concentrating a
+little beyond and over the town, and so soon as it began to trouble us
+it seemed to have deserted the Boers. Possibly the wind carried with
+it a rainspout, since the effect of the streaming water was as though
+from somewhere in the sky buckets were being emptied on to the place
+beneath. The veldt was quickly flooded, the dried-up spruits were soon
+charged with foaming cataracts, Mafeking itself lay under water, the
+earthworks around the town were swept away, trenches and bomb-proof
+shelters were choked with eddying streams, everywhere was
+ruin--destruction and complete chaos reigned until the storm had spent
+itself. Down the acclivity upon which Cannon Kopje is placed there
+rolled the surging tide, carrying in its might the stores of the fort,
+the blankets of the men, the bodies of struggling animals, who, if
+they succeeded in coping with the force of the stream, were dashed to
+pieces upon the rocky facing of the hill. The women's laager, which
+has hitherto rested in snug seclusion at the base of the hills forming
+the western outposts, was, in a few minutes, flooded with the
+off-pourings from the sluits of the veldt, while the trenches were
+quickly submerged or silted with the refuse of the torrent. A cart
+which went to the assistance of the inmates of the laager found itself
+water-bound through the tremendous force of the tortuous cataracts. In
+the town, bomb-proof cellars were vacated, and the people, discarding
+their shoes and stockings, made their way from point to point by
+paddling and fording the footpaths across the streets. To the north of
+the town, below the exterior outposts, the men stripped to the skin,
+allowing the full strength of the streaming downpour to beat upon
+them. The Market Square was a sheet of running water, rising with such
+rapidity that it seemed that the houses bordering the square would be
+inundated.
+
+From Market Square, upon two sides, the roads make something of a
+descent, and down these slight inclines volumes of water, yards in
+width and some feet in depth precipitated themselves to the river-bed.
+As the storm increased it was seen that it would be impossible to
+retain any longer our advanced positions in the river-bed. The first
+to go was the trench occupied by Corporal Currie and his native
+sharpshooters. As the water swept from bank to bank through this post,
+which we, but a few days before, had won so gallantly from the enemy,
+the men clambered up the banks to the veldt and made their way as best
+they could to the base. With the flooding of this position, so rapidly
+did the river rise, that those occupied by Captain Fitzclarence and
+his squadron were equally untenable. As they were abandoned the stream
+rushed by them with the roar of a river in flood, while the crash of
+boulder upon boulder turned masses of rock into shattered fragments.
+Within an hour the river had risen eight feet, and so unexpected was
+the flood that for the time being it was not possible to rescue from
+the rising stream the 7-pounder gun, which was in position some way
+down the river. As the rain continued the wind died down, until in the
+height of this storm it scarcely possessed the strength to dissipate
+the white mists which were rising from the veldt. They hung low upon
+the ground, prevented from rising by the strength of the downpour, and
+making it difficult to see the progress of events in the enemy's
+lines. From time to time above the hissing of the rain and the roar of
+the rivers we heard the angry cough of the Nordenfeldt, the shrieks of
+their quick-firing guns, and the heavy and more stately boom of "Big
+Ben." Ofttimes there was the echo of the Mauser, the grating rustle of
+the Martini, and it soon became evident that the enemy did not propose
+to let us endure the misery of the storm altogether undisturbed. From
+these omens, as some slight diminution in the downpour allowed the
+mists to rise from the ground, we expected to hear the sound of
+exploding volleys coming through the fog, and to find that the fight
+had become suddenly desperate; but the Boers lacked the individual
+courage, and the charge which they might have made under cover of the
+tangle of the brushwood and the bewilderment of the fog never took
+place. They were satisfied with cannonading our position; and across
+the ground, heavy with rain, upon which the mist laid dense, the red
+flashes of the gun and the sparkle of the rifles had a weird effect as
+they flared and vanished through the eddying masses of vapour and
+fantastic columns of smoke. The tumbling volumes of mist and the
+grey-black masses of smoke mingled and curled in distorted pillars,
+forming at a moment when the sun shone briefly, as the tears of heaven
+dried off into space, an evanescent and iridescent canopy of colour.
+The respite was momentary, and as the sun withdrew, the groups of men
+that had been seen about the Boer lines were quickly obscured in
+clouds of grosser vapour. Their fire, however, continued, while about
+them tossed the thick white fog, as above us occasionally rolled the
+thunder of their guns. The area of the storm included the most
+advanced trenches of the Boers, and as the wind shifted the gloomy
+masses of vapour we saw through the whirling mist and smoke-charged
+air, the Boers, rain-soaked as ourselves, standing disconsolately upon
+their muddy parapets. They did not seem to understand what they should
+do. They could hear their own guns firing on our positions, happily
+beyond the later centre of the storm, but these men themselves stood
+still, shaking the water from their limbs, attempting to dry their
+weapons. At night, with the darkness to cover our misfortunes, the
+town was busily constructing fresh earthworks, draining those shelters
+from which any further use could be obtained, and making such amends
+as were possible for an occurrence, almost unprecedented in the annals
+of war.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE ECONOMY OF THE SITUATION
+
+
+                                      _December 12th, 1899._
+
+The importance of the resistance which Mafeking has made to the
+attacks of the Boers should be viewed in the light of its relationship
+to the two Protectorates, Bechuanaland and Matabeleland, since had
+this place fallen, its position as a _dep�t_ for the Northern trade
+would have made it a comparatively easy task for the victorious Boers
+to have secured the control of the intermediate areas. They would have
+at once seized the rolling stock of the railway whose headquarters are
+temporarily invested in Mafeking, and could, by that means, have
+mobilised their forces in a fashion and with a degree of acceleration
+which would have brought them in a completely equipped and efficient
+condition to the borders of Rhodesia. Indeed, from what one can learn
+now, it is not at all improbable that the plan of the northern
+operations of the Boer forces from their base at Mafeking provided for
+the seizure of Mafeking with its stores and rolling stock, with their
+subsequent enlistment of this material in the work of occupying
+Bechuanaland and assisting our enemy in the concentration of their
+forces upon Rhodesia. With the railway in their hands small forces
+would have been stationed at the important points such as are afforded
+by the natural drifts, and while they maintained by this system of
+custodianship an open line of communication, they would, at the same
+time, have been free to utilise, in a combined and united mass, all of
+these scattered parties of Boers who were engaged upon marauding
+expeditions between here and Middle Drift. The history of Mafeking
+then would have been but the story of Vryburg, where, once its
+sympathy to the Boer cause was proclaimed and the place effectually
+occupied, the Boer commandant withdrew the greater portion of his men
+to fresh spheres of activity. With Mafeking in the hands of the enemy,
+our chief stand would have been around Buluwayo, where Colonel
+Baden-Powell and Colonel Plumer would have united their commands,
+thereby presenting to the enemy greater resistance than would have
+been possible had the forces been engaged upon their own initiative.
+In a way, therefore, Mafeking has forged an important link in the
+chain of outposts, by which the safety of the Protectorates has been
+guaranteed and the independence of the country still preserved to
+Imperial rule. It must not be forgotten, however, that the success
+which Plumer's column has enjoyed at Rhodes' Drift and at Middle Drift
+gave to Southern Rhodesia a certain immunity from hostile invasion,
+while in any estimate of the economy of the victories which Colonel
+Plumer's men and our own here have scored against the Boers, it should
+be borne in mind that had they vanquished our forces at Middle Drift
+or Rhodes' Drift, further Imperial territory would have been invaded,
+and the road upon which they might have marched to besiege Buluwayo
+would have been open to them. Colonel Baden-Powell has, of course,
+been chiefly instrumental in preventing the investment of Buluwayo,
+since the determined stand which he made caused General Cronje to hold
+an aggregate number of Boers, amounting to 8,000 men, and by far the
+larger portion of the Western Division of the S.A.R. forces, under his
+control for Mafeking; but without in any way disparaging this work, so
+important in its achievements, so vital in its issues, nothing perhaps
+has proved so integral a factor in the work of maintaining our
+occupation and dominion over these important adjuncts of our Empire in
+Africa, as the defence which Colonel Plumer so successfully and
+gallantly accomplished. However we here may have assisted in the
+preservation of those Protectorates as Imperial dominions, there can
+be no doubt we should have lost, for the time being, all claim to
+their moral and practical possession had Colonel Plumer's force
+retired. With 8,000 men investing Mafeking, and various minor bodies
+scattered up and down the border between here and Fort Tuli, the enemy
+could have spared 6,000 men for co-operation with these subsidiary
+bodies, and still have maintained the siege and bombardment of this
+town. It did not need, then, its downfall to give the Boers important
+belligerent rights throughout the Protectorate and Southern Rhodesia,
+and although our surrender might have materially facilitated their
+progress, our successful opposition did not necessarily, nor
+altogether, impede it. The strategical value of the drifts made their
+safe custody a matter of momentous importance, since through them, as
+much as from Mafeking, might entry have been made and territorial
+supremacy for the moment acquired. Indeed, it is very much to be
+doubted whether the chief value of the stand by which Mafeking has
+distinguished itself is not found in the lesson which it has read to
+the Colony itself. Had we gone the way of Vryburg, or had we
+surrendered after some slight stand, it is almost certain that our
+fall would have been the signal for the general uprising of the Dutch
+in the northern areas of the Colony as well as in British
+Bechuanaland. How near we are to a mare's nest in Mafeking is
+uncertain, but after much inquiry amongst the chief people (business)
+in the town, there is no doubt that had the inhabitants of Mafeking
+been able to conceive the difficulties and trials which were about to
+beset them, the losses in business at the moment, and the temporary
+stagnation which will follow the war, they would have preferred to
+have worshipped the Golden Calf, and to see Colonel Baden-Powell and
+Colonel Hore remove their headquarters to some spot in the
+Protectorate, while the sleek and prosperous merchants of Mafeking
+were thus enabled to follow their occupation and to turn over their
+money while they lived amid the baneful protection of a temporary and
+purely commercial allegiance to the Transvaal Republic. It is not, it
+would seem, that individually Mafeking is disloyal, but that it is
+essentially a commercial centre, governed, impressed, and inherited by
+commercial instinct, and reflecting, in its inhabitants, a gathering
+of the peoples of the world in more or less confused proportion. There
+is a small German community, there is an American colony, there are
+French, and Jews of every nation. They have made money in Mafeking;
+they own much property; they are even friendly to the Transvaal since
+they have large trade interests among Dutch towns which are near the
+border. They came here in the days when this part of Africa was
+unknown to white man; they trekked from Kimberley, from the Transvaal,
+even across the African desert from the coast, and if they have lived
+beneath the protection of our standard, they have amassed their wealth
+by trading with the flags of all nations. They care very little indeed
+for the Uitlander in the Transvaal, for his wrongs or for his rights,
+but they would respect him much if he came with his cattle and his
+sheep, with his waggons and his chattels, and some superfluity of
+money, for then they could add still further to their hoard of shekels
+and trade with him for his cattle. It is a weird and motley crowd that
+constitutes Mafeking: disgusted with Imperial government, wishing to
+have vengeance upon the Colonial Government, and boasting to Heaven at
+one moment about their gallant resistance, crying out against the
+ill-wind that has brought them the siege. They move with the current
+of the Colony, and can be as easily disturbed to patriotism as they
+can rouse themselves to a passionate criticism of the follies of the
+Imperial protection under which they exist. When they are moved to
+sympathy with the Dutch, it is difficult to believe that they are the
+self-same loyal inhabitants of Mafeking who are now beleaguered, since
+by daily contact, by union of marriage, by personal friendship, they
+have consciously or unconsciously assimilated the cause of the Boer,
+and reveal the profundity of their sympathies in these times of
+distress.
+
+An interesting side issue to the siege of Mafeking has been the chain
+of events relating to the departure of Lady Sarah Wilson from Mafeking
+upon the night of the day during which war was declared, her
+temporary sojourn at Setlagoli, from where she supplied the garrison
+with news, and acted as the chief medium by which Baden-Powell managed
+to get his dispatches through to the Government in Cape Town; her
+retirement from Setlagoli, when her work was discovered, to General
+Snyman's laager before Mafeking to request from that gentleman a safe
+permit into Mafeking; her eventual arrival in the town in exchange for
+the prisoner Viljoen. Lady Sarah Wilson experienced no very
+extraordinary adventures and was treated with that consideration which
+is due to her sex by the Boers, despite the fact that they might have
+made her position somewhat unpleasant, since she had quite voluntarily
+taken up active participation in the siege by endeavouring to keep the
+garrison supplied with news.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+A VISIT TO THE HOSPITAL
+
+
+                                      _December 12th, 1899._
+
+The week has been a dull one, which in relation to the siege implies
+that the passing days have not borne what we have now come to regard
+as their full quota of shells and bullets. We here are somewhat
+sceptical of the lapses of the bombardment since tactics which the
+Boers have already adopted have led us to believe that intervals of
+some hours' duration be planned deliberately so that when shelling
+should be renewed, it may please Providence, ever on the side of the
+Boers, to have the streets thronged with people. Upon one or two
+occasions we have been lulled into a fancied security by the cessation
+of shell fire; but with the lamentable occurrences of last week, we
+are disinclined to be again caught napping. Accordingly, although
+there has been a week of extraordinary desistence upon the part of the
+enemy, those who were about were careful enough to take their airing
+within a short distance of their bomb-proof shelters. In a fashion,
+this gave to the environments of the town and the town itself, the
+appearance of a rabbit warren, where at sunset the little animals may
+be seen bunched about the entrance to their retreats. A few ladies
+enjoyed the novelty of tea _al fresco_, with possibly, a keener
+appreciation for their propinquity to some bomb-proof, than for the
+light refreshment in which they were indulging.
+
+Thus it came that I was visiting the hospital, chatting with the
+physicians upon the stoep of the building. Beneath the shelter of the
+verandah lay the forms of many who had been wounded, and who now were
+sufficiently recovered to sit outside; here and there a man limped
+painfully with the aid of crutches, to talk to a comrade who, with his
+arm in a sling, was not altogether inappreciative of the fact that he
+had been wounded in a recent sniping affray against the enemy's
+position in the brickfields. As we sat upon the stoep with our legs
+dangling to the ground, behind us in the building there was the
+complement of battle: the wounded, the nurses, and the doctors; but in
+front of us there was the expansion of the veldt, green and peaceful.
+The heat haze lay upon it, simmering in an endless stretch of floating
+vapour. There was every appearance of the provincial and rural
+simplicity which goes to make up the daily life of those who live upon
+the veldt. There were homesteads which, but a few months ago, had been
+the centre of some small and flourishing agrestic community, but were
+now charred and blackened, epitomising the destruction which the Boers
+deal out to unoffending people; in the place of the herds which
+formerly had grazed upon the scene, there were the white covers of the
+Boer laagers; there were the lines of the Boer horses, there were the
+mobs of cattle, of sheep, of goats, which, raided from the
+countryside, had been collected in the rear of the enemy's
+encampments. Upon the skyline, from the steps of the hospital, the
+emplacement of "Big Ben" could be seen outlined quite distinctly in
+the bright sunlight. The position of the gun was known by the glint of
+the sun as it played upon the burnished metal.
+
+Presently, as we talked, there came the boom of cannon, and the enemy
+had turned upon the stadt their quick-firing Krupps. Instinctively,
+since the habits which rule the enemy are well known to us, a wounded
+man called out to us that was the five o'clock gun, and for the moment
+we were uncertain as to whether the peace of the afternoon would be
+further disturbed. But in a little a column of smoke, white and heavy,
+hung over the position of "Big Ben," and we at once settled down for
+further shelling during the remainder of the time that daylight
+lasted. In the distance, out on the furthest limits of the Stadt,
+there came echoes, echoing back the noise of the explosion when the
+hundred-pound shell burst amid a collection of native huts. It is so
+seldom that these greater projectiles miss their victims, that
+preparations were at once made for any casualties that might have been
+sent to the hospital. With these measures taken, we waited while the
+firing grew heavier. It was just one of those moments which we had
+been anticipating from the fashion which our friend the Boer had
+already set, and in a little it was proved that whatever had been our
+expectations they would be fully realised. When the firing began, the
+scene upon the stoep of the hospital gradually changed; the wounded
+were carried back to their wards, Surgeon-Major Anderson, the Imperial
+officer who has been sent out here; Dr. Hayes, who in the virtue of
+the rank of P.M.O. conferred by Colonel Baden-Powell, has charge of
+the hospital, and his brother, both local practitioners, waited the
+course of events upon the steps of the building. For the time firing
+seemed confined to the artillery and rifles from the Boer trenches in
+the brickfields, the south-eastern front of the town and the eastern
+facing of the native location receiving the brunt. By degrees the
+entire position of the enemy upon that side dropped into line, giving
+cause and effect to the wisps of smoke which broke into the air about
+the advanced trenches of the foe. In about half an hour from the time
+the first shell exploded over the stadt, a stretcher-party appeared
+coming from the town and began to descend into the trench which led to
+the hospital. As they crossed the recreation ground, a large white
+flag which was carried in advance of the party, heralding to the Boers
+the passing of wounded, attracted the attention of the enemy and was
+promptly fired upon. It is these wilful acts which make it difficult
+to consider the Boer in any way removed from a savage combatant, and
+although the flag-bearer waved repeatedly to the enemy's trenches, the
+fire from that direction did not diminish. With no little heroism the
+stretcher-party, which was under Sergeant-Major Dowling, a resident
+physician in Cape Town, who volunteered his services for the campaign,
+and who has charge of the subsidiary hospital in the native location,
+made their way across the zone of fire to the doors of the hospital.
+Then in a moment all that had been peaceful and serene before, became
+impressed with the horrible effects and the fearful injuries which are
+derived from war.
+
+The stretcher was taken to the operating-room, where nurses had
+already begun to arrange the table, to prepare the carbolic lotion, to
+lay out the lint and bandages, the dressing dishes, sponges, and a
+fine array of instruments; then when the stretcher had been placed
+beside the table, willing and gentle hands lifted the inanimate form
+by the corners of the brown and blood-stained mackintosh sheet in
+which the body had been enshrouded. Dr. Hayes snicked the strings
+which had caught the ends of the sheet about the injured, and as he
+threw back the flaps Surgeon-Major Anderson gently separated the
+clothing where, matted with blood, it had congealed into a sticky mass
+about the injuries. The doctors and the surgeon, bending with callous
+diffidence about the inert and prostrate form, then proceeded rapidly
+with their examination. Through the western windows of the room there
+came the ruddy rays of the sun as it sank to its rest. The light
+caught the bottles on the shelves, flickered for a moment upon the
+silvery brightness of the instruments, and played about the hair of
+the nurses, who, passing to and fro across the window, were as much
+interested in their work as in the nature of the patient's injuries.
+In a corner of the room Sergeant-Major Dr. Dowling explained to
+Surgeon-Major Anderson that the patient, who was a native woman of
+some repute, had been washing clothes upon the banks of the Molopo,
+when a flight of one-pound steel-pointed Maxim shells burst about her.
+The pelvis and the femur had been shattered completely, besides
+internal wounds of a most fatal character in the abdominal regions.
+The left foot was also pulverised, the extraordinary part being that
+any one, after suffering such severe injuries and sustaining so great
+a shock to the system, should yet be living. The examination
+completed, Dr. Hayes, turning to the head nurse, said that it was
+impossible to do anything which would save the woman's life,
+inquiring, as Surgeon-Major Anderson dissolved a grain of morphia in a
+wine-glass, if any one knew the name of the native. As the nurse was
+about to reply, the patient, moaning feebly, expressed in excellent
+English, that her name was Martha. Then it appeared that she was
+recognised as being the wife of a Fingo in the location, one who
+before marriage had been a member of the oldest profession which the
+world has ever known, but since lawful wedlock had consummated her
+union, she had passed, after the manner of her tribe, a life of great
+austerity. The air of the operating-room was becoming oppressive, the
+moaning of the patient merging with the heavy scent of the iodoform
+and the lighter evaporation of the carbolic liniment began gradually
+to dominate the nerves. To the casual observer such as myself, the
+scene was striking. The insensitiveness of those assembled in the
+operating-room, in reality the outcome of great experience in a
+particular profession, enforced a calmness of feature and of feeling
+with which I was far from being actually animated. The mechanical
+industry of the surgeons, the automatic regularity with which the
+hospital orderly waved his fly whisk above the head of the dying
+woman, imparted a coldness to the scene which one could not help
+observing. In a fashion, all that human skill could do had been
+accomplished, since had the foot been amputated at the ankle, or the
+thigh removed at the hip, the labour would have been unnecessary, the
+extra shock to the system serving only to accelerate the end. Very
+gently they sponged the mouth and nose of the woman and cooled her
+brow, very gently they administered morphia and sips of brandy, but
+one by one the doctors, rinsing their hands and lowering their
+shirt-sleeves, put on their jackets. At the door of the operating-room
+Dr. Hayes and Surgeon-Major Anderson paused to impart a few brief
+instructions to the nurses. They were not to forget, said the P.M.O.,
+to remove the tourniquet from the pelvis when the end had come;
+Surgeon-Major Anderson adding to this an order to continue waving the
+fly whisk so long as there existed the necessity.
+
+And the incident had closed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+A LITTLE GUN PRACTICE
+
+
+                                      _December 23rd, 1899._
+
+We take a keen interest in our artillery, although we never cease to
+deplore the fact that the War Office did not think it necessary to
+send to Mafeking anything better than old muzzle-loading
+seven-pounders of the Crimean period. Their range is restricted, and
+their mobility is greatly inferior to more modern types; but if they
+have not enabled us to do very much, we have at least been able to
+return their fire. In this way quite a little flutter of enthusiasm
+has been aroused through having unearthed an antiquated
+sixteen-pounder gun. It would seem to have been made about 1770, and
+is identical with those which up till very recently adorned the quay
+at Portsmouth. Its weight is 8 cwt. 2 qr. 10 lb., and it was made by
+B. P. and Co. It is a naval gun, and is stamped "No. 6 port." How it
+came here is uncertain, and its origin unknown; but one gathers that
+it must have been intended more for privateering than for use in any
+Government ship of war, since it is wanting in all official
+superscription. This weapon, which we have now christened "B.-P." out
+of compliment to the Colonel, has been lying upon the farm of an
+Englishman whose interests are very closely united with the native
+tribe whose headquarters are in Mafeking Stadt. Mr. Rowlands can
+recall the gun passing this way in charge of two Germans nearly forty
+years ago. He remembers to have seen it in the possession of Linchwe's
+tribe, and upon his return to the Baralongs, after one of his trading
+journeys, he urged the old chief to secure it for use in defence of
+the Stadt against the attacks of Dutch freebooters. The chief then
+visited Linchwe and bought the gun for twenty-two oxen, bringing it
+down to Mafeking upon his waggon. In those days it had three hundred
+rounds of ammunition, which were utilised in tribal fights. With the
+exception of visits which the gun made to local tribes, it has
+remained here and is now in the possession of Mr. Rowlands. It has
+recently been mounted, and is in active operation against our enemies.
+We have made balls for it, and are intending to manufacture shells, in
+the hope that we shall at least be able to reach the emplacement of
+"Big Ben." The first trial of "B.-P." in its new career gave very
+satisfactory results. With two pounds of powder it threw a ball of ten
+pounds more than two thousand yards. The power of the charge was
+increased by half pounds until a charge of three pounds threw a ball
+of the same weight as the first rather more than two miles. We,
+therefore, have pinned our hopes upon it, and commend to the
+responsible authorities the reflections which may be derived from the
+fact that our chief and most efficient means of defence, lie in such a
+weapon.
+
+After many weeks of inactivity upon our part, we have lately taken the
+initiative against the foe, whose present mode of war, so far as this
+place is concerned, would seem to give preference to the chastened
+security of laagers already beyond the three-mile limit from the town.
+Upon two occasions during the last week we have celebrated dawn with
+many salvoes of artillery, securing sufficient noise and effect from
+our shell fire display, to excite the town to no little enthusiasm.
+Moreover, up to the present, reaction has not set in, and we are even
+more cheerful to-day than we were at the beginning of the siege.
+Dingdaan's Day, the earlier of the two events, was distinguished by
+the Boers, as by ourselves, with a bombardment, which opened with a
+hundred-pound shell from "Big Ben," landing in the Headquarters Office
+at half-past two in the morning. Fortunately no one sustained any
+injury from this untimely marauder of our rest, the corner of the
+building alone being shattered, and the town itself sprinkled with
+fragments of masonry and shell. A few hours later the enemy again
+started firing, while our guns upon the east front proceeded to give a
+good account of themselves. About seven o'clock firing for the day
+ceased from the Boer lines, since they devoted themselves to psalm
+singing and prayer gathering in their laagers in commemoration of
+their day of independence; but we, upon our part, threw four rounds at
+noon into their camp, and then we, too, enjoyed the comparative peace
+of the siege. For the next few days our guns remained quiet, and "Big
+Ben" kept its nose pointed upon the furthest limits of the Stadt or
+Cannon Kopje, until the impression gained ground that the Boers had
+shifted the gun round to a position upon which they were very busily
+engaged on the western side of the Stadt. There were those even who
+were willing to lay odds that, when the gun fired again, it would be
+found to have taken up a new site. And so universal was this idea that
+it was not altogether discarded by members of the Staff. With a view
+to disproving this illusion Colonel Baden-Powell arranged that all our
+available artillery, under Major Panzera, should effect a
+reconnaissance of the Boer lines upon the east of the town, from which
+it could easily be learnt whether the fire of the big gun still
+dominated that front.
+
+There had been some little talk of a movement against the five-pound
+gun, which the enemy had located at Game Tree, and upon Sunday night I
+camped with Captain Vernon, from whose fort upon the western outposts,
+the sortie would have taken place. However, nothing happened, and
+although a few shells fell about us at daybreak, there was nought to
+interest one beyond the usual routine of daily life upon the western
+outposts. Upon returning to town I learnt that the following morning
+might reveal something more important than a mere artillery exchange.
+Towards nightfall, to those who knew about the contemplated move,
+Mafeking appeared to present much unusual animation. Artillery
+officers, whose duty detained them at points distant from the town,
+gathered at Headquarters to receive Major Panzera's final instructions
+before setting out for their emplacements, as at the same time small
+detachments of men moved to reinforce the entrenchments along the
+eastern front. For the most part the town went to its rest in
+ignorance of the surprise which was being laid for the enemy at
+daybreak upon the following morning, and by nine o'clock the nocturnal
+aspect of the town was eminently peaceful. The transformation from the
+harsh and biting sunlight of the day to the soothing and eerie light
+of night impressed the hour with grandeur and solemnity, which was in
+striking contrast to the labour upon which we were engaged. From the
+town, those guns which were not already in position moved to their
+stations--one, the Hotchkiss, being despatched to an emplacement which
+had only been completed the preceding night. It was a pleasant
+scramble to this position across the veldt, and so near to the enemy's
+lines that we could hear the murmur of their voices as they called to
+one another in the trenches and discerned their gloomy figures
+silhouetted against the skyline. The Hotchkiss, which was our extreme
+piece upon the north-east of the town, was to direct its fire upon the
+enemy at the waterworks and the opposing corner of their advanced
+trenches. Its precise utility was uncertain, since it was not possible
+to see the object at which its fire would be directed, but, as the gun
+party moved to the emplacement, the officer in charge arranged with
+the nearest entrenchment in the rear to signal the accuracy of his
+range. Then we set out to visit the outposts and the different
+emplacements. Time and distance passed rapidly in the starlight
+expanse of the night, and few things could have been more impressive
+than the calm which had come upon the town. From the veldt, as we cut
+directly across from the Hotchkiss to the nearest post, it seemed as
+though we were passing some walled-in city of the ancient days. At
+short distances the outlines of the forts showed out against the
+buildings, and it became almost difficult to suppress the cry to the
+sentry, "Watchman, what of the night?" As we made our rounds it was
+interesting to note how some points had received heavier fire than at
+others. The ground round the Dutch Church was ploughed and furrowed
+by shell, and at Ellis's Corner and across the front of the location
+to Cannon Kopje there were numerous traces of the enemy's bombardment.
+Presently the rounds were concluded, and Major Panzera went to snatch
+a few hours' rest before he opened fire in the morning. As upon
+Dingdaan's morning, so this time did I attach myself to the
+emplacement under the direct control of Major Panzera, at the Dutch
+Church, and around this, as he arrived there, the hour of midnight
+chiming from the church towers, there were the sleeping figures of the
+gunners. For the time we slept together, and when Major Panzera
+aroused us in the morning the rawness of the morning air foretold the
+earliness of the hour.
+
+The mists of night were still rising from the veldt about the Boer
+lines, and as we looked through our field-glasses, figures here and
+there, were busily engaged in gathering brushwood for the matutinal
+fire. Then, as it was yet early, and they were about to prepare their
+coffee, we boiled up ours, and, passing round the billy, filled our
+pannikins to the health of the enemy. It was but a grim jest, and one
+perhaps which shows the indifference of the men to the accidents of
+fate, but as we drank, he who was number one said, raising his tin to
+the air, "We will drink with you in hell." But the hour of jesting was
+soon over and the gun party prepared for their morning's work by
+running up the gun into the embrasure. Number one laid the gun, and
+number two stood with his lanyard in his hand ready to connect the
+friction tube. Number three hung upon the trail piece, and he, with
+the sponge and ramrod, was prepared for immediate service. Within a
+few feet of them were two who were actively adjusting the time fuses.
+At their side there was a pile of common shell and shrapnel, and with
+this, the local colour of the picture is completed. Of a sudden
+Panzera gave the order to the man who fed the gun--"Common shell,
+percussion fuse, prepare to load," and as it passed from the hands of
+the man to the muzzle of the gun, one found oneself muttering a prayer
+for the souls of the Boers who were so speedily to be sent into
+perdition. "Load," said Panzera rapidly, and the gun was loaded. Then,
+as I focussed my glasses upon the scene, the Major took one last
+squint down the sights of the gun. It was well and truly laid, and as
+he straightened himself to the precision of the parade ground the end
+came rapidly. "Prepare to fire," said he, and number two stepped
+forward, dropping the friction tube into the vent. "Fire," said
+Panzera, and one raised the glasses to fix them upon a party of Boers
+whom we could see drinking their coffee, as they sat upon the parapet
+of the trench. There was a roar, a cloud of smoke, and a red fierce
+tongue of flame leapt from the muzzle of the gun. Dust and smoke and
+sand enveloped the place where those Boers had been sitting, and I
+found myself wondering and endeavouring to believe that the breach in
+the parapet foreboded no great harm to anybody. The battle, if battle
+it were to be, had been started by a well-directed shell. Quickly the
+gun was trained and loaded again, and I felt the excitement entering
+into my soul. The feelings of humanity left me, and I began to hope
+that we should kill them every time. Again our gun fired, falling
+short, but giving the signal to the others along the front to join in
+the comparative splendour of the cannonade. Away down in the river-bed
+our guns boomed; beyond it and between that emplacement and Cannon
+Kopje there were the jets of smoke from the Nordenfeldt like the
+spurts of steam from a geyser. Above us there was the Hotchkiss and
+the merry rattle of the Maxim. So far as noise, and numbers of the
+pieces engaged, went the press of battle was about us. All down our
+front there broke the whistling rush of Lee-Metford rifles, as the
+eastern line of the defence dropped into action. For the moment the
+Boers were surprised at the manner and method of our onslaught, and
+beyond a few desultory rifle shots our guns fired some few rounds
+before any shells came back in answer. As Major Panzera had opened the
+fight so they threw their first shells upon his emplacement, and a
+well-directed flight of one-pound steel-topped base fuse Maxim broke
+in a cloud of dust about us, flinging their sharp-edged fragments in
+all directions. Then we fired again, raking the parapet of the Boers'
+trench, and wondering whether the big gun would reply to us, or
+whether those who had speculated upon its removal would win. The music
+of the fight grew louder and louder, the quick-firing guns of the
+enemy paying their tribute. From where we were we could see the gun in
+the river-bed emplacement doing remarkable execution. The smoke of our
+own hung heavy upon us, mingling with the dust from the Maxim shell,
+as the enemy continued to pepper our emplacement. We were beginning to
+find it difficult to see, while the roar of the guns made it almost
+impossible to catch the officer's orders. Suddenly, as our gun again
+broke forth, the bell clanged in the distance six times. It was the
+signal that the big gun had fired, the six strokes indicating that it
+was pointed upon us. We heard it and crouched in the dust, and as we
+crouched we wondered. There was a screaming tumult in the air, a
+deafening explosion at our feet shook the ground; earth and dust,
+stones and bits of grass fell all about us, and the roofs of buildings
+upon either side of us rattled with the fragments of the shell as it
+burst within a circle of twenty-five yards from the gun. It was a
+moment rather fine than frightful, with just sufficient danger in it
+to make it interesting, but, if anything, somewhat quickly over. We
+wiped the dust from our faces, shook the grass from our shirts, and
+laid again: once more fired, and chuckled to see, through rifts in the
+battle smoke, that it had landed in the very centre of the trench.
+Again the bell clanged sonorously, and a building not fifteen yards
+from us was blown to pieces. They were getting nearer, and making
+magnificent shooting, when the Nordenfeldt turned its fire upon "Big
+Ben" itself. From where we were we could see the thin columns of smoke
+rising, as the bullets burst before and behind the emplacement. If
+anything were calculated to check its fire it was the irritating and
+penetrating possibility of the armour-piercing Nordenfeldt. With the
+introduction of "Big Ben" into the morning's festivities, the Boers
+opened from their trenches, with their Mauser and Martini rifles. In
+the intervals between the shells from "Big Ben," the Maxim, and
+quick-firing nine-pounders, the enemy swept our emplacements with
+their rifle fire. They came through the embrasure with quite fatal
+accuracy, dropping at our feet and raising dust all around us, but the
+tale of the one is the tale of the many, and the same scene was
+occurring throughout the entire eastern front. For a moment it became
+impossible to serve the gun, and we desisted with apologies to the
+enemy, but anon rifle fire was deflected, and we again trained the
+gun upon those very advanced trenches of the enemy; but, as we fired,
+the bell rang, and for the third time their shell, passing ours in its
+flight, tore up the ground in front of us. And then the Nordenfeldt
+spoke again, shooting into the very smoke of the gun as though they
+were anxious to drop projectiles into the breach itself. And to the
+north of us the Hotchkiss spitted, as though resenting the intrusion
+of this big bully. But there unfortunately it ended, and no more big
+shells came our way, and we contented ourselves with a parting sally.
+
+Then the gun was sponged and laid to rest in the trench, and the spare
+shell put back into the box as the engagement closed. Then Panzera
+called his men together and thanked them, expressing his admiration
+for their courage and their coolness. Then we cheered him, and
+returning thanks for thanks, we went to breakfast, but in the distance
+we could see the Red Cross upon the white background, floating in
+tragic isolation, above a waggon, which was stopping ever and anon at
+places where we knew our shells had broken. That was in the Boer
+lines, but in our own the bugle sounded us to breakfast.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE ATTACK UPON GAME TREE
+
+
+                            MAFEKING, _December 27th, 1899_.
+
+Barely had the celebration of Christmas Day passed in Mafeking when
+the order to prepare for immediate action was sent out from
+Headquarters, and in the early hours of Boxing Day two dismounted
+squadrons began to move to the front. We had spent a pleasant holiday
+that day, which of all days brings glad tidings and goodwill
+throughout the civilised and Christian world; but when, hereafter, we
+come to speak of the Christmas season of 1899, our stories will be
+impressed with the sinister memories of the tragic events which have
+for us marked the time as one of lamentation. Nothing could have been
+in more complete contrast to the happiness of Christmas Day, imbued
+with much real meaning to beleaguered Mafeking, than those early
+morning preparations which were made as the day closed. For some
+little time we have been desirous to attack the enemy's position at
+Game Tree, and in my last letter I mentioned the fact that, in
+anticipation of such an event, I had camped one night recently with
+Captain Vernon at his western outpost. That attack, however, did not
+take place, and, although the town and garrison were disappointed,
+there was a very strong feeling that it would not be long before they
+were compensated for their disappointment.
+
+Game Tree, against which our force moved, is a strongly fortified
+position of the enemy, about two miles from the town, and it has been
+from this spot that our front to the north-west has been subjected to
+a persistent rifle and artillery fire during many weeks. The attack
+was ordered for the purpose of breaking the cordon around Mafeking,
+with a view to ultimately reopening our communications to the north. D
+and C Squadrons of the Protectorate Regiment, under the Imperial
+Service officers, Captain Vernon, of the King's Royal Rifles, and
+Captain Fitzclarence, of the Royal Fusiliers, were detailed to carry
+out the attack from the east, under the protection of the armoured
+train, and Captain Williams and twenty men of the British South Africa
+Police, with a one-pounder Hotchkiss and Maxim. This right flank was
+further supported by Captain Cowan and seventy men of the Bechuanaland
+Rifles, the whole of the wing being under the command of Major Godley.
+The left wing comprised three seven-pounders, one cavalry Maxim, and a
+troop of the Protectorate Regiment under Major Panzera; Captain Lord
+Charles Bentinck with two troops of A Squadron holding the reserve.
+The entire operations from this side were conducted by Colonel Hore.
+Colonel Baden-Powell and his staff--Major Lord Edward Cecil, Chief
+Staff Officer, Captain Wilson, A.D.C., and Lieutenant the Hon. A. H.
+C. Hanbury-Tracy--watched the progress of the fight from Dummie Fort.
+
+Our guns moved into position during the night, throwing up
+emplacements for the attack, and as soon as they could see, Major
+Panzera opened fire. It was yet dark, although there came a faint
+glimmer of light from the east, but not sufficient to prevent the
+flashes from the muzzles of the guns and the glow of the bursting
+shells from being plainly visible. Until that moment there had been no
+sign of any living thing about the veldt between us and the Boer
+lines, and there was no sound. We had seen C and D Squadrons creeping
+to their positions under the guidance of the scout Cooke. Captain Lord
+Charles Bentinck had deployed across the front of the Boer position,
+taking up his place upon the left of the line. Close to him and but
+little in advance, the gunners had ensconced themselves behind a few
+sods of earth and sacks of sand. These operations marked the
+preliminary of the fight, from which, as the armoured train steamed to
+its post, completing the units in our attack, nothing had been omitted
+which might increase our chances of success.
+
+At 4.15 a.m. our first shells were thrown upon the enemy's position,
+the shells bursting short and beyond Game Tree with no very striking
+effect. Upon the left of Game Tree and extending to the receding wall
+of the fort, some sixty yards distant, there was a heavy overgrowth of
+bushes, upon which, as the enemy seemed to be firing from concealed
+pits in their midst, the cavalry Maxim concentrated its fire. Away to
+the right there was the automatic rattle of the Maxim in the armoured
+train, and the sharp crack of the Hotchkiss. For the first
+three-quarters of an hour the attack was left to Major Panzera, who,
+it was hoped, would effect a breach in the parapet through the agency
+of his guns. But, unfortunately, the damage inflicted upon the fort
+did not materially aid the charge which our men were so soon and so
+very gallantly to make, and which, when completed, revealed the fact
+that Colonel Baden-Powell had also organised a frontal attack upon an
+entrenched and impregnable position, with most lamentable results. A
+few of the enemy were put out of action by our shrapnel shells
+bursting in such a manner as to search out the interior of the fort
+with their sharp-edged segments, but the strength of the fort was so
+great and had been so increased during the night, that the artillery
+which was available was not sufficiently heavy for our purpose, while
+the wisdom of using the guns at all is eminently questionable. The
+character of our attack needed a movement which was quietly delivered,
+and which was in the nature of a surprise. So far as the fact is of
+value, in appreciating the appalling disaster which upon that morning
+befell our arms, our gunfire simply warned the garrison in the fort to
+stand to their arms. There is no doubt that the employment of the guns
+was a blunder in keeping with the conception of the attack. Colonel
+Baden-Powell, one has to say regretfully, upon this occasion was
+instrumental in bringing about quite needless loss of life. Presently,
+as we watched, we could see the signal being given to the armoured
+train "to cease fire," and a moment afterwards the base notes of the
+steam whistle boomed forth, when, as though waiting for this signal,
+"Big Ben," whose emplacement was some 6,000 yards to the south-east in
+the rear, began to shell the armoured train. As the echoes of the big
+gun died away, a roll of musketry from our own line and from the fort
+swept across the veldt, and for a few brief moments the hail of
+bullets was like the opening shower of a tropical deluge. Upon the
+east Captain Vernon with C and D Squadrons had begun the charge. Their
+position at this moment was in echelon--Captain Sandford with a troop
+of C Squadron was upon the right extremity, with Captain Vernon in the
+centre, and Captain Fitzclarence upon his left. As Captain Vernon gave
+the word to charge they opened out into skirmishing order, maintaining
+the while successive volleys with perfect accuracy. The advance was
+well carried out; indeed, its order and style were worthy of the best
+traditions of our army, and received tributes of admiration from all
+the commanding officers present. As they advanced the fire of the
+enemy was principally delivered from the front of the fort and the
+rifle intrenchments in the scrub. For a moment it seemed as though the
+face opposed to the rush of Captain Vernon and Captain Sandford was a
+mere wall requiring only to be scaled for the fort to be captured.
+But, when the men approached within three hundred yards of the fort,
+rifles rang out from every possible point, and the ground was swept by
+Mauser and Martini bullets. The men who charged through this zone of
+fire suffered terribly, and the conclusion must have forced itself
+upon their minds that they were going to their death. As each face of
+the fort became engaged the fire of the enemy began to have a telling
+effect upon our charging line. Captain Sandford was the first to fall,
+mortally wounded with a bullet in the spine. He fell down, calling to
+his men to continue the charge; but where he had fallen, he died. Our
+men now began to drop rather rapidly, and Captain Fitzclarence was
+disabled with a bullet in the thigh. His place was taken by Lieutenant
+Swinburne, who at once continued the charge, that officer and
+Lieutenant Bridges, of the same squadron, being among the nine who,
+upon the termination of the fight, were unwounded. The ground around
+the fort was becoming dotted with the figures of our wounded men,
+who, although they were but an irregular soldiery, followed their
+officers with the pluck and dogged determination of veterans. The
+brunt of the fight now fell upon the companies under the immediate
+command of Captain Vernon, who, undaunted by the impossibility of his
+task, steadily fought his way forward. As they approached still
+nearer, his men, undisturbed by the shower of bullets which fell about
+them, cheered repeatedly, the echo of those cheers, giving rise to the
+impression that the capture of the position was imminent. The steady
+rush of our men, undeflected by the worst that the enemy could do, was
+rapidly demoralising those who were firing from behind the loopholes
+in the fort, and it may have been that, had we not had our responsible
+officers shot or killed before we reached the walls of the fort, a
+different story might have to be told. As it happened, when Captain
+Vernon, with whom was Lieutenant Paton, steadied his men for the wild
+impetuosity of the last charge, a bullet struck him in the body. For a
+brief interval he stopped, but, refusing the entreaty of Lieutenant
+Paton that he should fall out, he joined that officer once more in
+taking the lead. From the point which they had gained the character of
+the fort was seen, and the heavy fire under which it was defended
+showed it to be impregnable. It rose some seven feet from the ground,
+from the edges of a ditch with sides that it was almost impossible to
+climb. It was certain death which stared them in the face within
+twenty-five yards, but not a man was dismayed. They continued. The
+ditch was before them, the fort above them, and through double tiers
+of loopholes came the enemy's fire. Our men from one side of the ditch
+fired point-blank at an enemy who, from behind his loophole, fired
+point-blank at him. Here those who had survived until now were either
+killed or wounded, and it was here that Captain Vernon was hit again,
+as he, with Lieutenant Paton and the scout Cooke, whose tunic at the
+end of the engagement was found to be riddled with bullets,
+endeavoured to clamber into the fort. Captain Vernon and Lieutenant
+Paton managed by superhuman efforts to reach the loopholes, into which
+they emptied their revolvers. Their example was eagerly followed by
+the few who remained, and who were shot down as they plied their
+bayonets through the apertures. Here Captain Vernon, Lieutenant Paton,
+Corporal Pickard, Sergeant Ross, and many others were killed. Captain
+Vernon was shot in the head, the third wound which he had received
+within two hundred yards. Lieutenant Paton was shot in the region of
+the heart. Bugler Morgan, who was the first to ply his bayonet, was
+shot in three places, but it is believed that he will live. Then a
+mighty roar rose up, and we who had not taken part in the charge,
+again thought that the position had been carried. But it was the
+triumphant shout of the Boers, who, from the quick manner in which
+they followed us in hoisting up the Red Cross flag, would seem to have
+been partially demoralised by the keenness of our attack. With the
+dead and dying about them, and the area of the wounded encircling the
+fort, those of our men who were left fell back savagely and sullenly,
+with a contempt of the enemy's fire and the desire to renew the
+attack. Further assault was impossible, and, though we continued to
+fire upon the position until stretcher-parties were sent out, the
+fight was practically over upon our retirement. When they fell in
+again, out of the sixty men that had been engaged in the charge only
+nine were unwounded. Our killed were twenty-one; our wounded thirty,
+of whom four have since died. There were also three who were prisoners
+in the hands of the enemy.
+
+Soon after the commencement of operations the chief staff officer gave
+me permission to move forward from Dummie Fort, and I therefore rode
+over to the position occupied by Captain Lord Charles Bentinck, and
+afterwards to Game Tree, joining Surgeon-Major Anderson, when the Red
+Cross flag was hoisted on the scene of the engagement. The heavy
+vapour from the shells still impregnated the air, and hanging loosely
+over the veldt were masses of grey-black and brown-yellow smoke
+clouds. Boers on horseback and on foot were moving quickly in all
+directions, and mounted detachments were seen advancing at a gallop
+from the big laager upon the eastern front, with their rifles swung
+loosely across their knees. They had been proceeding to reinforce Game
+Tree Fort, upon an order from Field Cornet Steinekamp, when the
+cessation of hostilities had taken place under the provisions of the
+Red Cross. Game Tree Fort presented an animated picture. The enemy
+thronged its walls, held noisy conversation in scattered groups, that,
+breaking up in one spot, congregated the next moment in some other.
+The bushes about the fort were alive with men who, with their rifles
+in their hands and a few loose cartridges at their side, were prepared
+at any moment to resume hostilities. The fort itself showed no traces
+of the shelling, although it were impossible, from the seventy-five
+yards limit, up to which we were permitted to approach, to examine it
+very thoroughly. It has been claimed that the fort was strengthened
+during the night, but signs were absent by which one could detect
+traces of the new work, and, in view of this fact, one is disinclined
+to impugn the statement of Commandant Botha, who told me that he had
+been expecting the attack for the past two weeks. From where we were
+the strength of the fort was very apparent, seeming altogether
+unnecessary for the requirements of such a post, unless definite
+information had been carried to the enemy about our plans. It may be
+that the night attack which Captain Fitzclarence had led against the
+Boer trenches upon the east of the town earlier in the siege had
+prompted the enemy to strengthen all their positions. The fort itself
+had been given a head covering of wooden beams, earth, and corrugated
+iron; the entrance in the rear was blocked, and in every other way it
+appeared impregnable. When the order came for our men to retire, Dr.
+Hamilton proceeded from the armoured train with the Red Cross flag,
+making his way to the wounded in the face of a heavy fire. But as soon
+as it was recognised by the enemy that he was desirous of helping the
+sufferers the firing was at once stopped, and Commandant Botha himself
+apologised. The field around the Boer position at once became dotted
+with similar emblems, for the character of the charge and the severity
+of the fire had confined our losses within a very small radius of the
+position. The scene here was intensely pathetic, and everywhere there
+were dead or dying men. The Boers moved out from their trenches and
+swarmed around with idle curiosity to inspect the injuries which they
+had inflicted upon their foe, while a constant procession came from
+the immediate precincts of the fort, bearing those of our men who had
+fallen within its actual circumference. In their way they assisted us,
+although for some time they would not permit the waggons of the
+ambulance to approach nearer than half a mile, nor at first would
+they entertain our proposal that the services of the armoured train
+should be employed to facilitate the conveyance of casualties to the
+base.
+
+[Illustration: Boers Inspecting the British Killed at Game Tree Hill.]
+
+As Surgeon-Major Anderson proceeded with his work, assisted by Dr. T.
+Hayes, Dr. Hamilton and a staff of dressers, the character of the
+wounds which our men had suffered gave rise to the impression that the
+enemy had used explosive bullets, although it is perhaps possible that
+Martini rifles fired at close range would account for the wide area of
+injury on those who had been wounded. In one case a bullet in the head
+had blown off rather more than half the skull; in another a small
+puncture in the thigh had completely pulverised the limb; while in a
+third, in which the bullet had struck just above the knee-cap, it had
+raised a mass of shattered flesh and bone into a pulpy mound. With
+these fearful injuries before one it was scarcely possible to believe
+that the wounds inflicted had originated through the impact of Mauser
+or Martini bullets. The Field Cornet, with whom I conversed at some
+length, upon being shown the dreadful condition of the wounds,
+admitted that at one time explosive bullets had been served out, but
+that it was not possible that they could have been used that morning,
+since he was convinced that that particular ammunition had already
+been expended. He then produced a bandolier filled with Dum-dum
+bullets, and suggested that since so much of the Mark IV. ammunition
+had been taken by them from us, our men had been hit by bullets which
+we ourselves had manufactured. I pointed out that this particular
+ammunition had been recalled, so far as Mafeking was concerned, since
+it had been found to strip in the barrel of the rifle. The Field
+Cornet then said that he and his men were already aware of the
+uselessness of this particular pattern of bullet, since upon many
+occasions they had been hit by some curious missile from which it was
+evident that the casing had stripped, and from which no injury had
+been sustained. It was a strange conversation to have with a man
+against whom the moment before we had been fighting, but from time to
+time, as we were waiting for the wounded to be brought up, the
+conversation was reopened between us.
+
+The attitude of the Boers around us was one of stolid composure, not
+altogether unmixed with sympathy. At one time almost one hundred had
+assembled around those who were dressing the wounded. With their
+rifles upon their backs and two bandoliers crossing each other upon
+their chests, they appeared a stalwart body of men; for the most part
+they were big and burly, broad in their shoulders, ponderous in their
+gait, and uncouth in their appearance, combining a somewhat soiled and
+tattered appearance with an air of triumph. Their clothing was an
+ill-assorted array of patterns and materials, altogether incongruous
+and out of keeping with the campaign upon which they were then
+engaged. Some of them, with quite unnecessary brutality, had doffed
+their own rifles and bandoliers, in order that they might show and
+swing somewhat aggressively before our notice, the spoils of the
+battlefield. In this manner they sported Lee-Metford rifles and
+bandoliers containing Mark II. and Mark IV. ammunition. But for the
+most part they behaved with a certain decorum, and it may be that the
+weapon which they bore was the silent confirmation of the Field
+Cornet's words. Here and there they made some attempt to rob the
+wounded and despoil the dead, but when I remonstrated with the Field
+Cornet he expressed, with every appearance of sincerity, his very keen
+regret, ordering the transgressors from the field, and explaining that
+he was unable to accept the responsibility for such acts, since,
+although they had instructions to respect the dead, the younger men
+were so unruly as to be beyond his control. The Field Cornet proceeded
+to assert that the acts of his men were neither so barbarous nor so
+inhuman as those which our own soldiers had committed after the battle
+of Elandslaagte, where, he said, Imperial troops had stripped the body
+of General de Koch, leaving him to lie upon the field wounded and
+naked, and adding that we were morally responsible, and held as such
+by every right-minded person in the Transvaal and Orange Free State,
+for the subsequent death of the Boer general. This opinion was loudly
+endorsed by a number of the enemy, who had collected around us, one of
+whom stated that he had received orders from Commandant Botha to take
+possession of any effects which were found upon the bodies of the
+wounded or dead. I referred this man's statement to the Field Cornet,
+when quite a lively altercation in Dutch ensued. The Field Cornet
+denied that any such order had been given by Commandant Botha, and
+that, had any orders at all been given, they referred merely to papers
+and to the removal of side arms and ammunition. I pointed out to him
+the bodies of five of our men whose pockets had been turned inside
+out, and who were at that moment being brought up under an escort of
+the enemy. He was also confronted with three wounded who declared that
+they had had their personal effects stolen as they lay about the Boer
+trenches, their rings taken from their fingers, and their money taken
+from their pockets. The Field Cornet then promised that if any man who
+had done such a thing could be identified he would be immediately
+punished, while the more reputable of those who gathered round us
+guaranteed, if not the restitution of the property, summary conviction
+for the offenders. And in this connection it must be said that during
+the course of the afternoon a Boer orderly came in, under a flag of
+truce, to our lines to restore to Bugler Morgan his silver watch and
+_�_3, which had been taken from him as he lay, shot through each
+thigh, in the trenches of the enemy.
+
+Very striking was the tone of harmony which characterised this
+temporary intercourse upon the field of battle between Boer and
+Briton. People who had been pitted against each other in mortal combat
+the moment before were now fraternising with every outward sign of
+decency and amity. This is doubtless due in some measure to the
+strange composition of the two contending forces, since so many upon
+the one side have friends and even relatives fighting against them
+that it seems the most natural thing in the world for any mutual
+acquaintance of one particular individual to make inquiries about his
+welfare. These greetings impressed the scene with a note of
+pleasantness and good feeling which was in most happy contrast to the
+surroundings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE ADVENT OF THE NEW YEAR
+
+
+                              MAFEKING, _January 3rd, 1900_.
+
+New Year's Eve drew to itself much of the sentiment which is usually
+associated with that event. We perhaps did not ring the old year out
+and the new year in, because the sonorous clang of bells presages in
+these times the advent of shells. When the enemy lay their gun upon
+the town the bell at the outlook rings once; when its precise
+direction has been located it peals according to the number which has
+been given to that direction. Then there comes the firing-bell, by
+which time all good people should have taken cover. It will be seen,
+therefore, that the ringing of bells has a particular significance,
+and one from which it is inappropriate and inadvisable to depart. But
+our celebration of New Year's Eve was a quiet gathering of men drawn
+from the various points of the town, who assembled within the shadows
+of the English Church to sing a hymn and give voice to our National
+Anthem. It had been raining during the evening; the air was fresh and
+fragrant, and the ground was very damp. They came in their cloaks;
+they carried their rifles and wore their bandoliers, since it was not
+a time to chance the possibilities of an attack. There were perhaps
+one hundred of them, and had it been convenient to allow a general
+muster, the whole garrison would have very willingly attended. When
+everything was ready the great stillness of the night was broken
+gently by a prelude from the harmonium, which, dropping to a low tone,
+became a mere accompaniment to the human voices. Then the volume of
+music grew somewhat fuller until it carried in its depths the voices
+of the singers merged into one torrent of stirring melody; then there
+was a fresh pause, and as the echoes of the hymn died away, lingering
+in the rafters of the building until countless spirits seemed to be
+taking up the refrain, the voice of the preacher broke out in words
+which manfully endeavoured to cheer the congregation. We stood and
+listened, rapt with an attention which gave more to the scene than to
+the exhortations of the man, and waiting for the time to sing the
+National Anthem. In these moments, when one is so far from the Queen
+and the capital of her great Empire, the singing of the National
+Anthem has a weight and meaning much finer and much greater than that
+imparted to the hymn when the words are sung at home. Presently the
+voices took up the hymn, throwing into the darkness of the church some
+whiteness of the dawn which will usher in the days of peace upon the
+termination of the war. The National Anthem, sang amid these
+surroundings, was incomparably beautiful, seeming to strengthen the
+irresolute, even cheering those who were already strong, and imparting
+to every one a happier frame of mind and a greater spirit of
+contentment. Scenes on a smaller scale, but identical in purpose, were
+enacted at almost every one of our posts, and the hour of midnight
+must have borne to the watchful sentries of the enemy some slight
+knowledge of the pleasing duty upon which the garrison was engaged. It
+was only for a moment--just so long, indeed, as it took to sing the
+verses of the anthem. Then, when this was over, the harmony of night
+fell once more upon the garrison.
+
+The New Year has brought to Mafeking and the garrison that is
+beleaguered within its walls, no signs of the fulfilment of the
+prophecy that relief would come by the end of December. Indeed, the
+closing year of the nineteenth century was ushered in with the boom of
+cannon and the fire of small arms, and in a style generally which does
+not differ from any one of the many days during which the siege and
+bombardment have lasted. There was no cessation of hostilities similar
+to that which characterised Christmas Day; firing began at an early
+hour in the morning from the enemy's artillery, and did not terminate
+until the evening gun gave a few hours' peace to the town. For quite a
+fortnight there has been no such heavy fire, and it would seem that,
+for our especial edification, the authorities in Pretoria had sent to
+the commandant of the Boer forces that are investing us, a New Year's
+gift of three waggon-loads of ammunition. A new gun was also
+despatched to them, and, its position being constantly shifted, its
+fire has since played upon every quarter of the town. For the moment
+we had attached no great importance to this new weapon, but after the
+first few rounds it was discovered to be employing what are called
+combustible bombs. These new shells do not usually explode, seeming to
+discharge a chemical liquid which ignites upon contact with the air.
+They are also filled with lumps of sulphur, and so severe might be the
+damage from this new agency of destruction which the Boers have
+turned against Mafeking that the most stringent orders have been
+issued for any one finding these shells to see that they are
+immediately buried. At present, beyond a few unimportant blazes in the
+gardens of the town, no damage has been caused, while, in the
+meantime, our situation here has in no way altered.
+
+It would appear that our resistance is beginning to exasperate the
+enemy, driving him to a pitch in which he is determined to respect
+neither the Convention of Geneva nor the promptings of humanity.
+Again, despite the innumerable warnings which he has received, for two
+days in succession has he made the hospital and the women's laager the
+sole object of his attentions. Yesterday the shells fell sufficiently
+wide of these two places to justify the broad-minded in giving to his
+artillery officers the benefit of the doubt; but to-day it is
+impossible to find any extenuating circumstances whatever in his
+favour, and I very much regret to have to state that through the
+shelling of the women's laager many children's lives have been
+imperilled, many women wounded. From time to time every effort has
+been made to give to the gentler sex the most perfect immunity, but it
+would seem as though we can no longer consider as safe these poor
+innocent and helpless non-combatants. The children of some of the most
+respected and most loyal townspeople have been killed in this manner,
+just as they were romping within the trenches which encircle their
+retreat. For two hours this morning the Creusot and quick-firing guns
+of the enemy fired into the laager, creating scenes of panic and
+consternation which it is not fitting to describe. Nine
+one-hundred-pound shells burst within the precincts of that place in
+the space of an hour, and in palliation of this there is nothing
+whatever which can be said, since the enemy had posted a heliograph
+station upon a kopje a few thousand yards distant from the point of
+attack. As the big shells sped across the town to drop within the
+laager beyond, the enemy's signallers heliographed their direction to
+the emplacement of Big Ben. Our own signalling corps intercepted the
+messages from the enemy, reading out, from time to time, the purport
+of the flashes. The first shell was short, and the enemy's signallers
+worked vigorously. The second was too wide. The third fell within the
+laager itself, the pieces piercing, when it burst, a number of tents.
+To this shot the heliograph flashed a cordial expression of approval.
+These actions upon the part of the Boers, as repeatedly pointed out to
+them, make it almost impossible for us to regard our foe as other than
+one which is inspired with the emotions of a degraded people and the
+crude cruelty and vindictive animosity of savages. Just now, when the
+press of our feelings is beyond confinement, there is nothing but a
+universal wish that we may speedily be relieved and so enabled to
+enjoy the initiative against the Boers. When that moment comes it must
+not be forgotten that we have suffered bitterly, and in a way which
+must be taken as excusing any excesses which may occur.
+
+[Illustration: The Colonel on the Look-out at Headquarters.]
+
+As I returned from a visit to the women's laager Colonel Baden-Powell
+was lying in his easy-chair beneath the roof of the verandah of the
+Headquarters Office. Colonel Baden-Powell is young, as men go in the
+army, with a keen appreciation of the possibilities of his career,
+swayed by ambition, indifferent to sentimental emotion. In stature he
+is short, while his features are sharp and smooth. He is eminently a
+man of determination, of great physical endurance and capacity, and
+of extraordinary reticence. His reserve is unbending, and one would
+say, quoting a phrase of Mr. Pinero's, that fever would be the only
+heat which would permeate his body. He does not go about freely, since
+he is tied to his office through the multitudinous cares of his
+command, and he is chiefly happy when he can snatch the time to escape
+upon one of those nocturnal, silent expeditions, which alone calm and
+assuage the perpetual excitement of his present existence. Outwardly,
+he maintains an impenetrable screen of self-control, observing with a
+cynical smile the foibles and caprices of those around him. He seems
+ever bracing himself to be on guard against a moment in which he
+should be swept by some unnatural and spontaneous enthusiasm, in which
+by a word, by an expression of face, by a movement, or in the turn of
+a phrase, he should betray the rigours of the self-control under which
+he lives. Every passing townsman regards him with curiosity not
+unmixed with awe. Every servant in the hotel watches him, and he, as a
+consequence, seldom speaks without a preternatural deliberation and an
+air of decisive finality. He seems to close every argument with a
+snap, as though the steel manacles of his ambition had checkmated the
+emotions of the man in the instincts of the officer. He weighs each
+remark before he utters it, and suggests by his manner, as by his
+words, that he has considered the different effects it might
+conceivably have on any mind as the expression of his own mind. As an
+officer, he has given to Mafeking a complete and assured security, to
+the construction of which he has brought a very practical knowledge of
+the conditions of Boer warfare, of the Boers themselves, and of the
+strategic worth of the adjacent areas. His espionagic excursions to
+the Boer lines have gained him an intimate and accurate idea of the
+value of the opposing forces and a mass of _data_ by which he can
+immediately counteract the enemy's attack. He loves the night, and
+after his return from the hollows in the veldt, where he has kept so
+many anxious vigils, he lies awake hour after hour upon his camp
+mattress in the verandah, tracing out, in his mind, the various means
+and agencies by which he can forestall their move, which, unknown to
+them, he had personally watched. He is a silent man, and it would seem
+that silence has become in his heart a curious religion. In the noisy
+day he yearns for the noiseless night, in which he can slip into the
+vistas of the veldt, an unobtrusive spectator of the mystic communion
+of tree with tree, of twilight with darkness, of land with water, of
+early morn with fading night, with the music of the journeying winds
+to speak to him and to lull his thoughts. As he makes his way across
+our lines the watchful sentry strains his eyes a little more to keep
+the figure of the colonel before him, until the undulations of the
+veldt conceal his progress. He goes in the privacy of the night, when
+it be no longer a season of moonlight, when, although the stars were
+full, the night be dim. The breezes of the veldt are warm and gentle,
+impregnated with the fresh fragrances of the Molopo, although, as he
+walks with rapid, almost running, footsteps, leaving the black blur of
+the town for the arid and stony areas to the west, a new wind meets
+him--a wind that is clear and keen and dry, the wind of the wastes
+that wanders for ever over the monotonous sands of the desert. It
+accompanies him as he walks as though to show and to whisper with
+gentle gusts that it knew of his intention. It sighs amid the sentinel
+trees that stand straight and isolated about the Boer lines. He goes
+on, never faltering, bending for a moment behind a clump of rocks,
+screening himself next behind some bushes, crawling upon his hands and
+knees, until his movements, stirring a few loose stones, create a
+thin, grating noise in the vast silence about him. His head is low,
+his eyes gaze straight upon the camp of the enemy; in a little he
+moves again, his inspection is over, and he either changes to a fresh
+point or startles some dozing sentry as he slips back into town.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+NATIVE LIFE
+
+
+                             MAFEKING, _January 10th, 1900_.
+
+During the time which has elapsed since Christmas an interesting event
+has been the deposition of Wessels, the chief of the Baralongs. At a
+_kotla_ of the tribe, to which the councillors and petty chiefs were
+bidden by the Civil Commissioner, Mr. Bell notified the tribe of his
+decision. The deposed chief, a man of no parts whatever, but one who
+unfortunately reveals all the vices of civilisation, has been put upon
+sick-leave, the reins of government being placed in the hands of his
+two chief councillors. Wessels had been instigating his tribe to
+refuse to work for the military authorities here, and through his
+instrumentality it has become difficult to obtain native labour and
+native runners. He told them in his amiable fashion that the English
+wished to make slaves of them, and that they would not be paid for any
+services which they rendered; nor would they, added he, taking
+advantage of an unfortunate turn in the situation, be given any food,
+but left to starve when the critical moment came. With the change
+which had been adopted and which has been given the sanction of the
+_kotla_, it is hoped that matters may progress more smoothly and the
+tribe itself increase in prosperity. It was an interesting meeting,
+and one which recalled the early days of Africa, when the authority of
+the great White Queen was not a power paramount in the council
+chambers of the tribes. Wessels, unwilling and assuming an air of
+injured dignity, filled his place in the _kotla_ for the last time;
+around him there were the chiefs of the tribe, his blood relatives,
+and his councillors. Their attire was a weird mixture of effete
+savagery and of the civilisation of the sort which is picked up from
+living in touch with white Africa and missionary societies. Many black
+legs were clothed in trousers, many black shoulders wore coats. Here
+and there, as relics of the past, there was the ostrich feather in the
+hat, the fly whisk, composed of the hairs from the tail of an animal,
+the iron or bone skin-scraper with which to remove the perspiration of
+the body. A few wore shoes upon naked feet, a few others sported
+watch-chains and spoke English. At the back of the enclosure there was
+a native guard who shouldered Martini-Henri rifles, elephant guns,
+Sniders, or sporting rifles. A few of these were garmented with skins
+of animals upon the naked body. After a stately and not altogether
+friendly greeting to the man who had ordered the assembly to meet, the
+reasons which had brought about the contemplated change in the head of
+the tribe were stated in English and then translated by the
+interpreter. The old chief snorted with disgust and endeavoured to
+coerce his people to reject the demands made upon them. But they had
+been made before a body of men who were capable of realising the
+worthlessness of their chief, and who, under the protection of the
+Imperial delegate, did not mind endorsing the suggestions and
+expressing their opinions. The younger and more turbulent, who
+recognised, in the failings of the chief, follies dear to their own
+hearts, were inclined to express sympathy for the man who was so soon
+to be compelled to relinquish the sweets of office. They spoke at once
+in an angry chatter and confused chortle of sounds, which, if
+eloquent, were wholly insufficient. The chief then threw himself back
+upon his chair, spat somewhat contemptuously, and finally acquiesced
+in the decision, obtaining some small consolation from the fact that
+his official allowance would not be discontinued. Then the _kotla_
+ended, and the indunas rose up and left, standing together in animated
+groups around the palisades, for the discussion of the scene in which
+they had just taken part. Then, as the decision spread throughout the
+tribe, children and women, young and old, banded together to watch
+these final indabas.
+
+The scene had been solemn enough beneath the _kotla_ tree, but outside
+the natural instinct of these children of the veldt soon asserted
+itself, and they began to dance. They formed into small groups of
+about forty, to the sound of hand-clapping, a not unmusical intoning,
+and much jumping and stamping of feet. It would seem that they were
+dancing an old war-dance which had degenerated into one symbolical of
+love and happiness. Around the joyous groups the old crones
+circulated, clapping their withered hands, shrieking delight in
+cracked voices, and generally encouraging the festivity. The dance was
+curious, and appeared to catch echoes of many lands. There was the
+diffident maiden, anxious to be loved, but bashful, modest in her
+manner and in her gestures, until she saw the man that could thrill
+her; then she glowed, and her steps were animated, buoyant, and
+caressing. A smile irradiated her face, while a slight, almost
+imperceptible, movement pulsed through her body. Behind her were her
+companions, the same age as herself, who imitated her with feverish
+sympathy, instinctively reproducing her moods of body and of mind. The
+vibration that stole through the bodies of the dancers increased
+gradually until, from statues with wicked eyes, full of sensuous
+expression and amorous allurement, they wavered like thin flames of
+love in a gust of passion. As the potency of their feelings grew
+steadily stronger, they swayed in languorous movements, throwing out
+sinuous arms, their feeble faces smiling, their graceful bodies
+bending in eager attitudes of expectation. The air became heavy with
+noise, thick with a veritable tumult, as the dancers jumped more
+wildly; now they threw themselves into postures in the circle,
+shifting rapidly with tiny screams of delight and a gliding, clinging
+motion of their arms and legs as though, coy and eager, they would
+escape the cherished caresses of their lovers. As they glided, their
+actions seemed always to be marked with the same regularity, with the
+same regard to rhythm, and with an innate conception of grace. When
+they shook their bodies it was with an abandonment that was, at least,
+graceful; if they stood, rocking in a sea of easy emotion, as though
+victorious, they would hug their capture with an air of conquest which
+was delightful to behold. As they rose to the pinnacle of their
+happiness, when their countenances were suffused with love and
+tenderness, they infused into their emotions an appearance of sadness.
+It was as though a cloud had suddenly fallen upon them, revealing to
+them that their endearments had been abortive, that their ambitions
+were not to be realised and that they themselves had been flouted.
+Then there stole upon them the incarnation of sorrow, in which,
+finding themselves alone, uncared for, unconsidered, they resolved, in
+a burst of artificial tears, to have done with giddiness, and to take
+up with the delights of placid domesticity. Then the dance terminated,
+she, who had by her graceful contortions and sympathetic bearing moved
+her audience to laughter and tears first, being considered the
+victorious. Thus did these simple natives celebrate the new era.
+
+If dancing be one form of amusement here, the siege has also brought
+the means and opportunity of indulging in a pastime of quite a
+different character. If sniping be the rule by day, cattle raiding by
+night gives to the natives some profitable employment. During last
+night the Baralongs secured, by a successful raid, some twenty-four
+head of cattle, and in the course of last week another raiding
+detachment looted some eighteen oxen. The native enjoys himself when
+he is able to participate in some cattle-raiding excursion to the
+enemy's lines, and, although the local tribe may not have proved of
+much value as a unit of defence, their success at lifting the Boer
+cattle confers upon them a unique value in the garrison. We were
+deploring the poorness of the cattle which remained at our disposal
+only a few days ago, but the rich capture which these natives have
+made has given us a welcome change from bone and skin to juicy beef.
+These night excursions are eagerly anticipated by the tribe, and
+almost daily is the consent of the Colonel sought in relation to such
+an object. During the day the natives who have been authorised by
+Colonel Baden-Powell to take part in the raid approach as near to the
+grazing cattle as discretion permits, marking down when twilight
+appears the position of those beasts that can be most readily detached
+from the mob. Then, when darkness is complete, they creep up, divested
+of their clothes, crawling upon hands and knees, until they have
+completely surrounded their prey. Then quietly, and as rapidly as
+circumstances will allow them, each man "gets a move on" his
+particular beast, so that in a very short space of time some ten or
+twenty cattle are unconsciously leaving the main herd. When the
+raiders have drawn out of earshot of the Boer lines they urge on their
+captures, running behind them and on either side of them, but without
+making any noise whatsoever. As they reach their stadt, their approach
+having been watched by detached bodies of natives, who, lying
+concealed in the veldt, had taken up positions by which to secure the
+safe return of their friends, the tribes go forth to welcome them, and
+when the prizes have been inspected and report duly made to
+Headquarters they celebrate the event with no little feasting and
+dancing. Upon the following day merriment reigns supreme, and for the
+time the siege is forgotten.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+BOMBAST AND BOMB-PROOFS
+
+
+                             MAFEKING, _January 20th, 1900_.
+
+Yesterday we completed the first hundred days of our siege, and when
+we look back beyond the weeks of our investment into those earlier
+days it is difficult to realise the trials and difficulties which we
+have undergone, and to believe that the period which has elapsed has
+witnessed the inauguration of a new era for South Africa. In those
+early days when we first came here Mafeking was a flourishing
+commercial centre, contented with its position, proud of its supremacy
+over other towns, and now, perhaps, if outwardly it be much the same,
+its future is impressed with only the faint echo of its former
+greatness. The town itself has not suffered very much; here and there
+its area has been more confined for purposes of defence, while the
+streets and buildings bear witness to the effects of the bombardment.
+Houses are shattered, gaping holes in the walls of buildings, furrows
+in the roads, broken trees, wrecked telegraph poles, and that general
+appearance of destruction which marks the path of a cyclone are the
+outward and visible signs of the enemy's fire. We shall leave in
+Mafeking a population somewhat subdued and harassed with anxiety for
+their future, since the public and private losses will require the
+work of many anxious years before any restoration of the fallen
+fortunes can be effected. The pity of it is that all this distress
+might have been so easily avoided, and would have been, had the
+authorities in Cape Town and at home taken any heed of the very
+pressing messages which were despatched daily to them; but it was
+decreed that Mafeking should shift for itself for so long as it was
+able, and then--surrender. This, however, did not meet with the
+approval of Colonel Baden-Powell, with the result that we are still
+fighting and still holding our own. We have even achieved some little
+place in the sieges of the world, and our present record has already
+surpassed many of the more prominent sieges. But there is not much
+consolation to be gained from contemplating the position which we may
+eventually take up in the records of famous sieges, and, truth to
+tell, there is such glorious uncertainty about the date of our relief
+that it is perhaps possible that we may surpass the longest of
+historic sieges. At one time we confidently anticipated that the siege
+would be over in ten days. This, however, was in the days of our
+youth; since then we have learned wisdom, and eagerly seize
+opportunities of snapping up any unconsidered trifles in the way of
+bets which lay odds upon our being "out of the wood" in another month.
+Events are moving so slowly below that it does not seem as though we
+shall be relieved by the end of February. The relief column, which a
+month ago appeared almost daily in "Orders," is now no longer
+mentioned in polite society, although there be little reason to doubt
+that, at some very remote date, the troops may make their appearance
+here.
+
+The early part of November witnessed the first attempt of the
+Commissariat to control the stocks of provisions in the town. All
+persons holding stocks of Kaffir corn, meal, crushed meal, yellow
+mealies, and flour, were ordered to declare the quantities and price
+at which they would be willing to dispose of them to the authorities.
+Captain Ryan, the Commissariat officer, was an energetic and
+painstaking individual, whose aim was to prove his department a
+financial success, and so rigidly did he adhere to this resolve that
+the questions involved by the Commissariat became amongst the most
+important of the siege. Traders claimed that the economy of the
+situation gave them a siege profit, since, as the Government had not
+been shrewd enough to lay down stores, those who had done this at
+their own risk, and upon their own initiative, should be permitted, at
+least, to make a margin of profit in proportion to the prices which
+they could obtain for their goods. This contention, however, was not
+upheld by the Commissariat officer, who at once became the best hated
+man in Mafeking. Oddly enough, although the Government would not allow
+the merchants to reap the profit, they themselves, in virtue of the
+expense in connection with the issue of rations, were not above
+charging these expenses to prime cost, and so exorbitantly increasing
+themselves the retail price of the articles which they had taken over.
+What was perhaps the most objectionable feature in the findings of the
+Commissariat Department was that the merchant himself who disposed of
+his goods to the Government at a ruling which allowed but the profit
+incidental to the transaction of business in times of peace, was
+compelled to buy back, when he required goods of that particular
+variety, at the price which the Government had placed upon them.
+This, of course, seemed to the people unfair, and they were quite
+unable to obtain any satisfactory explanation of such procedure;
+satisfactory because the reasons vouchsafed assumed the right of the
+Government to a certain profit, denying, however, that rate in the
+same ratio of proportion to the individual. Among the chief obstacles
+against which Captain Ryan had to contend was the maintenance of the
+daily bread ration, since the supply of flour, of mealie meal, of
+oats, was not particularly great. There were many experiments made
+with the bread, but those which were most unsatisfactory failed
+because it had been found difficult to sift the husks from the oats
+once the oats had been crushed. While the issue of this particular
+bread lasted symptoms of acute dysentery prevailed, and in order to
+prevent an epidemic of dysentery from breaking out the Commissariat
+were compelled to adopt other methods of treatment. The bread
+eventually developed into a weighty circular brown biscuit, weighing
+anything under six ounces, about nine inches in circumference. These
+particular biscuits were less spiky, and less liable to create acute
+inflammation. They were issued to the entire garrison, excepting those
+who had been permitted to draw an invalid ration of white bread, and
+were preserved in many cases as mementoes of the siege. Although we
+have food enough to last several months this precaution is necessary,
+as when the siege is raised many weeks must elapse before supplies can
+come in. The garrison has been put upon a scale of reduced
+rations--1/2 lb. of bread, 1/2 lb. of meat per day. The reductions in
+bread took place in the early part of the year, while the orders in
+relation to the meat supply were issued during this week. Matches and
+milk are prohibited from public sale, and the latest order prevents
+the shops from opening. All supplies of biscuits, tea, and
+sugar--preserves also--have been commandeered. The shop-keepers and
+the hotel proprietors, and indeed anybody who can find any possible
+excuse for doing so, have trebled the price of their goods, pleading
+that the inflation is due to the siege. Accordingly, meal and flour
+have jumped from 27s. per bag to 50s.; potatoes, where they exist at
+all, are �2 per cwt.; fowls are 7s. 6d. each; and eggs 12s. per dozen.
+Milk and vegetables can no longer be obtained, and rice has taken the
+place of the latter among the menus. These figures mark the rise in
+the more important foodstuffs as sold across the counter, but the
+hotels have, in sympathy, followed the example, they, upon their part,
+attributing it to the increase which the wholesale merchants have
+decreed. A peg of whisky is 1s. 6d., dop brandy 1s., gin 1s., large
+stout is 4s., small beer 2s. In ordinary times whisky retails at 5s.
+per bottle. This rate has now advanced to 18s. per bottle and 80s. per
+case. Dop, which is usually 1s. 4d., is now 12s. per bottle; the
+difference upon beer is almost 200 per cent., and inferior cigarettes
+are now 18s. per hundred. Upon an inquiry among the publicans here, I
+was informed that the chief reason for the increase in their prices
+was to hinder the local soldiery from becoming intoxicated; this
+sudden regard for the moral welfare of the garrison on the part of the
+saloon keepers is however, oddly at variance with their earlier
+practices, and is in reality the flimsy pretext by which they seek to
+condone an almost unwarrantable act. Hitherto the constantly recurring
+evils arising from the sale of drink to soldiers and others performing
+military duties, have been openly encouraged by the hotel
+proprietors, who, although they now profess a fine appreciation for
+the moral obligations attached to their trade when prices are high and
+profits great, took no very serious steps at the outset to allay what
+was becoming a very serious menace to the community. Moreover, the
+hotels have demanded from such people as war correspondents and others
+brought here through business connected with the siege, rates which
+are far in advance of the ordinary tariffs, with equally preposterous
+demands for native servants and horse-feed. Indeed, whatever Mafeking
+may lose through the absence of business with the Transvaal, many will
+receive ample compensation from the high prices by which those who are
+able, are endeavouring to recoup themselves, and in a way which it is
+not possible to consider other than extortionate. Stores of all kinds
+are, however, rapidly giving out, and it would not have been possible
+for Mafeking to have sustained the siege so long had not the
+Government contractor, upon his own initiative, laid in far greater
+stocks of provisions than were provided for by his contract, and in
+this respect every credit should be given to the commercial foresight
+and sagacity by which these arrangements were inspired. For everything
+which is in daily want, in fact for the bare necessities of life upon
+the existing scale of reduced rations, Mafeking now depends upon the
+stores and bonded warehouse which represent the local branch of the
+contracting firm, Messrs. Julius Weil & Co. In their hands lies the
+issuing of the daily allowances of bread and meat to the garrison, of
+the forage for the horses, of the feeding of the natives. Indeed,
+there seemed no end to the resources of this house. When the siege
+began, had there been no Weil, the Government stocks would not have
+lasted two months, and, moreover, they did not know that the Weils had
+laid in these stores--a fact which again establishes how very meagre
+were the preparations made for the siege. Therefore, when the time
+comes to give honour to whom honour is due, notice should be taken of
+the important _r�le_ which this firm has fulfilled during the siege of
+Mafeking.
+
+The siege drags on, however, the days seeming to be an endless
+monotony in which there is absolutely nothing to sustain one's
+interest. Week by week we make a united and laborious attempt to whip
+our flagging energies into some activity. It is a hideous spectacle,
+but this Sunday celebration reveals how very trying has become the
+situation. The military authorities have been at their wits' end to
+find amusement for the garrison, and this effort has developed into a
+Sabbatarian charade in which we all assume an active co-operation, and
+try to think that we are having a very giddy and even gushing time.
+Colonel Baden-Powell, in this respect, makes an admirable
+stage-manager. Authors, scenic artists, stage hands, scene shifters,
+there are, of course, none; but in the middle of the week the Chief
+Staff Officer becomes the town crier, crying lustily, by means of
+proclamation, that, by the grace of God, upon the coming Sunday there
+will be a golf match or baby show, a concert or polo match, even some
+attempt at amateur theatricals. The Sunday respite is, however,
+immensely appreciated, and, indeed, it is a very welcome panacea to
+our siege-strung nerves. Where in England you people are saying, "Oh,
+bother Sunday," "How like a Sunday," we say, "Thank God it is Sunday,"
+implying, for that day in seven, a period of absolute rest and no
+little contentment. We are warriors on Sunday: bold, bad, and brave.
+We have our horses out on Sunday and take a toss as elegantly as we
+take our neighbour's money at cards in the evening, when fortune
+favours. We drink, we accept one another's invitations to meals of
+unsurpassing heaviness; we even invite ourselves to one another's
+houses. We drink, we eat, we flirt, we live in every second of the
+hours which constitute the Sunday, and upon the passing of the day it
+is as though we had entered into another world. As midnight arrives,
+we hasten back to our trenches filled with the good things of the day,
+even with the zest to penetrate the mysteries of another week of
+siege. In the morning we stand-to-arms at four o'clock, not because
+there is any special purpose for doing so, but rather that we may
+satisfy ourselves that we are soldiers; and then the labour of the day
+begins, and for six more days we stand-to-arms and wonder when the
+devil the enemy are coming on. We are very brave then, and at times we
+take ourselves so seriously that into each breast there comes the
+spirit of the Commander-in-Chief. Then we criticise the war, talk
+fatuously of what we would do, struggle somewhat ingloriously with the
+archaic jargon of the army, until, if our speech betrays our
+ignorance, we, nevertheless, make a mighty lot of noise. Then we are
+satisfied, though doubtless each thinks the other somewhat of a fool.
+
+To the man who looks on at all this, the gradual change which has come
+over the garrison is plainly discernible. In the beginning, when the
+Boers made war upon us, there was a contempt for bomb-proofs; there
+was a contempt for many other things besides, since each individual
+knew better than his Post Commander, and did not hesitate to tell him
+so, or rather to imply that he had told him so; but the scorn of
+bomb-proofs was mightier than the sword. In those days we feared
+nothing beyond mosquitoes and the creeping things of earth, but the
+change came silently, and although few people commented upon it, the
+transformation was completed within the first month of the siege. It
+grew, as it were, in a single night, from a village of mud-walled
+houses into one in which every other man owned something of a dug-out.
+For the first few days, while scorn of dug-outs was rife, he who built
+himself a haven kept it to his inner conscience, recalling it, when
+its existence was forced upon him, with something of an apologetic
+air. Thus we existed; then the staff built an underground room, and
+upon the Sunday that followed this momentous event many there were who
+visited it, and who, gathering wrinkles, went quietly to their gardens
+and did likewise. Thus insidiously came the transformation, and
+although there are still a few who talk disparagingly of these
+bomb-proof shelters, their faces wear an anxious look when the enemy
+are shelling, and strangely enough, as the fire waxes hotter, they
+easily find excuses to visit friends, lingering, the while, in the
+congenial gloom of their host's dug-out.
+
+So greatly have ideas expanded upon this subject that at one of the
+hotels an underground dining-room is in course of construction. This
+is at Riesle's, whose proprietor, at last, has been induced to build
+his boarders--mostly war correspondents--a dug-out, since he had given
+places of shelter to the servants, to his native boys, and to his
+family, seemingly thinking that since the boarders kept the hotel
+going they could very easily shift for themselves. But then that is
+always the creed of the publican. These dug-outs are large
+excavations some ten by fourteen feet and seven feet deep, upon which
+there is placed a layer of iron rails which are procured from the
+railway yard; over these there is usually a layer of thick wooden
+sleepers, which again are covered over with sheets of corrugated iron.
+The earth from the hole is then piled up on this, and, after the
+dug-out has been inspected by the Town Commandant it is considered
+safe for habitation; a few cases and chairs equip it with certain
+accommodation, although there are a few into which trestle beds have
+been placed. It is not very healthy passing days and nights in these
+inverted earthworks, but it is eminently safe, and has been the sole
+means afforded us for escaping the enemy's fire. Fortunately the Boers
+have made no attempt to advance upon the town under cover of their
+guns, for if they did so we should have to stand-to-arms and face the
+music of the flying splinters. Every post has been supplied with one
+of these underground retreats, and quite the larger proportion of the
+townspeople have constructed private shelters for themselves.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+SOME SNIPING AND AN EXECUTION
+
+
+                             MAFEKING, _January 31st, 1900_.
+
+In itself the situation has not developed over much, but in relation
+to the siege there are two tragedies to chronicle. The Boers are still
+investing us, in more or less the same numbers, and with but little
+difference in the strength of their artillery. Sometimes we miss an
+individual piece, judging from its absence that it has been sent north
+to reinforce the Dutch who are endeavouring to circumvent the
+movements of Colonel Plumer's column. However, these periodical
+journeys of the five-pounder Krupp, the one-pounder Maxim, or the
+nine-pounder quick-firing Creusot do not last for any great time, and,
+as a matter of fact, Commandant Snyman has not permitted himself to be
+deprived of any one piece of artillery for much longer than a week.
+The garrison here, jumping at conclusions in the absence of any
+definite news, finds in these disappearances some slight consolation,
+since we at once affirm that Colonel Plumer must have arrived at some
+point in which the presence of the enemy's artillery is urgent and
+necessary.
+
+[Illustration: War Correspondents and their Bomb-proof Shelters.]
+
+The gun which we would very gladly spare is the one hundred-pounder
+Creusot, whose occasional removal from one emplacement to another is a
+source of much anxiety to every one in the garrison. In the beginning
+of the siege--a date which is now very remote--"Big Ben" hurled its
+shells into this unfortunate town from an emplacement at Jackal Tree.
+In those days it was almost four miles distant, and we took but little
+notice of a gun which flung its projectiles from such a distant range.
+Those were the days in which we dug holes by night, and speculated
+rather feebly during the day upon the resisting power of the
+protection which we had thus thrown up. But the gun moved then to the
+south-eastern heights, a matter of barely 4,000 yards from the town,
+and of sufficient eminence to dominate every little corner. Those were
+the days in which we dug a little deeper and went round trying to
+borrow--from people who would not lend--any spare sacks, iron
+sleepers, or deals, so that our bomb-proofs might be still further
+strengthened. However, as time passed, we even got accustomed to the
+gun in its new position, and, much as ever, there were many who felt
+inclined to promenade during lapses in the enemy's shell fire. Now,
+however, this wretched gun has again been moved, and, according to
+those who know the country, is within two miles of the town--a little
+matter under 3,000 yards.
+
+In accordance with the fresh position of the Creusot gun we have been
+compelled to extend our eastern defences in order that we may, at
+least, direct an artillery fire upon their advanced trenches. To the
+north-east and south-east we have put forward our guns and to the
+south-east have increased a detachment of sharpshooters, who, from a
+very early date in the siege, have occupied a position in the
+river-bed. These men are only two hundred yards from the sniping posts
+of the Boers, and through the cessation of hostilities upon Sundays,
+they have grown to recognise one another. Sunday has thus also brought
+to the snipers an opportunity of discovering what result their mutual
+fire has achieved during the week, and, when from time to time a
+figure is missing, either side recognise that to their marksmanship,
+at least, that much credit is due. Among the Boers who occupied the
+posts in the brickfields were many old men, one of whom, from his
+venerable mien, his bent and tottering figure, his long white beard,
+and his grey hair, was called grandfather. He had become so identified
+with these posts in the brickfields that upon Sundays our men would
+shout out to him, some calling him Uncle Paul, others grandfather, and
+when the old fellow heard these remarks he would turn and gaze at our
+trench in the river-bed, wondering possibly, as he stroked his beard,
+brushed his clusters of hair from his forehead, or wiped his brow,
+what manner of men those snipers were. He has been known to wave his
+hat when in a mood more than usually benign; then we would wave our
+hats and cheer, while he, once again perplexed, would, taking his pipe
+from his pocket, slowly retrace his steps to his trench. The old man
+was a remarkably good shot, and from his post has sent many bullets
+through the loopholes in our sandbags. He would go in the early
+morning to his fort and he would return at dusk, but in the going and
+coming he, alone of the men who were opposing us, was given a safe
+passage. One day, however, as the Red Cross flag came out from the
+fort, we, looking through our glasses, saw them lift the body of
+grandfather into the ambulance. That night there was a funeral, and
+upon the following day we learnt that he had been their best marksman.
+For ourselves, we were genuinely sorry.
+
+Yesterday there occurred another of those acts of war which illustrate
+in such a very striking fashion the silent tragedies which are
+enacted, and with which perforce many unwilling people are connected,
+during the progress of a campaign. There are, of course, many issues
+to the career of a soldier, and perhaps not the least important of
+these is the arduous and very dangerous task of collecting
+intelligence. In the ranks of society, men who are known to be spies
+are regarded with silent contempt, and ostracised from the circle of
+their acquaintances, so soon as their calling is ascertained; but the
+duties of a military spy differ in almost every respect from the
+individual who becomes a social reformer. In the field the military
+spy carries his life in his hand, since his capture implies an almost
+immediate execution without any possibility of reprieve. Last night
+such an occurrence took place at sundown, when, as the sun sank to its
+setting, a native, who had been caught within our lines, and who
+confessed to be an emissary of the Boers, was taken out and shot.
+
+The spy was a young man, and a native of the stadt, which is a portion
+of Mafeking, and one who had accepted the work of carrying information
+to the enemy because he did not sufficiently realise the punishment
+which would fall upon him, were he to be captured. His instructions
+from the Boers had been remarkably explicit, and the sphere of his
+activities embraced our entire position. He was to visit the forts,
+counting the number of men, and taking special notice of those to
+which guns had been attached. He was to report upon the strength of
+the garrison, the condition of our horses, the supplies of
+foodstuffs, and he was to stay within Mafeking for about ten days. He
+was captured a fortnight ago, as he was creeping in, snatching cover
+from the bushes and rocks which spread over the south-eastern face of
+the town. When he was caught, as though momentarily realising the
+possibilities of his fate, he at first refused to say who he was,
+whence he came, or what had been his purpose. However, among the
+native patrol that had so successfully surprised him were some who
+knew him, whereupon he stated that he was simply returning to the
+stadt. In the earlier part of the siege almost every native who came
+across the lines gave this same excuse, until the suspicion was forced
+upon us that the Baralongs were acting in conjunction with the enemy.
+However, this was not proved to be the case, the chief repudiating the
+suggestion and disclaiming any authority over those natives who
+happened to be beyond the lines at the outbreak of the war.
+Nevertheless, it had been impossible to prevent the Boers receiving
+information through native sources, and for the future, there remained
+no alternative but that which implied the immediate execution of
+captured spies. An increase in the Cossack posts at night somewhat
+checked the mass of information which was carried to the Boers across
+our lines, and in an earlier instance, when a native came in from the
+Boer camp and said that the big gun had been taken away that morning
+upon a waggon, he was given the benefit of forty-eight hours' grace,
+with the understanding that, should the gun fire during that period,
+he would be at once sentenced to death. For a day this man watched the
+emplacement of the big gun, and twenty-four hours passed without
+Mafeking receiving any shells from it. The day following was half
+over, and it was about noon, when the Boers disproved the story which
+they had instructed their spy to tell, and fired into the town. The
+man then confessed that his errand had been inimical, and that he
+himself was hostile to our interests. At dusk the sentence of the
+Summary Court of Jurisdiction was carried out, and that spy was shot.
+But this other at no time seemed to understand the gravity of his
+offence, and when we captured him he informed his captors and the
+Court that he himself had meant no harm. However, he confessed,
+endeavouring to minimise his offence by showing that at the moment of
+his capture he had gathered no information, yet his pleas were futile,
+and he at last seemed to understand that his doom was sealed. From
+then, as he returned to the prison to await the execution of his
+sentence, he said nothing more.
+
+Last night the shooting party came for him, marching him to a secluded
+point upon the south-eastern face, and there they halted him, a silent
+figure in a wilderness of rock and scrub. Around him there was the
+scene of the veldt at eventide. There was the gorgeous, flaming
+sunset, its ruddy gold turning the azure of the sky to clouds of
+purple, pale orange, and a deeper blue. Here and there the heavens
+were flecked with fleecy clouds, which gambolled gently before the
+breeze. In the distance lay the green-clad veldt, simmering a russet
+brown beneath the glories of the sunset. At our feet it sloped,
+breaking into rocky sluits, banked up with bushes; over all there was
+the zephyr, tempering the heat. It was a moment meant for rejoicing in
+the beauty of earth's loveliness rather than for dimming it with the
+sadness of some crimson act. Presently we arrived, and as we bent
+across the slope the blood-red stream of passing sunlight played
+around the shallow heap of earth, thrown out from this man's final
+resting-place. It was visible, much as were the deeper shadows of the
+excavation some seventy yards away, when, as though wishing to spare
+the prisoner, his eyes were bandaged by the officers of the party.
+With that a sudden silence fell upon us, and each seemed to feel that
+he were walking within the shadows of the valley of death. The
+prisoner, supported on either arm, stumbled in the partial blindness
+of the bandage, seeming, now that his last hour was at hand, to be
+more careless, more light-hearted than any of the party. Then we
+halted, and he was asked whether there were anything further which he
+wished to say, and he was warned for the last time. He shook his head
+somewhat defiantly, but his lips moved, and in his heart one could
+almost hear the muttered curses. Then for a space he stood still, and
+a few yards distant, in fact some ten paces, the firing party formed
+across his front. There were six of them, with a corporal and the
+officer in command of the post, and there was that other, who in a
+little was to pay the penalty of his crime. There was a moment of
+intense silence as we waited for the sun to set, in which the nerves
+seemed to be but little strings of wire, played upon by the emotions.
+Unconsciously, each seemed to stiffen, as we waited for the word of
+the officer, feeling that at every pulsation one would like to shriek
+"Enough, enough!" As we stood the prisoner spoke, unconscious of the
+preparations, and the officer approached him. He wanted, he said, to
+take a final glance at the place that he had known since his
+childhood. His prayer was granted, and as he faced about, the bandage
+across his eyes was, for a few brief minutes, dropped upon his neck.
+In that final look he seemed to realise what he was suffering. The
+stadt lay before him, the place of his childhood, the central pivot
+round which his life had turned, bathed in a sunset which he had often
+seen before, and which he would never see again. There were the cattle
+of his people, there were the noises of the stadt, the children's
+voices, the laughter of the women, and there was the smoke of his camp
+fires. It was all his once--he lived there and he was to die there,
+but to die in a manner which was strange and horrible. Then he looked
+beyond the stadt and scanned the enemy's lines. Tears welled in his
+eyes, and the force of his emotion shook his shoulders. But again he
+was himself: the feeling had passed, and he drew himself erect. Then
+once more the bandage was secured, and he faced about. The sun was
+setting, and as the officer stepped back and gave his orders, a
+fleeting shudder crossed the native's face. Bayonets were fixed, the
+men were ready and the rifles were presented. One gripped one's palms.
+"Fire!" said the officer. Six bullets struck him--four were in the
+brain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+LIFE IN THE BRICKFIELDS
+
+
+                             MAFEKING, _February 3rd, 1900_.
+
+The main occupation of the garrison just now is to speculate upon the
+progress of the work of trench-building, which is being rapidly pushed
+forward in the brickfields upon the south-eastern face of the town. It
+is eminently a safe occupation, since our activity in that quarter is
+absorbing the almost undivided attentions of the enemy in the adjacent
+trenches, and therefore giving to the town an enjoyable and protracted
+respite from rifle fire. This, however, exists throughout the day
+only, since night is made hideous and uncomfortable by the heavy fire
+which the enemy turn upon it, and which is returned, with very
+pleasing promptitude, by the town forts and the occupants of the
+trenches in the brickfields. The area of war, localised thus as it is
+in the brickfields, is an interesting testimony to the progress of our
+arms here in Mafeking. We began the siege by abandoning this position
+and with it the very excellent sniping opportunities it gave to the
+Boers. The 8,000 men that Commandant Cronje had with him in those
+early days, made it impossible for our small garrison to hold, with
+any prospect of success, positions so far outlying from the front of
+the town. It is, however, quite a different thing to occupy those
+trenches to-day, since the veldt intervening in the rear, has now been
+carefully protected, and we advance not at all until the post which is
+in occupation at the moment, has been securely fortified and connected
+with adjacent outposts by well-covered trenches. We are now, after
+almost six months' siege, some 1,700 yards in advance of the town, and
+the south-eastern outposts, as these brickfield forts are called,
+constitute our most outlying positions around beleaguered Mafeking.
+
+Very gradually, and with infinite pains and labour, we have sapped
+from town until the company of Cape Boys that is posted in the
+"Clayhole," under Sergeant Currie, is within two hundred yards of the
+Boers' main trench--a point from which one may hear at times our enemy
+holding animated discussions upon his failure to capture Mafeking.
+When war was first declared Commandant Cronje threw strong detachments
+of sharpshooters into the brick kilns which we ourselves now hold, and
+at this present moment, there is no position in those which we have
+seized, that was not originally in possession of the Boers.
+Innumerable traces exist of their temporary occupation, and where it
+has been possible we have preserved these; so that the town itself may
+at some future date be able to see the remains of the Boer investment.
+These little facts give to our work here a greater significance,
+insomuch that it may be assumed that an enemy who has been fortunate
+enough to secure for himself a strong position, is not so foolish as
+to abandon it voluntarily. This, of course, is quite the case, and
+many have been the occasions when the town has been able to watch
+affairs between outposts being briskly contested in these very
+trenches.
+
+[Illustration: Plan of the Brickfields.]
+
+Nothing is quite so pleasant, so invigorating, nor quite so dangerous
+as life in these brickfield posts. Inspector Marsh, Cape Police, in
+whom the command of the south-eastern outposts has been invested, most
+kindly permitted me to join his quarters. We are aroused in the
+morning as the day breaks by a volley from the Boer trenches, and in
+all probability the derisive shout, "Good morning, Mr. damned
+Englishman!" to which the Cape Boys usually return the salutation of
+"Stinkpots!" which is the euphonious rendering of a Dutch word
+calculated to give, more especially when coming from a nigger, the
+utmost possible offence. The day may then be said to have begun,
+although, between this and any further ceremonies, there is usually a
+mutual cessation of hostilities, in order that each side may enjoy a
+cup of matutinal coffee. The coffee is made in town and brought out,
+since orders are exceedingly strict against the lighting of fires on
+outposts. Sometimes the day proves long, but usually it is one of an
+exciting character, and one in which it behoves the men to move with
+the utmost care. The enemy would seem to have filled their advanced
+trench with a number of picked sharpshooters; for it is quite an
+ordinary occurrence for them to fire, at five hundred yards range,
+through our loopholes; nor are these chance shots, for there is one
+man who seems to put the bullets precisely where he wishes, since, at
+least once during the day, he will test the accuracy of his aim by
+emptying his entire chamber through one porthole. Such sharpshooting
+compels one to move with a large amount of precaution, since if so
+much as a finger be shown above the top of the sandbags there is
+every likelihood of it being perforated by a Mauser bullet. But if
+this be the manner of our existence, the Boers do not take any risks
+either, and move between their portholes with the greatest precaution,
+until this system of watching one another may be said to have
+developed a class of work which consists principally of lying upon
+one's stomach in readiness to fire--if there should occur the
+slightest opportunity.
+
+Sometimes, if the day be quiet, we creep from trench to trench, even
+venturing to the river; but upon the whole, however, there is not much
+of this visiting accomplished, since the Boers have the habit of
+attempting to lull us into security and then spoiling the delusion
+with a well-directed volley. Recently the advanced trenches of the
+Boers were so heavily reinforced that we expected an attack upon the
+brickfields; in fact, one night we were almost positive that the enemy
+were about to make an attempt to wrest this position from us. They did
+not do so, nor have they made any night attack, since the Dutchman
+does not like to meet his enemy by night, unless he himself is
+ensconced safely behind some sacks and his foe in the open. Upon such
+an occasion he will fire until his ammunition is expended. However, we
+expected them, and although they made no advance, they poured in at
+daybreak, at somewhat under four hundred yards range, a most terrific
+fire. They turned upon us a 9-lb. Krupp, a 5-lb. Creusot, a 3-lb.
+Maxim, and about five hundred rifles. It was an amazing morning and a
+most interesting experience, while for some hours afterwards the air
+seemed to ring with the droning notes of the Martinis and the sharp
+crackle of the Mauser. Of course we fired back, since we never allowed
+the Dutchmen to turn their guns upon us without treating the gun
+emplacements and embrasures to several volleys. It is good sometimes
+to impress upon the Boers the uselessness of their efforts. Out here
+in these brickfields we appear to be upon the edge of a new world,
+with the limits of the old one just below. Mafeking itself is only
+1,700 yards distant, but the undulating ground, the rocky ridges, the
+simmering heat, and the mirage give rise to the impression that the
+town, of which the brickfields is the outpost, is many miles away. We
+live a peaceful, almost serene existence, disturbed only by the hum of
+passing bullets. There is no pettiness of spirit, no mutual
+bickerings, no absurd jealousies; one does not hear anything of the
+clash between the civil and military elements. That is all below us in
+the little town which sits upon the rising slopes with that appearance
+of chaos and despair which now mark its daily existence. Black care is
+not here, and thank heaven for it; for indeed a luxury beyond
+comparison is the quiet and peaceful day.
+
+Mafeking at last is siege-weary--and, oh, so hungry! It seems months
+since any one had a meal which satisfied the pangs that gnaw all day.
+We have been on starvation rations for so many weeks that time has
+been forgotten, and now there seems the prospect of no immediate help
+forthcoming! We are so sick of it, so tired of the malaria,
+diphtheria, and typhoid that claim a list as great almost as that
+caused by the enemy's shell and rifle fire! We ask, When will the end
+be? and then we shrug our shoulders and begin to swear; for we have
+such sorrows in our midst, such suffering women and such ailing
+children as would turn a saint to blasphemies!
+
+[Illustration: Cape Boys Hurling Stones at the Boers as They
+Endeavoured to Rush the Sap.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+FROM BAD TO WORSE
+
+
+                             MAFEKING, _February 7th, 1900_.
+
+At a moment when the entire garrison, perhaps, excluding the military
+chiefs, was eagerly anticipating some announcement which would
+determine the date of an immediate relief, intelligence has come to
+hand, in a communication from Field-Marshal Lord Roberts himself,
+informing the inhabitants of Mafeking that he expects them to hold out
+until the middle of May. Since the beginning of the year the town has
+lulled itself into a sense of security by endeavouring to believe that
+at some early date the garrison would be relieved. But now, if it were
+possible to find "a last straw" to break the spirits of the townsmen,
+it is contained in the unfortunate telegram which Colonel Baden-Powell
+received from Lord Roberts. To hold out until the middle of May, it
+can well be longer, is to ask us to endure further privations, and to
+maintain an existence in a condition which is already little removed
+from starvation, and at a moment when the great majority of the
+civilian combatants, if not of all classes, are "full up" of the
+siege. For the past month we have been living upon horseflesh,
+although at first these unfortunate animals were slaughtered only in
+the interests of the foodless natives, and whatever gastronomic
+satisfaction may be culled by us now in eating what in more ordinary
+circumstances has done duty as a horse, it is none the less a hardship
+and a damned and disagreeable dish.
+
+The effect of the announcement has been to increase the gloom and
+depression which for some weeks has been noticeable among those
+civilians whose businesses have been ruined; who are separated from
+and unable to communicate with their families, and who themselves have
+been impressed into the defence of the town. During this state of war
+they are unable to earn anything, and it is quite beyond their power
+to pay even the most perfunctory attention to their businesses; but
+now with this statement buzzing in the brain like an angry bee, can
+they not be excused if they cry out, "Enough, enough," and feel
+depressed and sick of the whole siege? Within a few weeks we shall be
+entering the sixth month of the siege, and already the severity of our
+daily life is beginning to tell, and indeed has already told upon
+many. But now that we have come so far through the wood, when we have
+fought by day and by night, when we have been sick with fever and
+pressed by hunger, when we have been harassed by bad news, and the
+conviction, through the absence of any cheering information, that all
+was not well with us down below, it would be a monstrous misfortune if
+we cannot survive the pangs of hunger and the torments of starvation
+until the long-promised relief arrives in the middle of May. If we do
+succeed, those who come through alive will have a tale to tell, in
+which there will be much which will remain buried, since there are
+experiences which, when they have been lived through, it is impossible
+to talk about.
+
+If we were only just ourselves, merely the defenders of a town against
+an enemy, we could endure our privations, our short rations, and our
+condemned water with even greater fortitude. The men live hard lives
+in Africa, and their constitutions are strong, their nerves firm. But
+they hate, as all men hate, in all parts of the world, that their
+womenfolk should suffer, and here is the misery of our situation, more
+especially that these gentle creatures should suffer before their own
+eyes, when they themselves can do nothing for them. Aye, indeed,
+there's the rub. A hard life is always hardest upon women, and, unlike
+the Australasian colonies, and Canada, or the Western States of
+America, and all places where women who lead colonial life have no
+black labour to rely upon, the women in Africa are curiously
+incapable, delegating a multitudinous variety of domestic duties to
+the natives they employ. Their sphere of daily activity, so far as it
+is in relation to their household, is reduced to a minimum, while
+consciously or through the absence of some active pursuit by which
+they could occupy their mind and exercise their bodies, their view of
+life is petty and impressed with prejudices and absurd jealousies.
+Moreover, they are abnormally lazy; indeed, to one who has lived in
+Australasia, America, Africa, India, and elsewhere, and has experience
+of life in those colonies, the lassitude and indolence of the South
+African woman is one of the most striking aspects of the daily life in
+Africa. In Natal this weariness is called the "Natal sickness," and in
+Mafeking at the present juncture it is responsible for a great deal of
+the discontent, the unwillingness to make the best of an exceedingly
+trying situation.
+
+Without the feminine element in Mafeking, the civil and military
+authorities would be in better accord, but with a pack of women and
+children in an insanitary laager, caring nothing for the exigencies of
+the situation, firmly believing that they are oppressed by design and
+deliberately maltreated, and, rising up in their wrath, smiting the
+Colonel, the Chief Staff Officer, indeed, the entire Headquarters'
+Staff, or any military and official unit that comes unfortunately into
+contact with them, the worry and annoyance caused to the garrison at
+large by their presence here at this juncture is eminently worse than
+the most fearsome thing it is possible to conceive. Of course, one
+sympathises in all sincerity with these unfortunate non-combatants,
+for they live amid conditions which produce and promote typhoid,
+malaria, and diphtheria--diseases that have been peculiarly virulent,
+and from which many women and children have died.
+
+Apart from the fatalities from shell and rifle fire, there is the list
+of those who have died from the hardships which they have had to
+experience. Strong men have dropped off from typhoid, women and
+children contracting the same disease, or one which by its nature is
+similarly fatal, have been unable to bear up. The smiling and happy
+children that one knew in the early days are no longer such; they are
+thin, emaciated, bloodless, and live amid conditions which have
+already wrought sad havoc among their companions. The mortality among
+the women and children must form part of the general conditions of the
+siege, but it is peculiarly disheartening to the townsmen as they
+stand to their posts and their trenches to be compelled to ponder and
+to reflect sadly that the fell diseases which have killed the wives
+and children of so many might, at any moment, attack those members of
+their own family who are confined in the pestilential trenches of the
+laager. The unfortunate condition of these poor people here, as well
+as in Kimberley, has brought the suggestion to my mind that it should
+not be too late for either the Commander-in-Chief, or some one
+identified with his authority, to make overtures to the Boers, so that
+we, and even the garrison in Kimberley, might be permitted to send, in
+the one case our women and children to Bulawayo, and in the other
+case, to Capetown. It could surely be arranged, and if it were
+possible it would ensure a little greater happiness, a little greater
+comfort, falling to the lot of these poor people, who are unable to
+take, through lack of adequate remedies, the simplest precautions
+against the dangers which assail their own health and the lives of
+their children. But if our friends the Boers think that because of
+these straits we are disheartened they make a very grievous mistake.
+We propose to endure and we intend to carry the siege on until the
+end. Nothing so exemplifies the true tone of the garrison and the
+spirit of the men as this determination in which we one and all share
+and for which we mutually agree to co-operate.
+
+Despite the heavy burden of domestic trouble which presses down upon
+the townspeople, there has been a remarkable absence of any open
+friction between the civilian element and military at present gathered
+in Mafeking. The military authorities should be the first to recognise
+this and to appreciate the ready acquiescence and assistance which
+they have received from the inhabitants of the town. That at least
+they do acknowledge the importance of duties fulfilled, and the spirit
+with which they have been carried out, should be a conclusion against
+which it would be absurd to tilt. Nothing can underestimate the
+consideration which the townspeople, under conditions adverse to their
+interests, and for which the military authorities are entirely
+responsible, have shown for the vigours of martial law and the present
+military domination. Compensation would be so materially insufficient
+that it cannot be said that any one individual has stayed here for the
+purpose of receiving such emoluments as would be to him some kind of a
+profit. The economy of Governmental compensation is never known to be
+satisfactory--Government in its impersonal attributes being
+universally recognised as a most niggardly paymaster. They therefore,
+those who have stayed, apart from the delusions under which they
+suffered, can be said to have remained because they wished, as
+colonists, to prove their loyalty; and yet, when one looks back upon
+the siege and considers carefully the manner in which they have been
+imposed upon by their own Government, it is very questionable if ever
+so great a test was applied to the spirit of mind and body which
+constitutes allegiance to a sovereign. Fortunately the town cannot say
+that it has performed more than its share of the defence work. Indeed,
+for the most part the services of the townsmen have been restricted,
+so far as was possible, to a connection with forts which have been
+constructed upon the boundaries of the town, and have not been thrust
+forward in preference to the men of the Protectorate Regiment, who,
+following the profession of arms, can properly be expected to bear the
+brunt of the fighting. It was thought at one time that the strange
+assortment of human nature which had collected in or was drawn to
+Mafeking might be difficult of management; but mixed as is the
+population here at present, the doubtful element, which is one that
+sympathising with the enemy might create dissatisfaction among others,
+has been singularly subdued. There are many instances here in Mafeking
+of men who have taken up arms in defence of the town in which their
+business and their domestic ties are centred, and who, to do this,
+have had to fight against their own blood relatives. We have had
+therefore, in a sense, many men who, while apparently loyal and
+engaged in manning the trenches, were yet under constant supervision,
+lest they should give way to their feelings and too openly proclaim
+their sympathies with the Boer cause; but there have been few
+desertions, and affairs in general between Englishman and Dutchman,
+between the civilian and military, have passed off with greater
+harmony than was altogether anticipated. Mistrust between Englishmen
+of pronounced Imperial sympathies and colonials suspected of Dutch
+leanings has been the cause of a certain amount of jealousy, which
+tended to make the defence of Mafeking a work of, by no means, a
+pleasant nature. However much this feeling of difference, creating and
+causing in itself an acute tension between the pro-Imperial and the
+colonial, has given rise to, or has been the sole cause of, any
+ill-feeling which may have marked the relations between the civil and
+military, it has at no time assumed proportions grave enough to foster
+the opinion that its prevalence might endanger in time the commonweal
+of the inhabitants and threaten with strife the daily intercourse of
+the various units in the garrison.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE FIRST ATTACK UPON THE BRICKFIELDS
+
+
+                            MAFEKING, _February 14th, 1900_.
+
+In the history of the siege of Mafeking there should stand forth an
+event as remarkable to posterity, if, perhaps, not quite so
+historical, as the famous ball which was given by the Duchess of
+Richmond on the eve of Waterloo. It may be, indeed, a trite
+comparison, since its only relationship is contained in the fact that
+the officers were called away to the field of battle; but, with so
+much uncertainty in European circles upon the conditions of the
+garrison, this fact and its issues tend to show the spirit with which
+the town is sustaining its precarious existence. Although we have some
+3,000 Boers around us, with twelve different varieties of artillery,
+and despite the steady increase in fatalities from shot and shell
+which marks each day, we can yet stimulate our flagging spirits to a
+pitch in which a ball is accepted and welcomed as an essential to the
+conditions of the siege. A mere detail, yet one of sufficiently
+striking importance and showing how very sombre and how serious is the
+daily situation, will perhaps be found in the postponement of this
+ball from Saturday night until the succeeding evening--a proceeding
+which was rendered necessary by the death of a popular townsman from
+a 100-pound shell in the course of the previous morning. Recent
+Sundays have revealed a tendency, upon the part of the enemy, to
+ignore that generous and courteous concession to a beleaguered
+garrison which General Cronje granted, by professing his willingness
+to observe the Sabbath, insomuch that the Boers have maintained rifle
+fire until 5 in the morning, commencing again at any moment after 9
+o'clock at night. This Sunday was no exception, and we had the usual
+matutinal volleys.
+
+Towards 8 o'clock in the evening the streets near the Masonic Hall
+presented an animated, even a gay, picture. Officers in uniform and
+ladies in charming toilettes were making their way to the scene of the
+festivity, each with a careless happiness which made it impossible to
+believe that within a thousand yards of the town were the enemy's
+lines. Immense cheering greeted the strains of "Rule Britannia,"
+played by the band of the Bechuanaland Rifles, and then the dance
+commenced. The town danced upon the edge of a volcano, as it were; and
+while it danced the outposts watched with strained eye for any sign of
+movement in the enemy's lines. As dusk closed in the outposts had
+reported to the colonel commanding that the advanced trenches of the
+enemy had been reinforced with some three hundred Boers, and that
+their galloping Maxim had been drawn by four men to a point adjacent
+to our outlying posts in the brickfields, while what appeared to be
+the nine-pounder Krupp had been put into an emplacement upon the
+south-eastern front. This news Colonel Baden-Powell did not permit to
+become known, since he very properly wished to allow the garrison to
+enjoy its dance if occasion offered; and accordingly the dance began.
+It was early when the enemy sent their preliminary volley whistling
+over the town; in an instant the animation of the streets which had
+preceded the dance was apparent once more, as around the doors of the
+Masonic Hall a number of people collected from out of the ball-room.
+Officers raced to their posts as orderlies galloped through the
+streets sounding a general alarm. We were to be attacked, and a man
+can serve his guns, can ply his rifle, can stand to his post in
+evening pumps and dress trousers as efficiently and as thoroughly as
+he can were he clothed in the coarser habiliments of the trenches. For
+a few minutes no one quite knew what would happen, and greater
+mystification prevailed as the noise of firing came from every quarter
+of our front. Urgent orders were issued, to be obeyed as rapidly;
+Maxims were brought up at a gallop, the reserve squadron was held in
+readiness, coming up to Headquarters at the double. The guns were
+loaded and trained, and within a few minutes of the general alarm, the
+ball-room was deserted and every man was at his post.
+
+It was a fine night, and the moon was full. Here and there,
+silhouetted against the skyline, those who were watching could see the
+reinforcements marching to the advanced trenches. There had been
+little time to think of anything, to collect anything, the men who
+were sent forward simply snatching their rifles and ammunition
+reserves. For a brief moment there was exceeding confusion in the
+forts that had been ordered to furnish reinforcements for any
+particular trench; but this duty was performed so quickly, and the
+town was in such readiness to repel attack, that our mobilisation
+would have reflected credit upon the smartest Imperial force.
+Presently there came a lull in the firing, and the ambulance waggon
+made its way to a sheltered point, prepared to move forward should it
+become necessary. I watched for a few minutes the scene in the Market
+Square, paying particular attention to Colonel Baden-Powell and his
+staff officers, who had congregated beyond the stoep of the
+Headquarters office. Now and again Lord Edward Cecil, the Chief Staff
+Officer, would detach himself from the group to send an instruction by
+one of the many orderlies who, with their horses, were in waiting. It
+was a cheering spectacle, the prompt and methodical manner in which
+our final arrangements were perfected. Then the staff group broke up,
+and the C.S.O. explained the possibilities of the situation. The enemy
+contemplated an attack upon our south-eastern front, concentrating
+their advance upon our positions in the brickfields. If such, indeed,
+were the case, we could promise ourselves a smart little fight, and
+one, moreover, at point-blank range. We had so fortified our trenches
+in this particular quarter that, happily, there was no prospect of any
+disaster similar to that which befell our arms at Game Tree. Towards
+midnight heavy firing broke out upon the western outposts, caused, as
+was afterwards proved, by the success of our native cattle raiders,
+who, managing to elude the vigilance of the Boer scouts, had driven
+some few head of cattle through their lines into our own camp. The
+sound of this firing drew the Chief Staff Officer to the telephone in
+the Headquarters bomb-proof, whereupon I made my way to the point
+against which we had assumed that the attack would be directed.
+
+It was to an old post in a somewhat new shape, then, that I made my
+way, a journey which amply compensated for any lack of excitement in
+the events of the last few days. Fitful volleys from the Boers made
+it impossible to walk across the section of the veldt intervening
+between the rear of these advanced posts and the town, while at
+present, these posts form a little colony, connected as they are now
+among themselves, but cut off altogether from communication with the
+town until the pall of night comes to shield the movements of those
+compelled to make their way between the town and the brickfields.
+Soon, those who are posted there hope to see a trench constructed,
+affording passage at any moment with the base; but until this happens
+it is a pleasant scramble, a little dangerous, and somewhat trying.
+The ground is rough and stony, sloping slightly, in open spaces, to
+within a few yards of the Boer lines. It is commanded in many points,
+and upon this particular night it seemed to suit the purpose of the
+enemy to play upon it with their rifles at irregular intervals. To
+reach the river-bed was easy, to scramble up the river-bed with one's
+figure thrown out against the skyline is better appreciated in
+imagination; to put it into practice is to walk without looking where
+one is going, since one is continually sweeping the enemy's positions
+to catch the flash of the enemy's rifles. When the flash is caught, if
+the bullet has not hit one first, it is wiser to throw dignity to the
+wind and oneself upon the ground. In this position, prone and very
+muddy, even a little bruised, I found myself, until the fierce but
+whispered challenge of a sentry told me that my temporary destination
+had been reached. At this fort there was little to betray the
+excitement which consumed its gallant defenders, beyond the fact that
+the entire post was standing to arms. With a laugh and a jest we
+parted; and cut across what would have been the line of fire had a
+fight been raging at that moment. There was a low, elongated wedge a
+few yards distant upon the left, against which the moon threw black
+shadows. It was the Boer position, and as they had been firing
+frequently, warning to proceed cautiously was not altogether
+disobeyed. Inspector Marsh's post was then very shortly gained, and
+with this officer I passed the night.
+
+It was 2 a.m. when Inspector Marsh turned out to make his last round
+before the men in his command stood to arms at daybreak. Whatever else
+was not evident, it was now certain that there would be no attack
+until the break of day, and so, upon returning to our post, we lay
+upon the stony ground and slept. It seemed that Time had scarcely
+scored an hour when we woke up, and, taking our rifles with us,
+buckling on our revolvers, stood to the loopholes. Day broke solemnly
+and with much beauty, night fading into grey-purple and soft, eerie
+shadows. Trees looked as sentinels, and there was no sound about us.
+Indeed, the spectacle of a large number of men expecting each minute
+the opening volley of an attack, was thrilling, and in that cold air
+their martial effect was a sufficient and satisfying tonic against the
+river mists. We had been standing some few minutes when from up the
+stream came the croaking of the bullfrog, so loud and emphatic that
+the older veldtsmen knew it at once to be a signal. This had scarcely
+been passed round when from that black line upon the sky there broke a
+withering sheet of flame; it was a magnificent volley, and swept
+across our intrenchments. We held our fire, crouching still lower and
+peering still more anxiously through the sandbags. Dawn was rapidly
+advancing, and as the light became clearer the enemy heralded its
+advance with a merry flight of three-pounder Maxims. They burst among
+us, hitting nobody, and falling principally upon the trench occupied
+by Sergeant Currie and his Cape Boys. Then we fired, or rather our
+most advanced trench opened, and in that moment the engagement began.
+However, beginning brilliantly as it did, under the snapping of the
+Mausers, the droning hiss of Martinis, and a roaring deluge of shells,
+it was short-lived. Sergeant Currie and his men bore the brunt of the
+rifle fire, replying shot to shot, undaunted and unchecked. The
+reverberating echoes of the firearms, of the exploding shells, to the
+accompaniment of the insulting taunts of the Cape Boys were somewhat
+deafening. When the advanced trenches of the enemy started, volleys
+came also from the ridge of the acclivity leading from the river-bed
+to the emplacement of the nine-pounder Krupp. Between them again,
+there were smaller trenches joining in the rifle practice, which,
+while it lasted, was so hot that it was not possible to creep through
+the connecting trenches, or, indeed, to move in any manner whatever.
+Within three hours the enemy threw some thirty nine-pounder Krupp,
+some twenty-five five-pound incendiary shells, an overwhelming mass of
+three-pound Maxims, and a few rounds from the cavalry Maxim. Bullets
+innumerable had whizzed across us, to be answered by rifle fire as
+brisk again, and so rapidly returned that few of the defenders had
+even time to think.
+
+But we wondered, as the day grew brighter and two hours' firing had
+passed, what would be the end, considering ourselves fortunate that
+the enemy made no attempt to rush any one of the brickfields in his
+command. Occasionally, as we fired, Inspector Brown, in charge of the
+river-bed work, exchanged signals with Inspector Marsh, the post
+commander, through a megaphone, much to the discomfiture of the
+Boers, who, as the stentorian commands rang out in any lull of firing,
+were sadly perplexed. These signals had, of course, been arranged
+beforehand, the men knowing that they were the merest pretext and one
+by which it was hoped to confuse the Boers. Upon the part of the enemy
+it must have been rather alarming to hear between some temporary
+stoppage in the firing a voice in thunderous tones crying out, "Men of
+the advanced trench, fix bayonets," an order which would be invariably
+followed by hearty cheering from the Cape Police and insults of an
+exceedingly personal character from the Cape Boys. However, everything
+draws to an end, and the Boers, abandoning their intention of turning
+us out of the brickfields, ceased fire, giving to ourselves an
+opportunity to prepare breakfast. We ate it where we had previously
+been firing, the men passing the tins of bully and the bread rations
+from one to another. Then just where we had been fighting, with the
+scent of the burst shells and the smoke of the rifles hanging in the
+air, thin spiral columns of smoke arose in the rear of the few
+brick-kilns, and coffee was presently brought to us. Until mid-morning
+we maintained our posts, but with the luncheon hour we took it easy,
+although preserving a watchful attitude towards the Boers. Thus passed
+the day with little further firing, and some sleeping, terminating in
+a merry dinner--under siege conditions--with Inspector Marsh and
+Inspector Brown, in the dug-out of their town post.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE SECOND ATTACK UPON THE BRICKFIELDS
+
+
+                            MAFEKING, _February 28th, 1900_.
+
+In many ways this month has been the most eventful of any during the
+siege. Other months of the siege have secured for themselves a certain
+notoriety, because they have been identified with some particular
+engagement; but this month of February has seen our labour in the
+brickfields brought to a successful consummation, and, at a moment
+when the garrison was congratulating itself upon the triumphant issue
+of such an adventurous and adventitious undertaking, we have been
+brought face to face with the contingency that even yet it may not be
+possible to continue to occupy so advanced a post. If I return to the
+subject of the brickfields after such a short interval, it is because
+there, more than anywhere else in Mafeking, the clash of arms is
+predominant. These many days we have followed out our scheme,
+endeavouring to circumvent the enemy by pushing forward a line of
+entrenched posts until they should embrace an area which would enable
+us to outflank their main lines and enfilade their advanced trenches.
+There was a moment when this was actually completed, a moment in
+which we who were in the advanced forts, knew that if we could but
+hold the position we held the invaders in such a fashion that they
+would be compelled to abandon their posts. But there was the shadow of
+uncertainty, since we were rather reckoning upon the hitherto
+recognised fact, that the Boers belonged to that class of fighting
+peoples who never purposely attack if they could secure their ends by
+entrenchments and delay. For one day we rather gloried in the work,
+until towards dusk we realised with a swift and fearful astonishment
+that the Boers were intending to sap us. We have supposed it to be by
+accident rather than by design that a man, in the uniform of some
+German regiment, appeared of a sudden to arise out of the ground at a
+point some thirty yards distant from what we had considered to be the
+end of the Boer trench. His presence explained much, since the night
+before we had been perplexed at hearing the sound of picking and
+shovelling a little in advance of our position. At that time we had
+concluded that the noises emanated from the natives, who were
+deepening and strengthening the advanced trench of the Boers; but with
+this figure suddenly appearing, we realised that there was quite a
+different story to be told, one which implied that our previous
+opinion of the enemy was in error, and that they intended to make us
+fight for our position or to turn us out. The situation was rapidly
+becoming as interesting as any which has developed from the siege. Sap
+and counter-sap were separated perhaps by eighty yards, and so
+gallantly and vigorously did the enemy work that we could see them
+approaching yard by yard. It was impossible for us in the time at our
+disposal to do very much to stop them; we could simply keep a look-out
+and drench their trenches with volleys upon the slightest
+provocation. It was useless to fire upon the natives working in the
+sap, since it was only possible to see the points of their picks as
+they were swung aloft, catching for a moment the radiance of the sun.
+Still they came on, and one night we knew that before dawn they would
+be into us. That night no one slept in the advanced trenches, and
+Inspector Marsh, who has very generously permitted me to stop with him
+for the past month in his quarters in the brickfields, visited the
+posts hourly. Between two and three we slept, and for a short space
+there was a perfect calm in our lines. At half-past four we stood to
+arms, to hear that the enemy had made contact with our trench. As we
+found this out, news was brought that the big Creusot gun had taken up
+its position upon the south-eastern heights, and so commanded our
+entire area. The inevitable had arrived and perhaps for a brief moment
+we were all a little subdued. As the sun rose Inspector Marsh,
+commanding the south-eastern outposts, under directions from
+Headquarters, warned every man to take such cover as was obtainable.
+
+The situation would have given satisfaction had there been any
+prospect of an equal contest, since man to man we were not unmatched,
+but it would be impossible for the occupants of these advanced posts
+to attempt conclusions with an enemy who could bring to their
+assistance a high-velocity Krupp and a 100 lb. Creusot. There was
+immediate excitement, and Inspector Marsh telephoned the news to
+Headquarters. For the moment that was all which could be done--inform
+Headquarters. Then, with our rifles in our hands, with an extra supply
+of ammunition by our sides, we waited the inevitable, and we waited
+until night; but upon that night nothing happened. As dusk drew down,
+and as the calm of night was broken only by the rumbling echoes and
+tremors of the work in the enemy's sap, we threw out a working party
+of some two hundred natives, starving and ill-conditioned, but the
+best that we could procure, intending to make the effort to check once
+and for all the advance of the Boers. We worked all night, and dawn
+was breaking as we drew off, but we had passed them. In a single night
+we had carried our sap some thirty yards beyond theirs, and at such an
+angle that we enfiladed their sap, while only eighty yards divided the
+pair. The Boer line of advance was deeper than ours by some five feet,
+but all that day white man and Cape Boy strove to deepen our new
+trench, and by night it was perhaps a foot deeper than it had been. It
+was dangerous work; it was exciting. The crackle of bullets was never
+absent; they struck all round one, and there were a few fatalities.
+That night we worked again, and so did they. Indeed, each side
+volleyed heavily all night to protect their working parties. We were
+not extending our trench; it was already a hundred yards sheer into
+the open, but in the morning when we looked, the Boer trench was
+barely thirty yards away from ours. That day we did nothing but await
+the inevitable again. We slept, since it was certain that on the
+morrow a fight would come. Once more there was nothing for it but to
+wait in such readiness as we could be in, for anything that the enemy
+might attempt. They began at dusk by throwing dynamite bombs into our
+sap--some burst, some fell blind; but this work was futile, since they
+had not yet reached sufficiently near to effect any damage. When they
+did obtain such access, we also had a little pile of bombs. Tooth for
+tooth--we were not going to give up without fighting. Then the end
+came suddenly, for Headquarters telephoned that the big gun had taken
+up its original position, which was barely two thousand yards distant
+on our left flank. With this message we began to comprehend what the
+next day would bring forth.
+
+The affair between the outposts began about a quarter to five in the
+morning. The first 100 lb. shell fell between our trenches and those
+of the enemy: it seemed that they had wished to secure the range. They
+had secured it. The three holes which form our advanced position
+contain no cover whatsoever, since there is none to put up, and
+whatever earth had been thrown up was commanded by the enemy's fort
+upon the south-eastern heights. Each hole contained a shelter from the
+sun, a corrugated iron arrangement, supported by props, with a
+sprinkling of earth on top. The shooting was magnificent, and it will
+be difficult to find, when the various comparisons be drawn,
+marksmanship more precise or more accurate. Each was wrecked in turn:
+a shell to a shelter. When this work had been accomplished, the big
+gun directed its attention to the brick-kilns, in which we had posted
+our sharpshooters. In a little time the three were heaps of ruins.
+Between the intervals of shelling the Boers fired volleys from the
+three points: from the fort on the south-eastern heights, from the
+fort in the river-bed, and from their main trench. The company of Cape
+Boys in the advanced hole could not be expected to relish the triple
+fire, which was in turn endorsed by shells from the big gun. The holes
+are not very large, nor very wide, nor high: they are natural
+depressions in the soil, in which water had collected and caused a
+further subsidence. When the enemy volleyed from the advanced trench,
+they had to crouch under the lee of a bank that was facing the
+direction of the fort on the south-eastern heights; when they wished
+to avoid shell and rifle fire from this fort, they had to run the risk
+of finding shelter in the direct line of fire from the main trench. If
+they endeavoured to move to the second hole, they had to do so under
+fire from all three points. It was rather an unpleasant state of
+things for the Cape Boys, who, moreover, could find no point from
+which to return the fire of the enemy. In an hour some twelve shells
+had been thrown into the first hole, and there were five fatalities.
+Whenever we endeavoured to occupy the sap the big gun shelled it,
+until it was no longer possible to maintain a post in a position so
+exposed. We fell back to the second hole, and the enemy began to shell
+other points in the brickfields. They sent two to Currie's post in the
+river-bed; they scattered them plentifully about the first, second,
+and third forts--entrenched posts by which it is hoped to keep back
+the Boers, should they successfully carry the Cape Boy holes. The
+situation was becoming serious, and we had been compelled to abandon
+the sap and evacuate the first hole. At the moment it was a question
+of whether the Boers were coming on, and as we waited in the
+expectation of seeing them advance down our own sap into our original
+position, the shelling ceased, for the Boers had gone to breakfast.
+That was our supreme opportunity, and although they must have seen us
+from the south-eastern heights, we employed ourselves in saving from
+the wreck what was possible. All the shelters had been pounded into
+_d�bris_: rifles and bayonets lay about broken and twisted, here and
+there were remains of camp utensils, and blood-stained clothing. It
+was a scene of ruin, and as we crept into it upon our hands and knees
+the confusion of the place struck one sadly. Sergeant-Major Taylor had
+been hurt by the second shell, and has since died, while another of
+the wounded has also succumbed. While the firing lasted the position
+was untenable, and we fell back from the sap into the most advanced of
+the holes. Here the situation rapidly became impossible, for the
+character of the outwork prevented any one from taking cover. But
+despite the galling fire, the Cape Boys behaved with admirable courage
+and endurance, and it was only when three men in the advanced hole had
+been seriously wounded, that they fell back behind the bank of the
+second pit. In a little, when the gun had effectually driven us from
+the advanced hole, the enemy began to shell the forts in the rear. At
+that moment there were two things to be done: one was to bank up the
+mouth of the sap, since the enemy had already reached it and were
+firing down it, the other was to throw up a rampart across the mouth
+of the second hole. Under a heavy fire Corporal Rosenfeld, of the
+Bechuanaland Volunteers, and myself undertook and accomplished the
+one, while at night the work upon the rampart was begun. By morning it
+was finished, but in the night the enemy had occupied our sap. The
+length of the first hole then alone divided us. Within the next few
+hours, however, the position of affairs changed as rapidly again. At a
+moment when the enemy were least prepared a strong party rushed the
+hole and sap, expelling the Boers by vigorous use of bayonets and
+dynamite bombs. Since then the Boers have left our advanced works
+severely alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+THE NATIVE QUESTION
+
+
+                                MAFEKING, _March 3rd, 1900_.
+
+It has become altogether impossible to gauge with any degree of
+accuracy, the situation in relation to the fortunes of the Imperial
+arms, or as it might be found in the camp of the enemy without
+Mafeking. We do not lack here men who, from a previous knowledge of
+the Boers, consider themselves capable of estimating the purpose and
+designs of Commandant Snyman; but what seems to be precise and even an
+admirable forecast one week, is proved, by events in the succeeding
+week, to be irrelevant and unreliable. It has been our habit, when for
+any length of time the enemy has rested, to attribute their
+comparative cessation from hostilities to news of ill-omen, and in our
+fatuous presciency we have approximately given the date upon which the
+siege will be raised. But in light of the never-varying contradiction
+in sense which befalls our optimistical assurance, we must perforce,
+recognise the falsity of our deductions and cease from worrying.
+Recently, indeed during the past week, we expected the Boers to
+celebrate Amajuba Day, and to this end, the garrison was held in a
+condition of complete readiness, so as to be able to at once repel the
+anticipated attack. The anniversary of this disastrous fight passed
+off, however, without incident, and as it happened that runners
+arrived from the North upon the same day, conveying to us the
+unconfirmed intelligence that a force under the ever-victorious
+General French had relieved Kimberley, the wise-acres here, both civil
+and military, were of opinion that the investing force, that has now
+surrounded us for six months, could not stomach such unfortunate
+information, and were as a consequence timorous of any renewed
+aggression. But now again our theories are erroneous, and the siege
+progresses to-day merrily and as pugnaciously as ever. With the
+tidings of Kimberley's good-luck, we looked to see the big Creusot gun
+removed across the border in its return to Pretoria, but alas! it
+still confronts us and still flings its daily complement of shells
+into the town. Indeed, without this piece of ordnance, life would
+become so strikingly original that the townspeople would break down
+under the strain. The uncertainty as to what direction it will take,
+as to the number of tolls which have been rung out from the alarm
+bell, as to whose house has been wrecked, or what family put into
+mourning, has buoyed up the townspeople to a pitch from which, when
+the cause is removed, there will be a pretty general collapse. With
+the advent of the news about the South, the Northern runners confirmed
+the fact of the presence of Colonel Plumer's force being near at hand.
+But this has been the irony of our situation since the siege began.
+There has ever been, it would seem, some worthy general or colonel
+within a little trifle of two hundred miles from us, bringing Mafeking
+relief, or if not for us, for the starving natives. This has always
+been so pleasant to reflect upon, just this little detail of two
+hundred miles. Colonel Plumer, we hear, is laying down "immense"
+stocks of food-supplies at Kanya, so that the natives here, who are
+already so reduced that they are dying from sheer inanition, having
+successfully accomplished the journey, which is one of ninety miles,
+may feed to their hearts' content--provided that they are able to pay
+for the rations which are so generously distributed to them. Whatever
+motives of philanthropy direct the policy of the executive in this
+question of distributing food allowances to natives, it cannot be said
+that the Government or its administrators, err in their administration
+upon the side of liberality. Even here in Mafeking we have set a price
+upon the bowl of soup--horseflesh and mealie-meal mixed--which is
+served out to the natives from the soup-kitchen, finding excuses for
+such parsimony in the contention that, by charging the starving
+natives threepence per bowl of soup, when it is exceedingly doubtful
+if they have that amount of money in their possession, we can
+successfully induce them to remove to Kanya, and there live in a state
+of happy flatulency off the stocks which Colonel Plumer has been
+ordered to prepare against their reception. Of course, at a moment
+like this, it is injudicious to cavil at the procedure of the Imperial
+Government, but there can be no doubt that the drastic principles of
+economy which Colonel Baden-Powell has been practising in these later
+days are opposed to and altogether at variance with the dignity of the
+liberalism which we profess and are at such little pains to execute,
+and which enter so much into the pacific settlement of native
+questions in South Africa. The presence of a large alien native
+population gathered in Mafeking at the present juncture has been our
+own fault, since the authorities, in whom the management and control
+of the natives of this district is invested, advised the military
+authorities here to allow some two thousand native refugees from the
+Transvaal to take up their abode upon the eve of war in the Mafeking
+stadt, and it is through the tax which this surplus population put
+upon the commissariat that this particular question has required such
+delicate adjustment. With supplies which are rapidly diminishing, we
+are compelled to force nightly a moderate number to attempt the
+journey to Kanya, and if they have been signally unsuccessful in their
+essay to pass through the Boer lines, it is in part because the enemy,
+having promised them a free passage, maliciously fires upon them as
+they reach the advanced trenches. For the most part, therefore, we are
+no better off than we were, since those natives who escaped invariably
+return to Mafeking.
+
+With the good news which we have received, a slightly better tone of
+feeling would seem to be about the community. We are simple people for
+the present, living as we do under the rigours of Martial Law, but we
+have such genuine faith in the supremacy of our flag, that now that we
+have heard of the general movement of troops, we are infinitely
+happier and inclined to forget for the moment the trials and
+difficulties of our position. There was a time when the townspeople
+were so disgusted with the conduct of the war, with the disgraceful
+and nefarious practices of the Colonial Government, with the
+abominable lethargy of the Imperial authorities, that five men out of
+every six had resolved to abandon a country where such misrule was
+possible, and to remove to some one other of our colonies, where life,
+upon a broader and happier basis, was the order. But with the
+inauguration of brighter things, such as the relief of Kimberley
+portends, this tone has disappeared, while there seems to be an almost
+unanimous desire to wait the arrival of the next intelligence. It is
+perhaps not altogether incorrect to say that the feeling of disgust,
+by which so many people were at one time swayed, existed chiefly among
+those who were connected to and related with families of Dutch origin,
+and who at some period discarded their Dutch allegiance, casting in
+their lot with the British. These people yet retained a certain
+sympathy with the Transvaal, and were as concerned as any Boer about
+the issues of the campaign. Upon the outbreak of war, many of these
+people took up their residence in border towns, and by these means
+Mafeking received a sprinkling of people who were, by protestation,
+Britishers, and by instinct, Dutch. These men were accepted, since as
+a rule they were known to be genuine in their avowal; but when they
+brought their families into Mafeking, their womenfolk, being wholly
+Dutch, were as a rule regarded in quite a different light. It must be
+remembered that inter-marriage is practised in the Transvaal to an
+extraordinary degree, and that the relationship of any one family with
+others can by this means permeate the entire country to such an extent
+that, while the woman might be the wife of an African Imperialist, she
+might be able to claim kinship with men who held high positions in the
+Republican service. These ladies, therefore, were quite open to the
+suspicion of wishing to convey to their relations in the Transvaal
+authentic information regarding Mafeking. As our condition has been
+precarious, and as important information was surreptitiously carried
+to the enemy, it was perhaps natural that we should take steps to
+confine these ladies within their laager, and to place a guard upon
+it--precautions which were neither valued nor appreciated by them, and
+from which they suffered no hardships other than those which might be
+expected to accrue from the enjoyment of the somewhat restricted
+liberty, with which they, together with the entire garrison, must
+perforce rest content.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+POLITICAL ECONOMY
+
+
+                               MAFEKING, _March 15th, 1900_.
+
+Colonel Baden-Powell has recently issued an order to all ranks in his
+command requesting the names of those who are willing to enlist in the
+special corps which are to be raised for purposes of patrolling the
+country when the war is terminated. If this be a sign of the times, a
+token by which we may read the lines of the policy by which Africa
+will be governed during the next few years, it is satisfactory at
+least to understand that we do not propose to take the risk of
+successful risings in the months to come in different Dutch centres.
+This war has shown us the folly of courting "compromise and Exeter
+Hall" in dealing with dissatisfied areas of the Empire. We have
+policed Burma, we patrol Ireland (but in a different sense), and in
+India we have incorporated and turned into admirable efficiency many
+of the hill tribes, but we cannot translate the native-born Republican
+nor convert the rebel Dutch without the almost certain contingency
+arising of their proving traitorous. There are many who know the Boer,
+and, knowing him and appreciating his strange strategy, his curiously
+warped mind, his natural aptitude for breaking his bond, would not
+trust him in any transaction where integrity of character and probity
+were the essential complement. There has been much opinion among
+colonials that the Imperial Government might, anxious to be as
+conciliatory as possible, enrol the Dutch for constabulary duties,
+giving, indeed, to the younger generation the preference, and thus
+enabling them to possess an employment definite, if not altogether
+lucrative. But in this we should be perpetrating against the loyal
+colonists of Cape Colony a grave injustice, for until the present
+generation of Dutch has passed away, taking with it the memories of
+the war, it will be unsafe, it will be unwise, to employ in any
+administrative capacity whatsoever, those men who, themselves nursing
+a rancour against Great Britain, will omit no opportunity to foster
+the traditional hatred of their forefathers. We have in France, and in
+the French animosity against Germany, a case which is identical,
+proving, as it does, how the prejudices of a people can be nurtured
+and kept evergreen through the sheer force of malignant sentiment; and
+there can be little doubt that time, and time only, is capable of
+removing from the minds of the Republican Dutch that feeling of
+detestation and contempt which has maintained them in their attitude
+of hostility towards us for so many decades. To them, for many years
+to come, the British will be a nation of iconoclasts; we may banish
+them, we may wipe out all traces of their misrule, and so obliterate
+the signs of their existence that historians may find it difficult to
+believe that they once lived. We may do all these things, but it will
+be impossible to govern their instincts by Act of Parliament, to curb
+their impulses by the rulings of the High Commissioner. It would
+therefore be thrice foolish to employ them in their own country and
+among their own people, and such action would imply that we intended
+to ignore uses to which the younger colonists can be so conveniently
+put. In South Africa, as in Australasia and in Canada, there is a
+large army of young men who loaf their hours away in the idleness of
+an agricultural life rather than seek some trade in the offices of the
+big cities. They achieve little that is profitable upon their farms,
+clinging tenaciously to such a livelihood, since it possesses finer
+natural elements in its intimacy with the life of the veldt than any
+form of metropolitan activity could give to them. There are, of
+course, many men who have been driven to the towns through the failure
+of their holdings, but in this present state of war these especially,
+and all those others, have answered eagerly to the call for
+volunteers, and in proving themselves worthy, have rendered excellent
+services to the State. The great majority of these men would willingly
+take service in the forces to which the order of the colonel
+commanding makes reference, and by this we have at hand an army
+extraordinarily adapted to colonial purposes, and needing only to be
+called out. Moreover, at a time when the Empire has seen how its
+various units have hastened to the aid of the Mother-country, would it
+not be well to create in each colony a permanent militia from the men
+who have so unanimously come forward; a force which would be to the
+colonies what the Imperial army is to India, and which would supersede
+the local defence forces in Australasia, approaching in its conception
+a fixed soldiery rather than one to which is given a certain number of
+exercises in the year? There would be no lack of numbers in any of the
+colonies, and in Africa we could make use of the Zulu, the Matabele,
+and the Cape Boys. We have long rested in fancied security, and not
+until China falls a prey to Russia and India passes from us, need we
+fear that Australasia can be taken from us by the combined fleets of
+the Powers of Europe; nevertheless, since we must reorganise our army,
+it would be no mean policy to place, once and for all, upon their true
+foundation the defences of our colonies.
+
+To those who know the life of the mounted police in Burma, of the
+constabulary in the West Indies, and of the police in Canada, the
+duties of the corps that are raised for South Africa will be at once
+comprehended. They would both police and administer the areas of the
+Transvaal and the Orange Free State, and it may be that they will be
+affiliated with the British South Africa Police corps that are already
+enrolled. The life is enjoyable, there is much sport, and for a few
+years to come there is sure to be trouble, at odd intervals, among the
+Dutch. It is, perhaps, doubtful whether the man from home will be
+quite adapted to such work, since, in a very high degree, a knowledge
+of the Dutch language will be indispensable, and much valuable time
+will be lost in acquiring some smattering of this tongue and in
+teaching the recruits to ride, to shoot, and to drill. But life in the
+mounted constabulary has also possessed so great a fascination for the
+average Englishman that, should the Government decide to make eligible
+the men from home, any paucity among the colonial applicants can be at
+once remedied. Care, however, should be taken that the colonial men
+who came forward on behalf of the colony in its hour of peril, should
+be given the first refusal, and a greater financial consideration
+should be meted out than, with the exception of the Canadian police,
+has hitherto been customary. The economy of Africa is high priced, and
+it will be eminently difficult for men to live upon their pay should
+they have to forfeit any large proportion of it for extras, the cost
+of which might well be borne by the Government itself. There has been
+a great outcry about the higher rates of pay which are drawn by the
+colonial corps now serving at the front as compared with the
+wretchedly inadequate wages of the regulars, and it is a great pity
+that we, who can be so foolishly magnanimous, cannot disavow the petty
+economies of the service at a moment like the present. Five shillings
+a day is small enough when men have to provide their entire equipment,
+but to argue that because the War Office is supplying the kit the rate
+should be reduced, since the main source of expenditure be removed, is
+to incline towards a policy of expenditure which is penny wise and
+pound foolish. We read recently, and with infinite zest, that the
+artillery by which Mafeking is defended includes a battery of field
+guns and four heavy pieces. This, of course, is a grotesque
+exaggeration. We have no heavy ordnance, and our field pieces are
+obsolete muzzle-loading monstrosities. Had the War Office paid
+attention to its work, and supplied this advanced outpost of the
+Empire with efficient artillery, instead of rushing up to Mafeking an
+improvised field battery, it would be possible to ignore the attempt
+to curtail the pay of the colonial forces, since, if Africa had been
+prepared for war, it is improbable that Great Britain would have been
+compelled, in order to crush the combined forces of the Republics, to
+summon to her aid men from her colonial dependencies. But we did not
+do this, and if we be now reaping the fruits of an impotent
+administration, we should be sufficiently generous to accept the
+responsibility for the expenditure, and to desist from an endeavour to
+bolster up accounts by imposing upon the colonial contingents the
+effects of an economy which aims at sparing a few thousand pounds by
+saving some portion of their pay. Moreover, if it be true that the
+colonial contingents which have been enrolled since war began, are
+receiving ten shillings a day, why should not that rate be accepted as
+the standard of pay for all colonial forces under arms? In relation to
+Mafeking, where the question of compensation has become acute, such
+addition to the pay of the defenders of the town as would increase
+their rate to ten shillings would be a felicitous manner of
+recognising the gallant work which the garrison has performed, and
+provide at the same time, a practical exposition of official
+appreciation for the units of the defence.
+
+If this be the one question of moment, in reference to the other
+problem--the pastoral and agricultural future of the country--there is
+little doubt that Africa--more especially these western districts,
+where agricultural and pastoral pursuits are widely followed--will
+require the assistance of the capitalist before the mere emigrant from
+England can make much headway. In a sense Mafeking is the central
+market for farm produce for areas which stretch far into the
+Transvaal, and which, lacking the propinquity of a local market, are
+compelled to send their products across the border. Many of these
+districts have proved to possess valuable mining qualities, so that it
+is possible we shall see in a few years the development of towns
+which, owing their existence to the mines, will attract the trade
+which now finds its bent in the Mafeking market. But the hope here is
+of railway communication with Johannesburg and Pretoria, and the
+consequent opening out and settlement of the Bechuanaland
+Protectorate, and it is in this respect the capitalist will be the
+Alpha and Omega of the countryside; for the youngster who goes to
+Australasia with five hundred pounds and leases a property will be
+unable to obtain a hearing up here until the economy of daily life has
+been reduced to a less expensive order. There is a golden future here,
+but much gold will have to be poured into the lap of Mother Nature
+before any very satisfactory results are gained. The cost of transit
+is prohibitive, and there is a scarcity of water, which will make
+wells a necessity. There is much cheap labour, but the present mode of
+existence of the farming class is one which favours a bare
+sufficiency, and for the remainder a state of placid idleness.
+
+The insufficient development of South Africa in respect to its
+agricultural and pastoral resources is largely due to the
+unprogressiveness of the Boer or South African farmer. He personifies
+useless idleness, and contents himself with raising a herd of a few
+hundred head of cattle; he seldom plants a tree; seldom digs a well;
+seldom makes a road; and has an unmitigated contempt for agriculture
+and agriculturists. His ploughs, harrows, and utensils of husbandry
+are clumsy, ill-formed, and, where they exist at all, are hopelessly
+antiquated. He cannot be prevailed upon to make any alteration
+whatsoever in the system of his agriculture. His ancestors were
+farmers, and he himself does not conceive it to be his duty to alter
+methods which were already obsolete when he was a child. The English
+farmer, with good training, active disposition, and accurate
+knowledge of how and where to institute radical reforms, possessing
+capital, might find both home and fortune in these areas. It is a good
+cattle country, and with a careful reorganisation in the management of
+the cattle-farms across the border--a reorganisation which should
+extend throughout all agrestic or nomadic communities in the
+Transvaal--it should receive material assistance from the farms of the
+western border of the Transvaal that are already stocked. The Dutch
+farmer, living the life of the patriarch of old, leaves everything to
+nature, and does not, as a rule, combine the varieties of farming
+which his property would sustain. He remains a stock-breeder, or a
+grower of cereals: the combination of the two is usually too complex.
+It will be therefore a good thing should a different basis of
+management be inculcated, and when this be accomplished, greater
+facilities for stocking their farms will be held out to the intending
+colonists who may favour the country, but for the time the new-comers
+should check their eagerness, since, above all things, capital will be
+necessary to their salvation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+"A HISTORY OF THE BARALONGS"
+
+
+                               MAFEKING, _March 22nd, 1900_.
+
+Beyond a few successful cattle-raiding forays on the part of the
+Baralongs, we have done nothing these past days but maintain
+courageously the glories of our splendid isolation. In a way we have
+been compelled to depend to no small extent upon the prowess of the
+local tribe. The Baralongs have done well by us, and have served us
+faithfully, and with no complaint. They have fought for us; they have
+preyed upon the enemy's cattle, so that the white garrison might have
+something better than horseflesh for their diet; they have manned the
+western defences of the stadt, and they have suffered severe
+privations with extraordinary fortitude. There have been moments in
+the earlier stages of the war when they might well have considered the
+advisability of supporting a power that could not from the outset
+hinder their own arch-enemy, and one against whom they have been
+pre-eminently successful in other years, from invading the territories
+of the Empire. But whatever may have been the workings of the native
+mind, however they may have dallied with the treacherous overtures of
+the Boers, they have individually, and as a tribe, unanimously risen
+to the occasion, and given to the Great White Queen their absolute
+support. In the history of these people there is not much in the
+consideration which we have shown them to justify their allegiance,
+and if we have secured their loyalty at so critical a moment, let us
+hope that it may, in some way, epitomise the actions for the future,
+of the tribes that are allied with them, and, when the moment comes
+for compensation, let us at least remember the debt of honour which we
+owe them.
+
+The Baralongs are, of course, identified with the Bantu peoples of
+Africa, but they come from a stock that is industrial as opposed to
+the military element of this race. The distribution of the military
+and industrial Bantu is significant, but in this latter we will
+consider one of the peaceable tribes. The military Bantu is found in
+possession of the most fertile regions, and it may be well to remember
+that they occupied the Southern extremity of Africa, contemporaneously
+with Europeans. They are now found between the Drakensberg Mountains
+and the Indian Ocean, fruitful areas about the Zoutpansberg and
+Kaffraria. It would seem that they held these grounds by right of
+might, and their district is in somewhat striking contrast to the
+regions in which the industrial Bantu are at home. These latter cling
+to the mountains, as in Basutoland, and are scattered over the high
+plateau which forms so great a part of the Free State and the
+Transvaal, or in the confines of the Kalahari Desert and those deserts
+and karoos which lie to the south of the Orange River. The desert has
+ever been their ultimate retreat, and as their more warlike kinsmen
+seized and held the finer qualities of the country, the arid and, so
+to speak, waste areas of Africa fell to the heritage of the industrial
+Bantu. Descendants from the same family, there is naturally an analogy
+between their tribal organisations which is yet curiously dissimilar.
+They are both armed with the same weapon, but the assegai of the
+military Bantu is short-handled and broad bladed; while the assegai of
+the industrial Bantu is long and sharp, light in the blade, and
+intended mainly for purposes of the chase. Among the former the chief
+is a despot, against whose word there is no appeal; his town is
+designed with a view to defence; the chief's hut and the cattle-pens
+of the tribe are placed in the centre, and around these the remaining
+huts are built in concentric circles. The power of the chief among the
+industrial Bantu is limited; first by the council of lesser chiefs,
+secondly by the general assemblage of the freemen of the tribe. His
+town is intended to serve the requirements of a peaceful people, while
+outside the ground is cultivated in a rough and unscientific manner;
+they are even acquainted with the art of smelting ore and working in
+iron. The pursuit of the military Bantu is directed to the successful
+cultivation of a bare sufficiency of corn and cattle, and he pays
+little attention to anything which is beyond his immediate
+requirements. The Kaffirs, the Zulus, and the Matabele Zulus are among
+the warlike tribes of this dark-skinned race; but the chief seats of
+the industrial tribe are Bechuanaland and Basutoland, and it is with
+the peaceful Bechuanas, with whom are identified the Baralongs, that
+we propose to deal.
+
+Historically, Bechuanaland will remain ever interesting to Englishmen
+as being the scene of the labours of Robert Moffat, David Livingstone,
+and John Mackenzie: three famous missionaries, who in their time did
+so much for the interests of our country in what was then the Dark
+Continent. The immense area lying to the north of Cape Colony
+possessed in itself one great political feature which made its
+possession of paramount importance. It was the natural trade route
+between that colony and Central Africa at a moment when Imperialism
+was a soulless conception, and when our ideas of the Empire in Africa
+shrank at the possibility of northern expansion. During all those
+years possession of Bechuanaland was the golden key to a future which,
+had we but realised it then, would have given us some right to claim
+the distinction of being a race of discoverers. We were, however, very
+diffident about accepting and recognising any greater responsibilities
+in relation to any enlargement of the areas of our African domains,
+and if a vindictive spirit had not encouraged the Boers to plunder and
+destroy the settlement in which missionary Livingstone abode, and thus
+driven him to pastures of a fresh kind, we might never have possessed
+the gate through which the stream of prosperity has flowed, until it
+reached to the limits of Central Africa. If the Boers had resolved to
+oust this intrepid Englishman, they failed lamentably, insomuch as
+they did but drive him to explore the interior, and to open up a
+magnificent reach of country to his fellow Englishmen. Bechuanaland
+lay at his feet when he first started forth, but to-day the point of
+exploration is many hundred miles in advance. Bechuanaland has
+flourished, and would have prospered more, had we but appreciated the
+doctrine of those Victorian statesmen who, recognising the wondrous
+wealth which lay in this new country, but fearing that the moment had
+not come for such gigantic undertakings, were regretfully compelled
+to delegate to posterity the duty of some day acquiring these very
+areas. Great Britain does not go very far back into the history of the
+native tribes of Bechuanaland. We are the later agents of a new
+civilisation, but we have yet to undo many wrongs to the lawful
+possessors of this proud heritage, to adjust many intricate questions,
+and to grapple, without fear and hesitation, with the problems which
+confront us--problems upon which it is surely not too much to say the
+effectual solidarity and stability of this great African Empire
+depends.
+
+Tradition tells us that the Baralong branch of the Bantu came from the
+north under the leadership of Chief Morolong, and that the tribe
+settled, after a protracted exodus from the north, on the Molopo River
+under a chief who was fourth in descent from their first leader,
+Morolong. The combination of the military and industrial Bantu had
+been already broken by the character of the tribe itself. Before they
+had been settled very long, Matabele Zulus under Moselekatse attacked
+Mabua, and there was once again a complete division of tribe. They
+scattered in three directions. Thaba N'chu was selected by the leader
+of that party as their eventual resting-place. Two other sections, led
+by Taoane, the father of Montsioa, and Machabi, found their way into
+the country which lay between the Orange River and the Vaal. There
+they remained, leading a quiet and comparatively harmless existence
+until the Boers, under Hendrik Potgieter, entered into alliance with
+the Baralongs to attack Moselekatse. When the old lion of the north
+had been driven beyond the Limpopo, Taoane returned with his followers
+to the south bank of the Marico. By virtue of this conquest Potgieter
+issued a proclamation, claiming for himself and the Transvaal
+Government the country which had previously been overrun by the Zulu
+chief. Under this proclamation the Boers claimed to exercise sovereign
+powers over the Bechuana tribes, but upon the protest of the British
+Government this was withdrawn, Taoane and Montsioa, who had by this
+time succeeded his father, refusing to recognise the implied
+sovereignty of the Boers. By the intervention of the Imperial
+Government on behalf of the native chiefs of a territory which was
+practically unknown, it became the eventual channel through which we
+pushed a benign salvation, and an indifferent protection upon the
+natives of Bechuanaland until that time when we were enabled to
+assimilate the country. The attempt of the Transvaal Government to
+seize the areas of Bechuanaland was the rift in the silver lining of
+the clouds of Transvaal prosperity. The question became, between the
+two Governments, one of great moment, and its existence, since the
+Republic declined to ratify the award of the Keate Arbitration, was a
+bone of contention which was never altogether buried. The attitude of
+this Republic, the indirect assistance which the Transvaal offered to
+Moshette and Massou for the perpetuation of civil strife among the
+Bechuana chiefs, undoubtedly hastened the annexation by Great Britain
+in 1877 of the Transvaal territory. When this happened, despite the
+fact that the border was immediately delimited, Bechuanaland passed
+through a period of the greatest anarchy. The chiefs were warring
+amongst themselves, and although the two parties claimed the
+protection of either the Transvaal or the Imperial Government, the
+country was not definitely pacified till the despatch of the Warren
+Expedition, an expedient which by its success made Bechuanaland an
+integral portion of our African Empire. Montsioa, the Baralong chief,
+was fighting with his brother Moshette; Mankorane, the Batlapin chief,
+was engaged in struggle with David Massou, who was head of the
+Korannas. Of these four chiefs Montsioa and Mankorane sought the
+protection of the Imperial Government, while Moshette and Massou
+acknowledged the sovereignty of the Transvaal. European volunteers or
+freebooters who would be rewarded for their services by grants of
+land, assisted each of the four chiefs. At this juncture the Imperial
+Government changed its policy of administration in relation to the
+natives of Bechuanaland, and the result was that the High Commissioner
+of the Cape became supreme chief of the natives outside the Republic
+and the territories of foreign powers. In pursuance of the new policy
+Mr. Mackenzie arrived in Bechuanaland as British Resident, for the
+purpose of giving effect to the newly proclaimed Protectorate which
+had been established over the country outside the south-western
+boundary of the Transvaal by the consent of the delegates from the
+Republic, who had visited London to obtain certain modifications of
+the Convention of Pretoria. An extraordinary state of things awaited
+the arrival of Mackenzie, for the volunteers in the service of the
+Bechuana chiefs, Moshette and Massou, had established two independent
+communities, the "republics" of Land Goshen and Stellaland. The
+freebooters of Stellaland offered no resistance to the authority of
+the British Resident, but the burghers of Land Goshen celebrated the
+arrival of the Resident by a series of outrages and the contemptuous
+rejection of the demands made to them by these new officials. With
+the successful resistance of the filibusters from Rooigrond, the
+capital of Land Goshen, President Kruger issued a proclamation in the
+interests of humanity, by which he brought under the protecting wing
+of this South African State, the contending chiefs and their European
+advisers; thus the anomaly existed of a power endeavouring to assert
+its authority over rebels in a country in which we ourselves had
+assumed control. The mediation of the Transvaal Government was brought
+about, partly by the situation of Rooigrond, partly by the
+unjustifiable arrogance and assumption of the Transvaal President. The
+town had been so placed that it lay across the line of the new
+south-western boundary; the divisions lying partly in the Transvaal,
+partly in the Protectorate, and since it had become apparent that the
+Imperial or Colonial Government were unable to remedy the evils which
+arose from the depredations of marauders of Rooigrond, their leaders
+justified their actions by claiming that their town was the property
+of the Transvaal, and that they themselves were acting for that state,
+under the orders of General Joubert, and endeavouring to suppress
+conditions of anarchy in a country which, from the state of its
+existence, would appear to possess no controlling influences. If the
+outcome of this diplomatic feat were the proclamation of the
+Transvaal, it also aroused Great Britain to the true condition of
+affairs. The Transvaal had gone too far, and, in response to hints
+from the Imperial Government as to the feeling of the colony,
+resolutions were passed stating that public opinion in Cape Colony
+considered the intervention of her Majesty's Government for the
+maintenance of the trade route to the interior, and the preservation
+of native tribes to whom promise of Imperial protection had already
+been given, was an act dictated by the claims of humanity and by the
+necessities of policy. It was thus brought home to the Government that
+the Cape Colonists considered that it would be fatal to British
+supremacy in South Africa if we failed to maintain our rights which we
+derived from the Convention of London, and to fulfil our obligations
+towards the native tribes of the new Protectorate. After this
+assurance of moral support the Imperial Government despatched Sir
+Charles Warren, in order that he might remove the filibusters from
+Bechuanaland, pacify the country, and restore the natives their land,
+taking measures, in the meantime, to prevent a recurrence of the
+depredations and atrocities which had been enacted recently there.
+When the forces were finally withdrawn Bechuanaland was created a
+Crown Colony, and at a subsequent date, it was incorporated into the
+Cape Colony. Since this time we have continued to perform the duties
+of a central authority in respect to the native tribes beyond the
+borders of the South African Republic, the expenses of administration
+being paid from the proceeds of the hut tax which is levied upon
+natives, together with the revenue derived from trading licenses, and
+paid for by European traders. In the settlement of Bechuanaland we
+reached a critical point in the history of England's administration in
+South Africa. We have been compelled to accept the responsibilities of
+such a central power as we have become, and we can no longer disregard
+the adjustment of those problems which so burdened that office. Now
+that our Imperial interests are so strong and our holdings in the
+country so great, let us no longer continue to oppose the means which
+will lead to that eventual federation of the Colonies and States of
+South Africa, the union which, once secured, will do so much to
+rectify the mistakes that we have made in our African policy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+'TIS WEARY WAITING
+
+
+                               MAFEKING, _March 31st, 1900_.
+
+We have lived for so many months now under the conditions which govern
+a town during siege that we almost accept existing circumstances as
+normal. We have ceased to wonder at the shortness of our rations,
+content to recognise that we might grumble from sunrise to sunset and
+gain nothing by it. We are no longer surprised at the enemy; they seem
+to take the siege as a joke, but it is a comedy which has a tragic
+lining. We have astounding spirit; there is no question of the gravity
+of our situation; there is no doubt that if we were to relax our
+vigilance for a moment, if we were to withdraw an outpost, diminish
+the establishment of some trench, the Boers would be in upon us before
+the garrison had realised that any such alteration in the defences had
+taken place. Nevertheless, there is really an admirable exhibition of
+almost uncomplaining acquiescence in the hardships which have fallen
+to our daily lot. Here and there there is grumbling, but the man who
+grumbles to-day rejoices to-morrow, since no siege can be endured with
+fortitude and determination if one dwells unduly long upon the
+difficulties and trials which beset us. Lately we had an exhibition,
+and many people in the garrison have consumed the past three weeks in
+a feverish and untiring activity to complete their exhibits. Ladies
+accomplished something rather fine in lacework, the men turned their
+attention to constructing models of the town's defences, and one and
+all entered into this little break in the monotony of the siege with
+the cheering intention of getting as much out of the event as was
+possible. Prizes varying from �5 to a sovereign were offered, and
+indirectly, each endeavoured to foster the spirit of the town. It had
+a beneficial effect, this artificial method of killing time, and it
+realised some �50 for the hospital. There have been other things
+besides the exhibition to stimulate the spirits of the garrison.
+Native runners brought us the news of the fall of Bloemfontein, a
+feature in the campaign which adds fresh laurels to the reputation of
+Lord Roberts. His continued successes have been an _elixir vit�_, and,
+indeed, so freely have we imbibed of this new medicine, that there
+have been many who have found themselves possessed of a fresh
+strength. There is, however, one thing which does not give any
+satisfaction whatsoever to the little band of men who have held this
+outpost of the Empire during so many weary months, and this is
+embodied in the absence of any very definite signs of a speedy relief.
+Lord Roberts has told us to hold out until the middle of May, but it
+is a weary wait, and we could well see the van of the column crossing
+the rise. Within the past few days the town has been swept by rumours
+about the propinquity of the southern column; we have understood
+Colonel Plumer has been within fifty miles of Mafeking for some weeks.
+The rumours anent the southern relief place this column at any point
+within two hundred miles of Mafeking; some days it has reached Taungs,
+upon others it has not left Kimberley, again it is a week's march
+north of Vryburg, and in the meantime we receive telegrams from London
+congratulating us upon our successful and happy release. Where do
+these rumours come from? How comes it that London should be in
+ignorance of our condition?
+
+We, who have followed with so much interest the fortunes of the
+campaign, sharing in the success of others with all sincerity and
+feeling reverses like personal insults, are disinclined to deny the
+existence of a relief column; but perhaps it is not altogether
+understood that, while we have food lasting till the middle of May, it
+is not impossible to feel famished upon our present rations at the end
+of March. Of food in the abstract there is an abundance, but the
+condition and quality of the ration is such that it cannot be reduced
+any further without immediately affecting the health of the garrison
+and proving a very serious obstacle to the successful execution of any
+work which may be detailed to the command. Experiments have been tried
+for the purpose of discovering whether it were possible to exist, and
+to work, upon an allowance of 8 oz. of meat and 4 oz. of bread, and,
+while it was proved that the garrison might exist upon such short
+commons, it would be very injudicious to issue this allowance, since
+it caused a serious deterioration in the stamina of the men; it has,
+therefore, been condemned. The bread is impossible, and, although
+every effort be made to improve it, it still resembles a penwiper more
+than a portion of bread. It is made from the common oats which one
+gives to horses. These oats are crushed, but, sift them as you please,
+treat them by every process which the ingenuity of the entire
+garrison can devise, they positively bristle all over with
+sharp-pointed pieces of the husks. Recently we have been promised Boer
+meal, but it would appear, according to Captain Ryan, that the Boer
+meal is to be held in reserve as long as possible. For the moment we
+rather hanker after that reserve, and we do not take much of the
+composite forage which is served us as bread. However, if we are
+eating the rations of horses, the unfortunate people of Kimberley ate
+the horses, and so, it would seem, our lot might be much worse. Horses
+have not become our daily ration yet, although they form the basis of
+a curious soup which is made and served out to the natives. The smell
+of that soup turns many weary pedestrians from their usual paths,
+although the spectacle of the starving natives swarming round the
+soup-kitchen is one of the sights of the siege.
+
+But, doubtless, those people who send us ridiculous messages of
+congratulation may think that this is, after all, but the mere detail
+of the siege--the side issue which should be expected, and which
+should in any case be endured with a fine toleration. That is all
+right; we do not mind the bread, we do not mind the aroma of the
+soup-kitchen, but we do object to preposterous messages of
+congratulation telling us "the siege is over," at the very moment when
+the enemy is shelling us simultaneously from five different points.
+The other day they endeavoured to concentrate their fire upon the
+centre of the town, and, if they did not do this altogether, they most
+certainly fired into Mafeking a weight of metal that has exceeded
+every other day's. We had from sunrise until dusk 79 Creusot shells,
+100 lb. each; 35 steel-capped, armour-piercing, delay-action,
+high-velocity Krupp, 15 lb. each; 29 9-pounder Krupp; 57 3-pounder
+Maxims; and such a merry flight of 5-pounders that these shells have
+become a drug in the market, and to such an extent that we would very
+gladly exchange between here and London, a few such stormy petrels as
+a polite and cordial memento of the day of our deliverance. It is true
+that in part we are relieved, since we have chosen to take the
+initiative into our own hands and expelled the enemy from a position
+on the south-eastern facing of the town which they have occupied since
+the beginning of hostilities. This has given us immense relief, since
+it has practically placed the town beyond the effective range of the
+Mauser rifle and the Boer sharpshooters.
+
+The trench was exceedingly well made, divided by traverses, protected
+with a rear bank and a strong head cover. It was a mercy that we did
+not attempt to storm it, and its remarkable strength and composite
+construction goes some way to explain the difficulty which we have
+experienced in making much impression, either by shell fire or
+storming party, upon the Boer entrenchments. We did this in a single
+night, having led up to such a climax by devoting our attentions to
+this particular quarter. We bombarded them by day, we sniped them by
+night, and sapped them in the intervals. For a brief moment the enemy
+checked us, but it was only for a moment, and our fire was so warm and
+so persistent that they relinquished their attempt to prevent our
+advance, leaving, however, in their trench at the moment of evacuation
+a little trifle, possibly forgotten in their scramble to the rear, of
+250 lbs. of nitro-glycerine. The mine was at once located, the wires
+were cut, the trench was occupied, and in the morning when day
+dawned, instead of there being the roar of a great explosion, there
+was simply the ruddy blaze of our artillery fire from the gun
+emplacements which they had constructed and which we had converted to
+our own use. But we have taken care of that little mine, and
+possession of the trench leaves us masters of the situation. This,
+however, is the only relief that has come to Mafeking.
+
+The Boer possesses a natural aptitude for digging ditches and throwing
+up earthworks, since his instinct tells him what not to do, much as
+this same intuition teaches him how to secure the natural
+fortifications of a kopje, and has made him, as the war has proved, a
+foeman worthy of our steel. We have despised the Boer; we have
+contumaciously called him a barbarian; but, nevertheless, these nomads
+of the South African veldt have given the mighty majesty of England a
+lesson which will take her many years to forget. Boer tactics are
+unique, but one has to witness them to believe in their feasibility.
+Their horses are so trained that when the reins are thrown over their
+necks they remain immovable. Their fighting is based on this fact,
+combined with the dictates of common-sense and their empirical, yet
+successful manner of encountering us in the Gladstonian War. Each
+commando of one hundred men is their unit; these are concentrated in
+scattered groups in rear of their outpost lines, and upon coming in
+contact with the enemy they endeavour to encircle their adversary,
+cantering in eccentric circles until they are able to dismount in a
+fold of ground near some coign of vantage. They are extraordinarily
+adept at making the best of their cover, and they are most patient,
+waiting hours for a shot, prone upon the ground, under a scorching
+sun. It would seem that they have maintained their time-honoured
+system, applying to the present campaign tactics possessing great
+mobility, rapid powers of concentration on vulnerable points, and as
+rapid retreats therefrom if seriously threatened. This power of rapid
+movement incidental to all being mounted gives them great advantage,
+increasing their powers of offence and defence, and representing the
+crux of their theories of war. The Boer carries on his horse one
+hundred rounds of ammunition, and rations of sun-dried beef sufficient
+for four days. The horses feed upon the veldt. In four days the Boer
+can cover two hundred miles, and it is this ability to move from point
+to point with extraordinary despatch, that makes the Boer force a body
+of mounted infantrymen possessing great strategical value. It has been
+impossible not to admire the tactics which the Boers have pursued in
+investing Mafeking, and where they have detached a force for any
+special purpose the execution of their work has been accomplished with
+laudable celerity. They dismantle and re-set, at an emplacement some
+miles away, their big Creusot gun--a process which seldom occupies
+them longer than between dusk and dawn; sometimes we see them moving
+their guns northwards, and hear from natives that they arrived at a
+point some thirty miles from Mafeking by daybreak. It may be that in
+respect to the mobility of their forces we have much to learn, and let
+us at least profit by the lessons which are thus afforded us.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+TWO HUNDRED DAYS OF SIEGE
+
+
+                               MAFEKING, _April 15th, 1900_.
+
+There is now happily no longer any doubt of the truth of the native
+reports of important successes having befallen our arms in the
+vicinity of Kimberley. We hear with infinite rejoicing that Kimberley
+has pulled through, and is no longer invested by the enemy, and almost
+so soon as these tidings reached us, natives brought in the
+unconfirmed news of the capture of Cronje. This has since been
+officially published, and the garrison here is beginning to feel at
+last that their turn is about to come! We have waited long for this
+moment, passing many black hours in the interval, but even now it
+seems that the power of England may be successfully defied by these
+federated South African Republicans. Yet we hope and, in the changing
+of the fortunes which we anticipate, we express and share in the
+felicitous congratulations which the Empire is offering to Lord
+Roberts. The shrewdness and tactical genius of this gallant veteran
+has been a source from which the entire garrison has drawn an
+inspiring hope which encouraged one and all to resist to the uttermost
+the attacks of the Boers.
+
+We have already been besieged six months, and although the internal
+situation does not appreciably differ from that which existed on the
+first day of the siege, the signs of the times betoken the gravity of
+our condition. During recent days there have been two separate
+indications of the straits to which the siege has reduced us. Colonel
+Plumer endeavoured to pass into Mafeking a mob of cattle; the Almighty
+sent a flight of locusts in such numbers that for many miles the veldt
+was brown beneath the thousands which alighted upon it. Now the locust
+is an article of diet, though it has not yet attained the dignity of
+the position enjoyed by the nimble prawn. At present the locust is
+compared only to a tasteless prawn, but it may be that when the siege
+of Mafeking be raised and the world knows that no small portion of the
+garrison were reduced to locusts without wild honey, this somewhat
+unconvincing appetiser may be relegated to the office of a _hors
+d'oeuvre_. Dame Fashion is responsible for so much that she might well
+introduce to the social world such a toothsome delicacy. To catch your
+locust is almost as difficult as to eat it, but it may be done by
+turning out at night and throwing a blanket over any patch whose
+numbers suggest the possibility of a profitable return. This, of
+course, is not the native mode: the native, being as nimble as the
+locust, goes for them on the rush, and sweeps them into heaps before
+they have quite recovered from the shock of the surprise. By this
+method you certainly secure your locust, by the other you generally
+catch a cold, for the process of catching an individual locust is
+somewhat laborious. However, it may be done, more especially where
+there is the tedium of a siege to while away. Having caught your
+locust, you then immerse him in boiling water, a treatment which at
+once subdues him. You then proceed to sun-dry him and pluck away his
+wings and head. The locust is then ready for the table, when, after
+eating him, you discover that he has all the aroma and subtlety of
+chewed string. For all the world one might as well munch string, but
+since the possibilities of imparting to him an especial flavour be so
+numerous and so eminently calculated to test the qualities of the
+_chef_, he should again be commended to the notice of society in so
+much that it is possible to create an altogether original locust.
+There is, of course, another way of eating locusts, and that is to eat
+them alive. This practice, however, is not held in any very great
+esteem, since the native who cannot afford to wait to cook his locust
+is _d�classe_, even if he be starving. Personally, I rather like
+locusts if they be fried, more especially if they be curried, for just
+now the great thing is to eat, and, having digested what has been laid
+before you, discreetly to ignore any question which might verify the
+truth of your suspicions: therefore in eating curried locusts, you
+thank Heaven for the curry, and pass on quickly to the next course. To
+eat just now upon this basis is to enjoy consolation, which, in
+relation to our food, is our sole form of enjoyment, since when you
+know that you are eating horse and you imagine that you are eating
+beef, your imagination is necessarily so strong and so triumphant that
+the toughness of the horse becomes the tenderness of beef. Moreover,
+everything is only a question of comparison, and as a consequence the
+toughness of horse-beef and the tenderness of ox-beef necessitates
+merely an exchange of terms which imply similar standards of
+perfection.
+
+The pleasures of the table, however, are as nothing compared to the
+delights of the bombardment by which the Boers assail the town almost
+daily. We have had more time these days to recognise the precise value
+of the enemy's shell fire and its wide area of demolition--more time
+because the Boers have withdrawn "Big Ben," and we no longer fear to
+walk freely in the streets, nor are we kept constantly upon the alert
+listening to the clanging of the alarm. The guns remaining do not
+appear to be able to reach the town from their distant emplacements.
+They are an array of minor ordnance, uninteresting to us, since their
+attentions would seem to be directed upon the outposts and the
+outlying forts. "Big Ben," however, was no respecter of places, but
+gaily hurled defiance at us from a variety of points, maintaining with
+wonderful regularity an almost daily bombardment.
+
+We who are anxious for his welfare, now spend many dreary hours upon
+the housetops, for, if we show appreciation of his presence by taking
+refuge in the cellars, we ascend to the highest points of our houses
+in order to make sure that he is gone. The sense of gratitude which
+inspires us to do these things is unrestricted, and were it not that
+there were smaller guns around us, we might have waved a parting
+salutation from a more adjacent point; but under the circumstances we
+are content, and although we feel sorry that he has left us, we shall
+more infinitely deplore his presence when he returns. It is almost
+pleasant in Mafeking just now, and if it were not for the scarcity of
+food, the coldness of the weather, the never-ending rains, the fever
+which exists (and of which we are all frightened), the entire absence
+of wood with which to make fires, and the appalling monotony of the
+days, the dreariness of the situation and the dulness of the people,
+we might be happy, possibly inclined to exchange our lot for that of
+anyone else who was not in Mafeking; but as it is, we are really
+rather anxious to get out and to see the siege raised. Our nerves are
+altogether raw, our tempers soured, our digestions failing. We were
+young men six months ago, impressed with the importance of our
+situation, invigorated with a determination to stick it out; but we
+have aged considerably since then, and we would willingly send the
+siege to the devil if we, by way of exchange, were permitted to
+indulge in the comparative comfort of another form of purgatory. It
+has become quite the accepted fashion to draw a simile between
+Mafeking and hell, and to give the early Christian fathers full credit
+for their powers; they were nevertheless quite incapable of imagining
+a punishment so deliberate as the mental and physical torture of a
+siege. To use a colonial colloquialism, "we went in blind," but one
+experience is sufficient to guarantee that every member of the
+garrison just now would put a thousand miles between him and the next
+beleaguered town. In the situation itself there is nothing to write
+about, it so constantly repeats itself until the absolute monotony of
+the days settles down upon the nerves, depressing one's spirit like a
+wet blanket. The Boers still fire at us, and we still sit tight,
+nursing our hopes by a sublime confidence in the relief column. If we
+be sceptical at times, we endeavour not to take our scepticism too
+seriously, and we talk airily about the date by which the van will
+have arrived here. But in reality there are but few people who believe
+in the practical existence of any relief column.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+THE EPICUREAN'S DELIGHT
+
+
+                               MAFEKING, _April 30th, 1900_.
+
+We have duly celebrated the two hundredth day of the siege, and if one
+examines closely into the condition of a town which has withstood the
+attacks of the enemy during two hundred days, it is to find a spirit
+that is strong and self-reliant among the garrison and to realise the
+sadness of the picture which presents the aspect of a town slowly
+passing into ruin. The ravages of the siege have in no way been so
+prominent as has been the case during the last few weeks. Mafeking of
+yore was somewhat stately, although it was merely a colonial
+up-country centre, possessing nothing which was grandiose or even
+elegant. But its calm and unruffled dignity sprang from clusters of
+stately trees around which it had sprung up, and from which in these
+days of tempest and adversity it snatches something of their
+independence, something of their indifference to the press of battle.
+But now it is almost a treeless town, and it is difficult to go
+anywhere without meeting the signs by which one may read the stress
+and privation which a siege imposes upon a beleaguered village.
+Mafeking was never a tiny town; it rambles too far over the veldt to
+be considered even compact, but these natural features are now greatly
+aggravated by the ruin which has fallen upon the outlying areas of the
+town, causing even the most central streets to be disorderly in
+appearance. From a very early date in the siege we have been
+accustomed to the spectacle of ungainly structures stretching across
+those thoroughfares which were exposed to the enemy's fire. These
+traverses were among the earliest preparations of the war, but now, in
+addition to these, at frequent intervals in the streets one comes
+across shelter-pits which have been excavated in the various
+thoroughfares. These protections against the enemy's shell and rifle
+fire were not perhaps any lasting imposition upon the elegance of the
+place, but as the siege developed its effects became more formidable
+and were more calculated to leave traces of a permanent character.
+To-day, perhaps, we are achieving to the end of this enforced
+vandalism, since we have already utilised the garden fences and
+demolished for the value of the wood which they may contain any houses
+which may have been damaged by shell fire. Indeed, just now, we are
+buying up the deserted huts of Kaffirs who have either been killed or
+who have made their way with safety through the lines. These huts
+comprise no small quantity of wood, so we are pulling them to pieces
+on account of the props which support the reed roofing. But before we
+ventured into the stadt for our wood, the trees in town were trimmed
+of their branches, or, as in many cases, chopped down altogether, and
+as a consequence the outward and visible sign of the results of the
+siege is an infinite sense of desolation. There is now no longer the
+gentle rustle of the trees as the night winds sigh through them; no
+longer do the birds scramble amid the branches, screaming merrily.
+There is no bird life now, for we have been unable to consider
+sentiment in the ordering of our daily life. The best timber in the
+town enjoys no greater immunity, since young and old trees each serve
+their purpose. Where there was once order, there is now confusion.
+Streets blockaded at one end are also furrowed by the many shells
+which have come into the town; the walls of the houses have been
+riddled with bullets, or wide, ragged holes gape where the projectiles
+of "Big Ben" pounded their way through. Telegraph poles and lamp posts
+are bent and twisted, some lying completely broken upon the roadside.
+The roads and paths are covered with weeds, and everywhere the neglect
+of the seven months' siege is in evidence. It is a depressing
+spectacle, and it is well just now to close one's eyes to
+everything--to the famine which is stalking in our midst, to the fever
+which is raging round the outposts, to the ill-conditioned horses and
+cattle, to the weary, patient women, to the children who,
+unfortunately fortunate, have survived so much distress, and yet if
+one looks a little forward it is difficult to see that the remedy will
+be forthcoming. It has required the labour of years to rear the trees,
+and in many cases the houses that were wrecked and upon whose sites
+lie piles of rubble, represented the successful conception of a life's
+handiwork which, destroyed in the passing of a moment, can never be
+altogether replaced. There are many men and some few women who have
+lost everything they possessed, and even if they receive an adequate
+compensation will still feel the absence, in their new abodes, of
+those subtle sentiments which made the fruition of their efforts so
+dear and treasured to them. It is impossible not to feel this when
+one perambulates through the town; every spot recalls something to the
+mind of some one, an indelible association, emanating from the siege
+and which time cannot obliterate. Men remember where they stood when
+some particular house was shattered, others recall their proximity to
+a bursting shell, whose explosion tore up the roadway. It is these
+things which will never be effaced, since they are the impressions
+which have struck deep down upon the mind, leaving an afterglow. But
+as a rule we keep our cares, feeling that so many people have so much
+else to worry them, recognising also that upon one and each of us the
+siege hangs sorely. There can be no doubt that it has left its mark,
+not only upon the town, but upon the garrison. The men are just a
+little gaunt, just a little unkempt; the women are haggard and
+careworn, for it is difficult to keep up one's spirit when from day to
+day there comes no news, only that curious, ironical instinct, that
+perhaps it may be that we are not to be relieved at all. The garrison
+is famished, that is, in reality, the kernel of our situation. Our
+energies are exhausted because our vital processes are insufficiently
+nurtured. We are all listless; we all feel that the siege has been a
+strain of the most severe description, and we are holding ourselves in
+for the final rally, anxious to support the position, determined to
+hold the town and occupy till the end our posts. Yet there is a false
+note through it all, and in those moments when one finds oneself alone
+one realises how artificial is the gaiety which we profess, feeling,
+by intuition, that one's own emotions are alike those of one's
+neighbour. However, each one of us endeavours to make an effort to
+maintain in public some appearance of interest in the daily conditions
+of the siege. It is a difficult part to play, because, as I have
+said, there is so much that is unsatisfactory in our position. The
+signs of the times are read by little things, and if one goes for a
+walk round the outposts it is as well not to mention in the town the
+presence of the fever flags which float over certain areas near which
+it is not permitted to go. There are three such places; one is remote
+from our lines, well out into the veldt, where, isolated and apart,
+living in a world of their own making for the time being, is a family
+fighting against the ravages of diphtheria; between them and the stadt
+there is the smallpox reserve, where the yellow jack droops from the
+trees beneath whose shade the tents of the patients have been pitched.
+Still nearer into town at the hospital the flag of mercy protects a
+building in which there is much malaria, some typhoid, and a few cases
+of enteric fever. This is the gamut of our sickness, and it is in
+these quarters that we, who are hale and hearty, look with anxious
+eyes. There are many there who will pay their lives as tributes to the
+siege, for, as in Ladysmith, so are we reduced to horseflesh, being
+fortunate enough to possess, however, a small store of medical
+comforts. The sick cannot be given very much, but we are very
+solicitous for their welfare, and only lately the garrison as a body,
+surrendered the ration of sugar to the needs of those who were ailing.
+Our rations are sadly diminished; three-quarters of a pound of minced
+horse-meat occasionally interchanged with mule and donkey flesh; four
+ounces of horse forage, a microscopical quantity of tea and coffee,
+pepper and salt, comprises the daily issue. Few of us have extras, but
+there are many who indulge in experiments with certain toilet adjuncts
+of an edible nature. Scented oatmeal, violet powder, poudre de ris,
+and starch, have all been tested, and it would seem that starch is
+the more adaptable. Recently I was allowed to taste a starch
+blancmange, with glycerine syrup; it was excellent, and infinitely
+better than scented oatmeal porridge. We also fry our meat in
+cocoa-nut oil, in dubbin, and in salad oil--if we can "find" any.
+Indeed, there is quite a boom in grease-stuffs for culinary purposes.
+Aside from starch, violet face powder gives very fair results, but
+when used as an ingredient for brawn, it is a hopeless failure. It
+will be seen, therefore, that we are somewhat puzzled to know how to
+satisfy our appetites, and we attempt infinite devices in order to
+supplement our daily food supply; occasionally we shoot small birds
+and less frequently we catch fish, but the size of both birds and fish
+is such that a day's bag is seldom sufficient for a meal. If the
+Europeans be exerting themselves to discover new processes by which to
+cook inedible compounds, the natives also are at their wits' end, and
+have resource to a variety of dishes which under more favourable
+circumstances they would not touch. Pet dogs that are sleek, family
+cats that are fat, are stolen nightly from the hotels and empty
+houses, but they are invariably traced to native marauders, who,
+inspired by hunger, prowl around by night seeking what they may
+devour. These details give a somewhat gloomy aspect to our situation,
+and if the truth be told our plight is quite sufficiently serious, but
+it must not be imagined that by reason of these things we are
+faint-hearted; we are not so. If we can pull through, and we are
+proposing to make every effort, we shall be content, and we are
+content, even at the present crisis, to think that it is not
+altogether impossible that very earnest efforts are being made to
+expedite our relief, and so alleviate our distress. Our
+constitutions, perhaps, are somewhat impaired by the scarcity of food,
+by dysentery and by fever, but we are well enough if the pinch should
+come and the Boers again make a serious attack upon the town. We will
+beat them off; possibly we may laugh at their efforts. It is only at
+odd moments that we become depressed, when the intelligence does not
+seem satisfactory, when our personal worries press too closely upon
+us. In those moments we may perhaps take an unduly gloomy view of the
+situation, but it is not so quick set that it cannot be dissipated by
+the receipt of some good news, by a cablegram from the Queen, or a
+message from Lord Roberts. It is these things after which we hanker,
+and it is these things by which we keep up our hearts. That there
+should be any possibility of a weak spirit manifesting itself at this
+late hour need not be considered seriously for a moment, since above
+all else, the garrison and townspeople of Mafeking have devoted
+themselves to the work of holding this important outpost to the Empire
+until such moment as the relief may come. In the beginning we
+withstood six thousand men, just now there are not two thousand men
+around us, and if they have more guns now than they had, we have also
+strengthened our weak places and thrown out a chain of outposts
+through which it should be impossible for an enemy to penetrate. Thus
+we have made ourselves secure against everything but the menace of
+starvation, and if there be anxiety upon our behalf in the centres of
+the civilised world, the message which we send touches not upon the
+question of relief, but asks that it should be remembered that, even
+if our spirits endure, our foodstuffs will not last for ever. That is
+the gist of our prayer, and we trust that it may receive some hearing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+THE LAST FIGHT
+
+
+                                 MAFEKING, _May 13th, 1900_.
+
+From time to time intelligence has reached us from native sources that
+the Boers were still anxious to make a final attempt to capture the
+town. We have had this story repeated to us so frequently that there
+were many in our midst who had altogether ceased to pay any attention
+to it; but that there was some sincerity in the desire to attack us
+has now been proved to be true, and it would seem that the obstacle
+which existed, and which prevented an earlier realisation of the
+enemy's plans, was the absence of any leader sufficiently capable and
+enterprising to attempt the execution of so hazardous a venture.
+However, when General Cronje delegated full command to General Snyman,
+President Kruger sent from Pretoria his youthful but gallant nephew,
+Commandant Eloff, who had not only frequently expressed his desire to
+capture the town, but brought with him from Pretoria men whose special
+knowledge of our fortifications had been gained when serving as
+troopers in the Protectorate Regiment. It was these men who were
+destined to conceive and carry to a successful conclusion the work of
+projecting a body of the Boers within our interior lines. Weeks have
+elapsed since Commandant Eloff arrived from Pretoria, but he has bided
+his time, studying carefully our system of defence, our outlying
+earthworks, and collecting all scraps of information which would
+convey to him a more intimate knowledge of our position. For a time
+his plans matured, but, as he conned them well over, he began to make
+his preparations, recognising that, if he allowed many more days to
+pass, the relief column from the south would be an additional and
+important factor in his scheme of operations. Upon May 10th the relief
+column had reached Vryburg, and Vryburg is only ninety-six miles from
+Mafeking. Upon May 12th this southern column had advanced to
+Setlagoli, a point only forty-five miles distant from the town, and
+the receipt of this intelligence, which was brought to Commandant
+Eloff by his scouts, revealed to him the urgency and absolute
+necessity of carrying out his attack upon the town. It was a
+well-considered scheme, whose eventual success was only nullified by
+the lack of cohesion and estranged relations which existed between
+General Snyman and Commandant Eloff. It was a glorious day for
+Mafeking; it was a day of honourable misfortune for the Boers.
+Mafeking fell heavily upon Eloff, recapturing the fort which the Boers
+had surprised and taken in the early morning, and thereby effecting
+the release of the thirty-two prisoners whom the Boers had caught, and
+causing known casualties among the Boers of killed, wounded, and taken
+prisoners, 139.
+
+[Illustration: Killing Horses for the Natives and Entire Garrison.]
+
+Commandant Eloff had designed to pierce our western lines under cover
+of a well-organised feint upon the eastern front of the town. Upon the
+morning of May 12th and a little before 4 a.m., the bells sounded a
+general alarm and the bugles summoned a general assembly of available
+arms to all posts. As in the early days of the siege, I ran from my
+hotel to Musson's Fort, where, upon similar occasions, I have served
+as a volunteer. There was no sign of disturbance in the west, but very
+heavy firing was breaking over the town from the main position of the
+enemy in the east. Gradually this fire was extended until the flanking
+positions of the Boers north-east and south-east were also engaged. As
+we stood to our arms in the fort, it seemed that they were directing
+an attack upon the brickfields, when, just as it appeared to be the
+usual innocuous fusilade, streaks of fire were seen leaping to the sky
+towards the west; there was a lurid glow across the native stadt and
+dense clouds of smoke were drifting and piling heavily towards the
+north. There was instant commotion in the fort, everybody exclaiming
+at once that the stadt was ablaze. At that moment we did not realise
+that the conflagration which we saw was the deliberate work of the
+enemy, although there were many who, catching sight of the blaze,
+concluded that the attack upon our eastern front was the blind to a
+movement of much greater importance upon the west. Thoroughly aroused
+and anxious to learn the reasons of the fire, I returned to the hotel.
+By this time rifle fire had slackened upon the east of the town, but
+bullets were coming over from the west, the town being under this
+cross-fire. There were few people about the town, and, save for an
+occasional group of frightened women, one saw no one. My horse was
+already saddled, and, riding to the front of the town, I at once
+recognised that the Boers were in the stadt. Huts were burning in all
+directions, the separate fires blending into a sheet of flame; dense
+smoke overhung everything. There was the crackle of the burning
+huts, and showers of golden sparks tossed themselves into the air. It
+was still dark and the hour was about five; a lemon-coloured dawn,
+sheathed in the golden glory of the fire and obscured by the
+grey-black waves of smoke, was slowly breaking, following closely upon
+the heels of a flame-coloured night. It was the hour when confusion
+reigns supreme, when it is impossible to tell tree from man, an
+outcrop of stone from a recumbent beast. It was the very hour in which
+to attack, but the Boers secured an additional advantage from the
+dense and heavy smoke which filled the atmosphere, making the gloom
+more impenetrable than ever and screening effectually the rapidity of
+their progress. Heavy firing was proceeding from the direction of the
+stadt, and there was a confused babel of voices. Natives were running
+in all directions, and against the flames groups of figures were
+noticeable in silhouette.
+
+There seemed little doubt that the situation at this moment was grave
+in the extreme. The Boers in the stadt, dividing rapidly, had advanced
+upon the British South Africa Police Fort, in which from the beginning
+of the siege the regimental headquarters of the Protectorate Regiment
+have been installed. At this moment Colonel Hore and the officers and
+men attached to the regimental headquarters staff, including four
+belonging to the British South Africa Police, numbered some
+twenty-three. Preparing to resist the invasion, Colonel Hore had
+already manned the earthwork, which from the days of the Warren
+expedition has been designated as a fort. The distance between the
+stadt and the fort is about four hundred yards, and around the
+regimental headquarters lie scattered numerous outbuildings. It is an
+impossible place to hold with a small number of men, while the
+outbuildings are so situated as to afford very excellent cover to any
+troops which may be advancing with the intention of surrounding the
+main buildings; and it was this manoeuvre which Commandant Eloff was
+endeavouring to carry to a successful issue. Scattering quickly, and
+under the cover of the different houses, he advanced within a very
+short distance of the fort. In the dim light, obscured by smoke, and
+in part concealed by the native refugees, it was impossible to tell
+whether these men were the van of a Boer force or our own outposts in
+process of retirement upon Colonel Hore. Under the guidance of Trooper
+Hayes, a deserter from the Protectorate Regiment, seven hundred Boers
+had rushed the interior lines of the outposts, making their way along
+the bed of the Molopo and through Hidden Hollow into the stadt. The
+movement had been noticed by the outposts, who, unable to do anything
+against such overwhelming odds, had given the alarm and fallen back
+upon either flank, delivering a flanking fire when the Boers were
+discovered. Arriving in the stadt, Commandant Eloff had ignited the
+huts in various directions, in this manner giving to the main body of
+the Boers their signal to advance. Before the rush of Commandant
+Eloff's men the Baralongs separated, reforming behind the enemy, in
+order to co-operate with our advanced outposts in repelling the
+progress of the main body. From the moment that this was accomplished
+the Boers outside our lines and those who were within the stadt were
+cut off from one another; but, leaving half his force in the stadt,
+Commandant Eloff, with whom were Captain Von Weiss and Captain de
+Fremont, prepared to assault the fort, and, advancing rapidly upon it,
+had surrounded it with but little difficulty. When the little band of
+men saw the Boers emerging from stadt, fire was at once opened upon
+them, but, as they claimed to be friends, and as it was understood
+that they were our own outposts, the fire from the fort ceased until
+the enemy were within sixty yards of its front face, being at the same
+time, unknown to the inmates of the fort, in occupation of the
+buildings upon either flank and in the rear.
+
+This, then, was the situation which had come to pass within three
+hundred yards of the railway and about seven hundred yards from the
+town. In the town itself the Town Guard, the Bechuanaland Rifles, and
+the entire strength of the Railway Division had been ordered at once
+to man the railway line. The men from the Hospital Redan and the
+establishment from Early's Corner Fort were detailed to the line in
+addition to the Bechuanaland Volunteers, while the Railway Division,
+screening their movements behind the corrugated iron fencing which
+encloses the railway yards, and perforating rifle holes in the
+sheeting of the fence, were given charge of the railway yards.
+Lieutenant Feltham and his troop of C Squadron supported Major Panzera
+and the artillery at the railway bridge, while, under orders from
+Colonel Baden-Powell, Lieutenant Montcrieff advanced a section of the
+Town Guard to occupy a house a little removed from the new line of
+defences which had been already taken up. The town itself, agog with
+excitement, had been reinforced by the Cape Police from the
+brickfields and the British South Africa Police from the kopje, and
+with these forces opposing them, the Boers at the fort found their
+further advance cut off, while, unless General Snyman forced the
+passage of the outposts and brought up his artillery, the entire body
+would be hemmed in.
+
+In the meantime Commandant Eloff demanded the unconditional surrender
+of the twenty-three men who were established at the fort, an order
+which, had Colonel Hore refused, implied that every man with him would
+be shot. Then, in that moment, it was known that the cheering which
+had been heard in Hidden Hollow a few moments before was the
+triumphant chortle of the Boers as they stepped within the inmost
+lines of our defences. Around the fort there was silence--there was a
+terrible silence; there was a man who was weighing in his hand and in
+his heart the lives of twenty-two others, who was considering in a
+fleeting moment of time the flight of an honourable career which had
+brought to him a string of six medals, and who saw in one of two steps
+instant death for his little band and irrevocable and almost
+irretrievable ruin in the other. The pause was indeed death-like;
+there was the hallowed uncertainty of a future existence, but there
+was the moral certainty that no living future would fall to the lot of
+any of the twenty-three men upon whose ears the cry had fallen of
+surrender. The position was hopeless. With the Boers behind them, with
+the Boers flanking them, with the Boers in front of them, with three
+hundred of the enemy within a circumference of seventy yards, what
+more could an honourable man and a gallant officer do than accept the
+responsibility of his situation and save the lives of his men by
+complying unconditionally with the demand of the enemy? Thus did
+Colonel Hore surrender. It was impossible to withdraw to the town.
+Such a movement would have meant retirement over seven hundred yards
+of open, level ground without a particle of cover and with a force of
+three hundred of the enemy immediately in the rear; moreover the
+situation imperatively demanded this action in consequence of events
+over which he had no control. It was, perhaps, a moment as pathetic
+and great as any in his career. The surrender was effected at 5.25
+a.m., and was not without incident, for with the garrison holding up
+their hands, their arms laid down, with five Boers within a few yards
+of the Colonel with their rifles at his breast, there was one man who
+went to his death. "I'll see you damned, you God forgotten----" said
+Trooper Maltuschek, and he went to his Maker the next moment. The news
+of such a catastrophe did not tend to relieve the gravity of the
+situation. With the Boers in the fort and in occupation of the stadt,
+it was necessary so to arrange our operations that any junction
+between the stadt and the fort would be impossible; at the same time
+we were compelled to prevent those Boers who were in the stadt from
+cutting their way through to the main body of the enemy. The situation
+was indeed complex, and throughout the remainder of the day the
+skirmishing in the stadt and the repulse of the feints of the enemy's
+main body, delivered in different directions against the outposts,
+were altogether apart from the siege, which we were conducting within
+our own investment. From the town very heavy rifle fire was directed
+upon the fort, which the Boers in that quarter returned with spirit
+and determination. But the position in the stadt had become acute,
+since, behind our outposts and our inner chain of forts, which are
+situated upon its exterior border, were a rollicking, roving band of
+four hundred Boers, who, for the time being, were indulging in pillage
+and destruction wherever it was possible.
+
+[Illustration: The British South Africa Police Fort, Colonel Hore's
+Headquarters.
+
+_The Bomb-proof shelter in the foreground was the Colonel's refuge
+during the enemy's shell fire._]
+
+Gradually, however, the situation changed. The rifle fire from the
+town had forced the Boers back from the limits of the stadt adjacent
+to the fort, enabling Inspector Murray and a troop of the Cape Police
+and Lieutenant Feltham with his troop of C Squadron to fight their way
+to this same border, affording to the town a definite and established
+barrier against any possible communication between the enemy in the
+fort and the Boers in the stadt. Skirmishing thenceforward progressed
+over the entire area of the stadt. Major Godley, with Captain Marsh
+and Captain Fitzclarence, and B and D Squadrons, effectively supported
+by the Baralongs, chevied and rounded up the Boers from point to
+point, until, shortly after noon, they took up a strong position in a
+mule kraal and upon the facings of some neighbouring kopjes. To
+dislodge these men was the work to which Major Godley now directed his
+attention, and, manoeuvring carefully and with discretion, he
+surrounded the position upon three sides and emplaced a seven-pounder
+under Lieutenant Daniel, of the British South Africa Police, within
+two hundred yards of the kopje. The enemy were now compelled to fight
+or to surrender, and, refusing the request to surrender, they fought
+pluckily, and with such stubbornness that they kept Major Godley's men
+some time at bay. But, gradually drawing his circle closer, he poured
+in a few terrific volleys and charged the position at the point of the
+bayonet. There was a rapid volley from the Boers, but it was of no
+avail, and, as the glistening steel was poised for a moment over the
+walls of the kraal, a flutter of white from the interior betokened
+that at least this body of the enemy had surrendered. Major Godley
+then proceeded to shell the kopjes, but the Boers at this point were
+not proposing to increase by their numbers those of the twenty-five
+who had laid down their arms in the mule kraal. They scattered and
+broke into the stadt, fighting from hut to hut, from rock to rock,
+from snug hollows to the broken points of the many rugged mounds which
+characterise the configuration of the stadt. These skirmishes
+continued, and Major Godley contrived to drive the scattered Boers in
+the direction of Captain Lord Charles Bentinck, who, so conducting his
+operations, managed to hem the enemy in between the fire of Major
+Godley and that of his own men. It would have been impossible for the
+Boers to escape; but dusk was falling, our men were weak and hungry,
+and we already had a number of prisoners, and, after a sharp rally
+between the three squadrons, Major Godley instructed Captain Lord
+Charles Bentinck to withdraw C Squadron and assist in driving out the
+enemy.
+
+These, then, were the events which were occurring in the stadt, and,
+if Major Godley had been successful in circumventing the Boer plan and
+checking any very definite occupation of the stadt, the outposts had
+also successfully repulsed the indifferent and weak-hearted attempts
+which General Synman had made to assist his colleague. There had been
+a definite plan of attack, and, although a portion of it was
+successful, its main features had failed because their execution had
+been left to a man who, faint-hearted and cowardly, was altogether
+unworthy of the command with which he had been entrusted. Upon General
+Synman must fall the responsibility of Commandant Eloff's capture,
+inasmuch as he failed to support his share of the operations. The Boer
+movement upon the town was carried out with remarkable precision and
+extraordinary dash, but, despite their splendid gallantry and
+enterprise in penetrating so far within our lines, the fatality which
+would seem to attend their attacks upon Mafeking rendered their
+present efforts again unprofitable, causing their assault to recoil
+upon their own heads. It had been the intention of the Boers to make
+the fort the key of a position from which they were proposing to shell
+the town with the guns which would have been brought up by the main
+body. But General Snyman did not fulfil his obligations to Commandant
+Eloff, and, as a consequence, when the siege of the fort had been
+effected the little which they could accomplish had been concluded,
+and they found themselves compelled to defend their newly-won position
+from the galling fire and spirited attacks of the townsmen. Their
+position, only seven hundred yards from the town, would have proved
+untenable much earlier in the day, had not the Boers secured the
+officers and staff of the regimental headquarters as their prisoners.
+We should have shelled them and in all probability caused tremendous
+carnage; as it was, however, killed and wounded upon either side were
+not numerous, although there is some ground to believe that the Boers
+were successful in carrying off a large proportion of their wounded.
+Upon the following morning, when the returns for the previous day were
+made up, it was found that 110 had been taken prisoners, ten had been
+killed, and nineteen had been wounded. Our own casualties were four
+killed and seven wounded, while there were five natives who had
+received slight wounds. These are the figures, correct, so far as we
+can ascertain, of this very remarkable day--a day which is almost
+without parallel in the history of war, inasmuch as the garrison, who
+in themselves had sustained a seven months' siege, were yet able once
+more to turn the tables upon their enemy, who, although penetrating
+into the heart of the invested town, failed to carry the position.
+
+During the morning of the fight, after accompanying Lieutenant
+Montcrieff to Major Hepworth's house, where he was engaged in
+installing a section of the Town Guard, I thought that I would attach
+myself to Colonel Hore, since his headquarters appeared to be a
+central position in the engagement. It was only a short ride--a few
+hundred yards. The bullets whistled over from the stadt, and I
+scampered rapidly across in order to gain what I thought was
+protection from this fire. The light was not clear, and the smoke was
+still drifting across the line of vision. Men were standing about the
+regimental headquarters, some were scurrying, many were sitting upon
+the stoep facing the town. It did not seem to me possible that these
+could be Boers; but, as I galloped on, my horse was struck, and,
+swerving violently, I found myself pulled up short by a peremptory
+demand to surrender. They were Boers, or rather they were the enemy,
+for there were Germans, Italians, and Frenchmen, and a few
+Republicans.
+
+They ordered me to hold my hands up, they ordered me to give up my
+revolver and to get off my horse; they asked me a dozen questions at
+the same time, speaking in Dutch, French, and English. As I sat upon
+my horse we conducted quite an animated conversation, but the bullets
+were coming from our men in town rather rapidly, and it seemed to
+strike the Boers that they had best take cover, advice which I pressed
+home upon them with much irony. In the meantime I had not dismounted,
+nor had I given up my revolver, nor were my arms thrust upwards in the
+air. "Will you hold your damned hands up?" said one, playfully
+thrusting a rifle into my ribs. "With pleasure, under the
+circumstances," I replied with alacrity. "Will you hand over that
+revolver?" said another. "What, and hold my hands up at the same
+time?" asked I, quibbling to gain a little time in which to think.
+"Get off your horse," said another, when, as they unstrapped my belt,
+I rolled to the ground. It was only then that I knew my horse had been
+shot in the shoulder, and as they dragged me to the shelter of the
+building, I asked them to shoot him. They refused. "Your men will do
+that soon enough," said they, and it seemed to me that this was the
+unkindest cut of all. The poor animal stood there looking at me. When
+I saw him again his throat had been cut, and there were seven bullet
+wounds in his body.
+
+The fort had surrendered. Colonel Hore, Captain H. C. Singleton,
+Veterinary-Lieutenant Dunlop-Smith, with fifteen non-commissioned
+officers and men of the Protectorate Regiment, Captain Williams and
+three men of the British South Africa Police, and five native servants
+were prisoners in the hands of the enemy. Around them were numbers of
+the enemy talking rapidly in French, German, Italian, and Dutch, while
+there were also many who spoke English. They were all well armed,
+carrying some 250 rounds of ammunition with eight days' rations in
+their haversacks. Some were eating breakfast, many were drinking from
+bottles which they had looted from the regimental mess; occasionally
+the group around us was swelled by the numbers of those who, hitherto
+engaged in looting the quarters of the officers, were now mostly
+anxious to preserve their skins from the fire from the town and to
+enjoy an inspection of their plunder. In the short time which the
+enemy had been in possession of the fort many of them had ransacked
+the premises, breaking open boxes, cutting open bags, and generally
+appropriating all the effects which they found. It seemed to me at
+this moment that the men engaged in this work were Boers, as distinct
+from the foreign element in their force, and I thought that I caught a
+current of conversation which was passing in French between two of our
+captors, and which denounced the unnecessary and almost wanton
+destruction which was in progress.
+
+From the remarks which were passing round us it seemed that the
+majority were discussing the precise treatment which should be dealt
+out to the prisoners. At this moment Trooper Hayes, deserter,
+swaggered towards the circle; he sported Colonel Hore's sword, and a
+gold chain and watch dangled from his belt. Hearing the subject of the
+conversation, he at once suggested that we should either be made to
+stand upon the verandah, a mark to the fire of our own men, or be
+given the opportunity of taking up arms and joining in the defence of
+the fort. "You cannot do that, I'm a war correspondent," said I in
+English to a Boer who was speaking fluent English to a friend. "You be
+damned!" said he, pleasantly enough, "we'll put you upon the roof."
+But at that moment Commandant Eloff approached and ordered our removal
+to a building in the centre of the fort, which hitherto had been used
+as the storeroom for the regimental mess. Into this they crowded us,
+together with three others who, visiting the fort in ignorance of the
+turn of affairs, had likewise been taken prisoners. We were thus
+thirty-two, and were confined for the day in a space which was not
+only short and narrow, but ill-ventilated, dirty, littered with
+rubbish, and already smelling horribly. Firing from town had now begun
+in earnest, and the bullets whistled and cracked and spat all round
+the fort. They struck upon the stones and spattered the roof with
+splinters of rock and lead, while we could detect from these signs how
+ably directed and how fierce was the rifle fire which was delivered
+from the town. When they had safely secured us in the storehouse the
+space in front of the building was at once occupied by some
+sixty-seven men, who crouched up against the walls of the house or lay
+within the lee of the exterior wall of the fort. From time to time
+these men moved to points whence the fire was hottest, seeming to take
+their share of the work in pleasing earnestness and with much
+keenness. Occasionally those who were without and around the door
+handed in fragments of dried meat and broken biscuits, but the
+quantity was not great, and there were many of us who had nothing to
+eat all day, while few Boers or prisoners had anything to drink. Early
+in the morning bullets from the town had perforated the water tanks,
+and as a consequence there was no water to drink, nor was there
+anything with which to alleviate the sufferings of the wounded. As the
+day wore on many casualties occurred among the Boers in the fort, and
+the absence of efficient medical aid among his men prompted Commandant
+Eloff to appeal to us for assistance, whereupon Veterinary-Lieutenant
+Dunlop-Smith, Farrier-Corporal Nichols and Forbes, the regimental
+canteen-keeper, offered and rendered valuable services to the wounded
+Boers, running the gauntlet of our own fire in the cause of a common
+humanity. Early in the fight the Boers took over the Children's
+Hospital, which was located some two hundred yards away from the fort,
+and in which those devoted nurses, Mrs. Buchan and her sister, Miss
+Crawfurd, remained the entire day, attending indiscriminately to the
+sick children, to the wounded Boers who were brought there, and
+bringing upon two occasions tea to the prisoners. During the progress
+of the fight we constantly caught glimpses of the Red Cross flag
+escorting one or other of these gallant ladies to points where wounded
+Boers were lying. Throughout the fight the Boers respected the
+conventions, repeatedly expressing their appreciation and their
+gratitude for the services of these ladies. For this courtesy
+Commandant Eloff was largely responsible, and indeed if there was any
+abuse of the Red Cross flag the blame of such disrespect cannot be
+charged against the enemy, since our side, I understand, issued orders
+that the men of the firing line were not to take notice of any white
+flags which the Boers displayed. The enemy respected its conventions,
+treated the prisoners humanely, and behaved throughout a situation
+almost maddening from the strain which it must have imposed upon them
+with conspicuous gallantry, coolness, and consideration.
+
+In our prison the situation was more than uncomfortable, and when
+towards evening they locked the door the atmosphere became fetid, and
+was seriously aggravated by the condition of a man who was suffering
+acutely from the agonies of dysentery. In a recess, piled up, were
+the stores of the regimental mess, comprising principally cases of
+liquors--whisky, Beaunne, pommade, and lime-juice. In a big open crate
+were tinned provisions of an indefinite character--fruits, peas, and
+parsnips, and other canned luxuries. These were at once looted by the
+troopers, who in this respect and the indifferent manner in which they
+received the orders of their officers, did not set a particularly
+praiseworthy example. Within the storehouse, however, the prisoners
+mingled irrespective of rank, and mutually sympathetic in the face of
+common misfortune. At first every man seemed to be smoking, but
+gradually the atmosphere became so bad that it was absolutely
+necessary to desist, and all pipes, cigars, and cigarettes were
+ordered to be put out. Commandant Eloff returned constantly to the
+prisoners, chatting brightly with them and sympathising upon the
+fortunes of war. He sat within the door upon a case of Burgundy, his
+legs dangling, his accoutrements jingling, and the rowels of his spurs
+echoing the tick-tacking of the Mauser rifles. Herein and within our
+presence the drama of the situation was slowly passing; orderlies came
+and went, but the Commandant, still tapping with his spurs, continued
+to issue his instructions and his orders. He seemed to possess the
+complete mastery of the situation; his buoyant face was impressed with
+the confidence of youth, reflecting the happiness he felt in so much
+that his ambition seemed to be about to be realised. But as the
+situation became more critical, beneath the brightness of his manner
+he seemed to be feeling the gravity of his position. At times he lost
+control of himself and complained querulously in Dutch about the
+non-appearance of his reinforcements; at other moments he regaled the
+prisoners with scraps of information relating to the situation, and by
+this means we learnt that Limestone Fort had fallen, and that the
+trench beneath the railway bridge had surrendered. This news was, of
+course, not particularly pleasing, and it somewhat added to our
+dejection when we learnt that, when night arrived, we were to be
+marched to the south-western laager and thence to be conveyed to
+Pretoria. I never wished less to see a place than I did the Transvaal
+capital at this moment. Since Commandant Eloff made himself so
+agreeable I was moved to chat with him. We discussed the situation in
+China and the feeling which America was showing for the Boers. To this
+latter he did not attach much importance, shrugging his shoulders as
+he said, "Americans and the English----" The pause was eloquent, and I
+changed the conversation, requesting his courteous permission, should
+the fortunes of the day go with him, to communicate with the _Times_.
+He expressed surprise at my being a correspondent, and said that he
+thought the correspondents had more sense than to get themselves
+captured. Then he laughed and asked my name. I told him, upon which he
+replied, "I have heard of you, but I have not read any of your stuff;
+you have been writing unpleasant things about the Boers." I retired
+crestfallen to the darkest corner I could find and reflected upon the
+character of the punishment which General Snyman would mete out to a
+man who had been so iniquitous as to write "unpleasantly about the
+Boers." Night was coming on rapidly now, and we were rather glad,
+since it removed from us the horror of being with the enemy and
+watching while they fired upon our own men. It seems to me that the
+strain which emanates from such a sight is more awful than anything
+in the world.
+
+As dusk settled down we prisoners, crowding in a small room, could
+hear echoes of desperate fighting outside. Bullets penetrated the
+wall, perforated the roofing, crashed through the windows, splintered
+the door. Ever and anon the fire would die away, breaking out again
+spasmodically within a few minutes. Through the grating of the windows
+we could see the enemy keeping an alert look-out; we could see them
+scurrying and scrambling to defend the points against which the firing
+was heaviest; we saw the limping figures of the wounded; we heard
+voices cursing us, threatening the prisoners, and urging Commandant
+Eloff to handcuff and march us out across the line of fire while the
+Boers used us as a screen to escape; while upon one occasion the door
+opened suddenly and three wounded Boers precipitated themselves
+violently into the room. The inside of the building was pitch dark by
+now, and lighted only by the fitful flashing of the rifles, which made
+almost a glow within. Straining eagerly at the windows, we caught
+glimpses of a number of Boers scrambling over the exterior walls of
+the fort, in order, we afterwards learnt, to make good their retreat.
+This movement to the rear surprised us and was followed by a terrible
+outburst of firing, caused by the order of Commandant Eloff to shoot
+down the fugitives. Then time dragged heavily, and we were hungry and
+tired and faint when there seemed signs of a rally among the Boers.
+After an interval of extraordinarily heavy firing, in which the noise
+from the snap of bullets and the reports of the rifles were deafening,
+there was a sudden silence. Commandant Eloff rushed to the door, and,
+summoning Colonel Hore, stated that if he could induce the town to
+cease fire the Boers would surrender. It was an altogether unexpected
+_d�nouement_, and in that moment there was not one amongst us who did
+not think that each in his turn was about to be summoned to an instant
+execution. We feared a ruse, and whispered to Colonel Hore, as he
+advanced to meet the commandant, to be careful. Our momentary
+hesitation caused Commandant Eloff to surrender himself as a hostage
+until the cessation of fire could be arranged. The Boers, like
+ourselves, were unable to grasp the situation, and seeing their
+commandant in our midst, made an attempt to rescue him, which only
+helped to increase the confusion of the moment. Commandant Eloff
+called out, "Surrender, surrender," and endeavoured strenuously to
+pacify his men. We, upon our part, shouted to the town to cease fire;
+this was at once done, whereupon sixty-seven Boers laid down their
+arms, handing them to the prisoners, who piled them up within the
+storehouse. Those of us who were not engaged in this work seized
+rifles and bandoliers from the heap and manned the defences of the
+fort until the prisoners could be delivered into proper custody. The
+Boers were then marched off and were found accommodation in the
+Masonic Hall and in the gaol. As I retraced my steps to the town and
+was passing the stables of the British South Africa Police Fort, the
+groaning of a wounded man caught my ear. I ran to him to find that
+lying within the shelter of the stables, with a wound through his
+thigh, was the man to whom I had surrendered myself in the morning. We
+smiled as he handed over to me his rifle and bandolier. My revolver he
+had lost, but lying beside him, stiff and dead, with a bullet wound
+through his forehead, was, by one of those extraordinary coincidences
+which do happen, the man who had shot my horse. And thus this day of
+melodrama passed; dramatic in its beginning, dramatic in its
+conclusion, with enough bloodshed, firing, and animation to satisfy
+the cravings of the most dispassionate seeker after excitement.
+Commandant Eloff, Captain von Wiessmann, Captain Bremont, dined at
+Headquarters. The town came to greet the prisoners, drink was
+unearthed, and everybody seemed to be congratulating somebody upon
+their mutual good fortune. We who had been prisoners and were now free
+rejoiced in the liberty which was restored to us, yet it was difficult
+to restrain oneself from feeling compassionately upon the great
+misfortunes which had attended the extraordinary dash and gallantry of
+the men who were now our prisoners. They had done their best. They
+proved to us that they were indeed capable and that we should have
+kept a sharper look-out, while it was indeed deplorable to think that
+it was the treachery of their own general, in abandoning them to their
+fate, that had been mainly instrumental in procuring them their
+present predicament.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+RELIEVED AT LAST
+
+
+                                  WEDNESDAY NIGHT, 7.30 P.M.
+                                 MAFEKING, _May 16th, 1900_.
+
+The relief of Mafeking is now an accomplished fact, and the first
+Imperial troops to enter our lines were eight of the Imperial Light
+Horse, under the command of Major Karri Davis. They had ridden in
+advance of the main body in an effort to pierce our lines while
+General Mahon, who had already formed a junction with Colonel Plumer,
+was engaging the main body of the enemy along the watershed of the
+Molopo, some seven miles north-west of the town.
+
+We had known since Sunday that an Imperial force was approaching
+Mafeking from the south, and during Monday immense activity was
+displayed in the Boer laagers, while towards the south-west a thick
+fringe of dust was drifting slowly under the commotion of a column of
+Boers who were retiring rapidly before the approach of the Southern
+force. During Tuesday we thought we heard the distant booming of the
+guns, and we could see the Boers preparing to take up positions along
+the north-western ridges of the Molopo River. At an early hour on
+Tuesday morning news reached us that the respective commands of
+General Mahon and Colonel Plumer had joined at Saane's Town, a few
+miles up the valley of the river. From the moment that the town
+received this news the memory of the past seven months was dissipated
+in the first flash of the glad tidings. Speculation was rife as to the
+precise hour of the arrival of the relief, but the day passed without
+much prospect of the siege being raised before nightfall. However,
+this morning the most positive information had arrived during the
+night, and it seemed that within the next forty-eight hours the
+combined forces would be here. The morning passed uneventfully. No one
+seemed quite to know how to spend the few remaining hours which were
+all that remained of the siege. About noon it became known in town
+that the forces would not enter Mafeking without having a smart brush
+with the enemy. We had observed small, detached forces of Boers making
+from north and south of the town for the ridges about the western
+areas of the Molopo. Artillery accompanied these men, whose numbers
+had been drawn from the various Boer positions around Mafeking. A
+large contingent had moved from the eastern laager and similar bodies
+had been called out from the south-western and northern camps. It was
+an anxious time for us in Mafeking, and, although there was no doubt
+about the final result, we still felt that the fate of the relief
+column hung in the balance. About half-past two General Mahon's guns
+opened upon the enemy, the smoke of the bursting shells being plainly
+discernible away towards the north-west. There was a constant booming
+of artillery, and the smoke of heavy rifle fire just above the
+horizon. As the news swept through the town there were many who
+gathered upon coigns of vantage to witness the action. It was
+impossible to see details, and indeed it was about half-past four
+before we even caught sight of the moving masses of men. It seemed
+then that the Boers were falling back; the artillery had ceased to
+play, and we were under the impression that they were engaged in
+taking up fresh positions. About five o'clock a large force of Boers
+was noticed moving rapidly along the ridge to the east, while a
+smaller body of three hundred men, detaching themselves from the main
+column, were riding rapidly towards the west.
+
+In the meantime Colonel Baden-Powell, Colonel Hore, Colonel Walford,
+of the British South Africa Police, and Captain Wilson, A.D.C. to the
+Colonel commanding, had taken up their position upon the roof of the
+railway sheds, where during the last few days a special outlook had
+been prepared. The scene in the railway yards was animated and
+dramatic, and in order to be close at hand I secured permission to sit
+upon the ladder which led to the outlook. In the town people were
+taking events quite calmly. The final in the siege billiard tournament
+was taking place at the club, and in many other respects it seemed
+difficult to realise that our deliverance was at hand. Between the
+railway yards and the outposts there were men shooting small birds,
+while in the yards around us natives were engaged in skinning and
+cutting the carcase of a horse which, shot overnight, had been handed
+over to the soup-kitchens. For perhaps an hour everything was calm and
+peaceful, but ever and anon the bubble of voices reached me from the
+roof as orders were transmitted over the telephone to Headquarters.
+Of a sudden Captain Wilson scrambled down the ladder, calling an
+order to Lieutenant Feltham to saddle up the horses and mount. While
+this work was in progress orders were issued to Captain Cowan, of the
+Bechuanaland Rifles, to march his men at once to the barracks of the
+Protectorate Regiment, while in a cloud of dust and with a cheering
+rattle Major Panzera galloped by with the guns. "I think we can catch
+them," said Colonel Baden-Powell, and a minute afterwards he had
+mounted his horse and was off. I found that he was referring to the
+detached party of three hundred Boers who were making their way from
+the scene of the fight in a south-westerly direction. I mounted and
+followed, and the small force which had thus been rapidly collected
+moved quickly towards our extreme position in the north-west of the
+town. It was just possible that we should catch them between the fire
+of General Mahon's guns and our own, and there was every necessity for
+speed. In a short time we were out at the "Standard and Diggers' News
+Fort," where, while our horses were given a short rest, the guns were
+unlimbered. That particular body of Boers who had been our objective
+seemed to be unconscious of the movement which had taken place in our
+own lines. As they emerged from the valley we opened fire and turned
+their head. For a moment they did not seem to realise their situation,
+when they rapidly wheeled about and put themselves out of range by a
+hurried retreat towards the main body. Dusk was now falling, and it
+was impossible to see any longer, and as a consequence the guns were
+ordered to retire to town and the men to return. It was half-past six
+when we reached town, and General Mahon's artillery had not been heard
+to fire for quite an hour. We went to dine, cheered by the comforting
+and consoling thought that by noonday upon the morrow the siege would
+be raised. However, about seven o'clock, in the bright moonlight, and
+totally unexpected, eight mounted men suddenly appeared in the Market
+Square. In a short space of time the news flashed round the town, and
+a concourse of people gathered to cheer vociferously about the
+precincts of the Headquarters Office. As round after round of cheers
+broke out it became known that these mysterious horsemen had galloped
+in under Major Karri Davis with a despatch from General Mahon. In a
+trice they were surrounded, besieged with questions, clapped upon the
+back, shaken by the hand, and generally welcomed. These plucky
+troopers seemed as surprised as ourselves and as glad. Major Karri
+Davis called for cheers for the garrison, while the crowd took up with
+tremendous fervour the National Anthem and "Rule Britannia." It was an
+exciting moment and a picturesque scene, bathed in the soft moonlight
+and irradiated by the glow of countless stars; but the men were
+hungry, and Major Lord Edward Cecil, the chief staff officer, busied
+himself in making arrangements for the care of these eight Imperial
+Light Horse, who, not content with relieving Ladysmith, had insisted
+upon being accorded the privilege of making the first entry into
+Mafeking.
+
+That night the town retired early, but about two in the morning a
+subdued roar came from the direction of the north-western outposts,
+and in a very little time word was passed round that the troops were
+making their entrance into Mafeking. Just as the relief column had
+proceeded from Vryburg without any flourish of trumpets, so was their
+entry into Mafeking unexpected and unostentatious. But the town had
+aroused itself and was soon flocking across the veldt to the ground
+where the combined columns had already begun to form their camp. It
+was not a large force; its full muster was below two thousand men; but
+amid the soft and eerie shadows of the starry, moonlit night there
+seemed no end to the lines of horses, mules, and bullocks, to the camp
+fires, to the groups of men, to the number and variety of the waggons.
+In a corner, as it were, were the guns, a composite battery of the
+Royal Horse Artillery, eight pieces of the Canadian Artillery, and a
+number of Maxims. It was these which we had heard booming to us the
+first distant echoes of relief, and we were of course proud of them.
+Then and there we examined them, felt them over, pondered upon them,
+and then and there we thanked our God that we had in our own hands at
+last some really serviceable artillery. But there were other sights to
+be seen, early as was the hour, tired as were the troopers. There were
+the men of the Kimberley Light Horse and their comrades of the
+Imperial Light Horse to be inspected, to be patted upon the back, to
+be admired, and to be congratulated. There was scarcely any one who
+could not claim a friend among the mere handful of men who had marched
+from Vryburg to our relief, but if by chance there were such a one he
+quickly placed himself _en amiti�_ with the first group of troopers
+with whom he came in contact. Alas! such was our plight that we could
+not give them anything to drink, but we most willingly had prepared
+cauldrons of steaming soup and boiling coffee. A cup of coffee is not
+much to offer, but the goodwill was taken with the spirit, and there
+was no one who did not seem glad to receive even so small a thing. It
+was not possible to stay long in the camp. The men were weary, and,
+moreover, there was much to be done before, with their martial cloaks
+around them, they were able to snatch a few hours' repose; and so the
+town returned to its bed, drunk with enthusiasm, in an abortive effort
+to calm its excited brain with sleep. But, good heavens! was such a
+thing possible? It was now four, and although it was somewhat early,
+in the morning we began to call upon one another, passing the hours
+between dawn and sunrise in hilarious uproar. About seven the camp was
+all a-bustle. There were rumours that the men were to move out and
+attack the Boers, who were still in position upon the east side of the
+town. Presently, as we moved about the streets down by the western
+outposts, clouds of dust were tossing themselves in the air. The guns
+were coming--our guns, if you please--and thereupon a pandemonium was
+raised. Every one seemed to be screaming, and as the Royal Horse swept
+through town we streamed after them, feebly endeavouring to keep pace
+with them, so as to be able to witness the effects of their power. The
+Market Square at this time presented a picture of military life which
+has never been equalled by any of the scenes that have been enacted
+there in its earlier days. Men in uniform were hurrying from point to
+point, troops from the various squadrons were coming in,
+squadron-leaders, majors and colonels were falling over one another.
+These were the beginnings of the fight, and much as the relief had
+fought its way into Mafeking so were they now going to secure definite
+freedom for the townspeople by driving out the Boers. As the guns came
+into the Square willing hands tore down and pushed aside the line of
+carts and fencing of corrugated iron which for these seven months had
+served duty as a traverse. Then the guns of the Horse Artillery swept
+on, taking up positions upon the veldt in front of the town, in
+readiness to begin the bombardment of the Boer position, while, in
+simultaneous co-operation with this movement, the Canadian Artillery
+were sent out with orders to shell Game Tree. However, the fight did
+not last long. In a very short time the Game Tree fort was deserted,
+the Boers from there hurriedly joining their main body. But the
+presence of the guns had terrorised the Boers, and they fled
+precipitately, leaving their camp, their guns, their stores behind
+them. We shelled for an hour with the composite battery of the Royal
+Horse, comprising four 12-1/2-pounders and two pom-poms. Then we
+advanced in skirmishing order, extending our line rapidly until we had
+outflanked their position. Then we charged, and the day was ours. The
+enemy had vanished, and we were in possession of their camp, while so
+undignified had their retreat been that they did not even wait to
+remove their hospital. Upon General Snyman's house there was still
+floating the Republican flag, while the Red Cross hung drowsily in the
+air above the hospital. There were thirty wounded in the hospital, and
+these, for the time being, were placed under a guard, but otherwise
+left undisturbed; in this manner did the siege come to an abrupt
+conclusion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+THE END
+
+
+                                 MAFEKING, _May 26th, 1900_.
+
+The imprimatur has now been given to the siege, and that chapter of
+the war which bears reference to the investment of Mafeking must now
+be considered as closed. The end of the drama is with us; the curtain
+has dropped, and the people of the play are scattering--some are dead,
+some have been wounded, lying nigh to death in the Victoria Hospital,
+some have passed through this seven months' ordeal suffering neither
+monetary loss nor physical hurt, but bearing with them, in their
+minds, the almost indelible impress of an interesting but terrible
+experience. And so the play is ended, and the great historical drama
+in which we have enacted our part is soon to present fresh scenes, and
+with the transformation, let us hope some stirring incident and a
+picturesque scenario. To the end, of course, there is the story, but
+it is simple of fact, it is plain of feature, it deals only with what
+one may consider as the final obsequies of the siege, and in a brief
+space we will consider them.
+
+The siege is now officially returned as having been raised by General
+Mahon's force at half-past ten upon the morning of May 17th. It has
+been quiet since then. The garrison has mainly rested, taking itself
+idly and participating in the few last deft touches with which Colonel
+Baden-Powell has adorned the siege. These issues to the relief have
+been sad, have been pleasing, but mournful or gay they have served
+their purpose, fitting in most accurately with the long chain of
+circumstances which has enclosed the siege. There was the time when
+the garrison attended just beyond the precincts of the cemetery, where
+the rank and file of the forces which have been beleaguered, stood to
+attention as they paid their last honour to the dead, to all of those
+who died so nobly, to those who had been the victims of disease, and
+who, one and all, had paid the penalty of our success. It was a
+mournful retrospect which was thus forced upon our notice as the names
+of our dead were passed slowly in review; but as the mournful cadences
+dropped from the lips of the preacher we braced ourselves to think
+that such an end, as we had gathered to conclude, was but the
+inevitable. As the Colonel stood before us--the man who reaped the
+glory of the siege--we wondered whether beneath the calmness of his
+demeanour there lurked any feeling of regret, any half-cherished
+desire to express aloud to those who stood around him the potency of
+his sorrows. To him it was but the simple ceremony, and one, moreover,
+to be got through quickly, and indeed there was but little in the
+service. Occasionally the breeze, which sighed so tremulously through
+the hedge of trees that fringe the graveyard, wafted to us snatches of
+prayer. And that was all, so far as we were concerned--the mere
+fragments of a passing communion, ending as abruptly as it began,
+seeming all to concentrate in that one moment when at command three
+rounds of blank cartridge were fired across the graves. That was the
+full weight of our honours to the dead, since afterwards--for it does
+not do to dwell too much upon these things--the Colonel commanding
+reviewed the remnants of his force, unbending insomuch that he
+addressed to each unit, a few words of appreciation and of thanks. And
+then where we had assembled, there did the Town Guard and other corps
+of the garrison receive their dismissal, since now that the siege was
+raised they might return to their businesses, to their homes, and to
+their families to spend a cheering hour or two in an endeavour to
+compute some estimate of the ruin which has fallen upon their
+fortunes.
+
+Now that the siege is over, it is not without interest to know to what
+extent the garrison has suffered. We have had 1,498 shells from the
+100-pounder Creusot, but in addition to this the enemy has fired into
+Mafeking some 21,000 odd shells of a smaller character. These have
+ranged from the 14-1/2-pounder high-velocity, armour-piercing,
+delay-action shell, down to the high-velocity one-pound Maxim,
+embracing in the series a variety of nine-pound shells--common,
+segment, shrapnel, and incendiary--several hundred seven-pound shells,
+and a multitude of five-pounders. This has been the weight of the
+enemy's artillery fire which has played upon the town since October
+12th, and which has supported commandos of Boers which were reckoned
+as 8,000 men in October, and whose numbers are believed never to have
+fallen below 3,000 rifles. Throughout the siege there have been some
+eight guns around us, including the big Creusot piece, but at times
+there have been eleven, and at rare intervals our spies reported that
+the strength of the enemy's artillery was fourteen guns. And we have
+stood this with a certain cheerfulness and with a pretty spirit of
+determination: moreover, we have returned their fire, claiming to have
+disabled three guns and killing and wounding several hundred men. Our
+own casualties from shot and shell and sickness until the end of April
+were 476. In October there were 77; November, 49; December, 101; in
+January, 47; February, 68; March, 67; and April, 67. The admissions
+into the base hospital during this period were 685, while 496 were
+discharged. Among those who were admitted to the hospital there were
+106 deaths. During a similar period and through identical causes, 180
+natives were admitted to this hospital, 115 were discharged, 56 died,
+but irrespective of these figures 398 deaths were registered from
+amongst the natives. That their mortality was great, the monthly
+returns from the native population will show. In October 12 natives
+died; in November, 13; December, 46; January, 64; February, 44; March,
+84; April, 135. These figures relate to those patients only who were
+passed through the base hospital, but the monthly returns bear upon
+the available strength of the garrison, and are in themselves an index
+to the conditions of the siege. The town itself has suffered to a
+great extent, although the amount of damage which the enemy's shell
+fire has created is insignificant when compared to what would have
+been the result had the main elements in its construction been bricks
+and mortar. The tin shanties and the mud walls have given to Mafeking
+a remarkable salvation, making it possible for the little town to
+compare, when the weight of metal brought against it is considered,
+even favourably with Ladysmith. Among the men forming the relief
+column there are many who were with Sir George White, and from these
+one gathers that the damage which Mafeking has sustained is infinitely
+greater than the injuries which Ladysmith can show.
+
+[Illustration: The Author's Dog "Mafeking," Wounded three Times
+during the Siege.]
+
+And so the siege is ended; but if this were taken in its more literal
+sense it would imply that there has been an immediate change for the
+better in our condition. But such is not the case. We have been
+relieved of the presence of the Boers, a matter which did not greatly
+trouble us, but there has been no alteration in our scale of diet--a
+matter which does greatly trouble us; we are still issued four ounces
+of rusty bread and a pound of scraggy meat, and there is still an
+absence of table delicacies. We have no sugar, we have no milk, we
+have neither eggs nor fowls. In point of fact we have nothing, and
+indeed there has been no change. Yet we understood that Field-Marshal
+Lord Roberts in his kindly and generous way had sent us a mob of prime
+bullocks, and a convoy of something other than hospital luxuries. This
+is told to us upon the authority of Major Weil, who controls the
+commissariat, and if it be true, it is still most certainly the case
+that the commissariat officer who has controlled the food supplies of
+the garrison during the siege is still, relatively speaking, doling
+out his sugar by the thimbleful, and ladling his flour with a spoon.
+However, there is to come a time some day when Captain Ryan will be
+far away, and the hours of meal times will be graced with such
+luxuries as we have not seen for seven months. It is only recently
+that the issue of horse meat was stopped, but there is a very general
+belief that if the horses are not being slaughtered for human
+consumption, their carcases still play an important part in the soup
+with which the garrison is served. Of course, the days of starch
+puddings and other table delicacies which were manufactured from
+toilet necessaries are over, while we believe that an effort is to be
+made to improve, but not increase, the bread allowance and to put
+fresh meat on the public sales. But these are the boons of the future;
+since we are relieved that is held to be sufficient for the present.
+However, our thoughts do not dwell much upon our food, we rejoice so
+much over our liberty that we can spare but little time for grumbling,
+and indeed feel but little inclination. The town is bright again, and
+people throng the streets as though a load had been lifted from off
+the backs of every one. The shops are open, the post office has
+resumed its work, and now once more accepts telegrams and letters.
+During the siege there has been but little opportunity to send to the
+outer world any message of a private character that contained more
+than a few words. Letters were almost out of the question, and were
+expensive luxuries even to war correspondents, who were compelled to
+employ special runners at high prices to carry their despatches to the
+nearest office. Lately, and when the investment of the enemy was not
+so close, the intelligence department did manage to pass through the
+lines small parcels of mail matter. The occasions have been
+infrequent, and there were so many people who were anxious to write
+that it became necessary to restrict the general public to a certain
+limit of space. It does not seem that many letters got through, since
+now that we have had time to overhaul the laagers of the enemy we have
+found much correspondence in their waggons. We have also found a
+number of telegrams, and these provide interesting reading and bear
+importantly upon the situation. Moreover, it would seem that our
+estimate of the Boer forces in the field is much exaggerated, for
+President Kruger complains bitterly to Commandant-General Botha of the
+paucity of numbers at the command of the State President. The
+Commandant-General had but fifteen hundred men with him in Natal,
+while General Snyman mentions the numbers of the various commandos
+which he has summoned to his assistance, and by which he hopes to
+secure an additional eight hundred men. But from the telegrams it
+would seem that, for the most part, the Boers are timorous and tired
+of fighting. The Field Cornet of Christiana asks what he is to do with
+twenty men, and states that the Johannesburg Police are bolting.
+"What, then, am I to do with my men?" At this moment the British
+troops were within one hour's ride of Christiana. General Snyman has
+many interesting comments upon the situation on the Molopo, and if
+President Kruger believed one half of the intelligence that General
+Snyman telegraphed to him, his knowledge of the situation must have
+been obscure. From the despatches which passed between this worthy
+General and the State President, mention is made quite frequently of
+the desperate assaults upon our lines which General Snyman organised
+and in some cases personally carried out, and which upon many
+occasions resulted in the capture of one of our outlying positions. If
+this be true such positions as were captured must indeed have been
+outlying, in fact so far beyond the perimeter of our defences as to
+altogether have escaped the notice of the garrison. But it does not
+seem that President Kruger believed everything that General Snyman
+communicated to him. In one message Oom Paul requests immediate
+information upon the whereabouts of Colonel Plumer. There is a certain
+pathos in the question of the aged President asking General Snyman,
+"Where is Plumer? You must know," and one gathers that the old man saw
+somewhat further into the future than the majority of his councillors,
+since he gives it as his opinion that Mafeking will be relieved. But
+prophets have never been respected in their own country. General
+Snyman does not seem to have found favour in Pretoria; perhaps the
+character of the man was too well known, since the State Secretary,
+Mr. Reitz, is ordered by the State President to inquire as to whether
+the failure of General Snyman's reinforcements to support Commandant
+Eloff in his attack upon the town on May 12th was due to drunkenness
+or to cowardice. "If it be drunkenness, let us say so," advises Mr.
+Reitz, "since it would be better that the truth be known than that it
+should be believed that General Snyman was a coward." Does this
+sentence contain the secret history of the failure of Commandant
+Eloff? If it be so one can afford to be generous and to sympathise
+with President Kruger, even to feel a certain pity for Commandant
+Eloff.
+
+The Commandant, since he surrendered to us, has taken life very
+philosophically. He is confined in the gaol, and with him are Captain
+de Fremont and some half-dozen others. The majority of the prisoners
+are lodged in the Dutch Church and in the Masonic Hall. Their time
+hangs heavily upon their hands, but when the tedium of their
+imprisonment becomes too great they indite long letters to their
+friends, using much paper, in villainous denunciations of the English,
+in complaining bitterly of their food, and in villifying Snyman.
+
+Commandant Eloff smokes and reads and talks. Sometimes he becomes
+abstracted, and again upon Sundays he is dejected. As I had the
+pleasure of meeting him in the British South Africa Police Fort upon
+May 12th, the occasion upon which he captured me, I called upon him in
+the gaol. He was pacing the courtyard, but he stopped and smiled when
+he saw me, and as I saluted him he held out his hand. "My prisoner,"
+said he, amiably. "The fortunes of war," said I, and he waved a hand
+in the air as he accepted a cigarette. His costume was free and
+comfortable. He wore a brown jersey, a pair of riding breeches, and
+slippers. The jersey fitted him, and he seemed to take some pains in
+showing the physical development of his shoulders. His arms also were
+strong, and with every move of his body his muscles quivered. He was
+lithe, supple and active, and as he stood there with the whitewashed
+walls of the gaol behind him, with his companions around him, and a
+guard upon each of the four walls which enclosed the courtyard, an air
+of romance clung to him and he might have been for the moment some
+creation of Anthony Hope, casting in his mind for some entrancing but
+desperate situation. He puffed my cigarette vigorously and began a
+conversation. "You know," said he, "I don't like horseflesh." "I am
+sorry," said I, "but you should have taken Mafeking before." "We shall
+have it yet," said a man at the table, whereupon the Commandant
+shrugged his shoulders and threw the end of his cigarette somewhat
+petulantly from him. "If," said I. "Ah," said the Commandant, and
+there was a pause in which we all laughed. He looked at me for a
+moment as though he thought. "It is possible," said he, and he
+punctuated his words with little nods. As he finished Captain de
+Fremont joined us. "My God," said he; "you English." Eloff laughed.
+"Do not let us make this Fashoda," said he. "Yes, it is possible," he
+began again, "and I think we should have captured your town, but
+Snyman----" he paused and spat. "I wish to God you would make Snyman a
+prisoner," said he. The conversation had become interesting, and I
+passed my cigarette case around again. It returned to me empty, but
+Commandant Eloff had begun to smoke a pipe. "Are not you Dutchmen
+tired of the war?" said I; "the end, after all, is inevitable."
+Captain de Fremont spoke again. He twisted his cigarette between his
+fingers and remarked with an air of incisive inanity, "Life and death
+are inevitable." "And the English," said Commandant Eloff, whereupon I
+laughed. The Commandant once more took up the thread of the
+conversation. "We attacked you because it seemed to me that you had
+relaxed your vigilance. How could we otherwise have pierced your
+lines?" His view was right--at least I thought so. "We expected you,"
+said I. The Commandant shook his head and looked at me somewhat
+quizzingly. After all it was a palpable lie. "No," said he; "you
+should at least allow us that amount of energy. You did not expect us,
+and had Snyman pressed home the attack upon your eastern front and
+supported me with the guns and reinforcements, I think that Mafeking
+must have fallen." He paused for a moment, and said, slowly, "I am
+certain that we should not be prisoners." "It was bad luck," said I,
+"we would rather have you with us than against us, but this time you
+will remain with us." He glanced at the four walls, upon each of which
+there was sitting a guard. "I notice," said he, "that I am well
+protected." The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders, as I suggested he
+would rather be outside. "Give me a chance," said he, and he snapped
+his fingers. "What, don't you know," said I, "what has occurred this
+morning?" In a flash his mind reverted to the firing upon the previous
+day. "Tell me, what was that firing last night?" "Mafeking has been
+relieved," said I. The Commandant said nothing, and once more there
+was a pause; but before we spoke again the sergeant of the guard
+clanged upon the door with his musket. "Time is up," called he, and
+the door opened. For a moment the Commandant could see through the
+open space of the doorway, beyond and above the heads of the five
+guards who were waiting outside, the glimpse of blue sky, a line of
+trees, a stretch of veldt. "Is there anything I can do for you?" said
+I, before I went. He waved his hand. "Nothing," said he, "except fresh
+meat." I stayed for a moment and pointed outside. "Fresh meat and
+fresh air are both outside." I thought I caught a sigh: it seemed to
+lurk for a moment amid the harsh and grating noises of the bolts as
+they were thrust forward in their sockets.
+
+From the prison I strolled to my hotel. The day was fine, the cold of
+the morning had given place to a warm and brilliant sunshine. It was
+the Queen's birthday, and our little world seemed at peace. For the
+moment we were forgetting the strife and tribulations of the past
+seven months, and in our anxiety to do honour to her Majesty there was
+much commotion in the town. Flags were flying and bunting was
+fluttering from the verandahs of the houses. Here and there, passing
+in a cloud of dust, were the troops marching to the parade. There was
+to be a review and there was also a general muster of arms. In the
+centre of the Market Square were the guns which we had captured from
+the enemy. In a corner, but surrounded by an admiring crowd, were the
+two pieces which we had improvised during the siege. There was
+"B.-P.," there was also "The Wolf," and acting as guard to these guns,
+were two men who, the day before had reached Mafeking from Pretoria,
+having eluded the vigilance of their sentries and walked one hundred
+and eighty miles in a gallant and successful attempt to gain liberty
+and freedom. The men were almost as interesting as the guns. But time
+was speedy and the war correspondents were anxious to attend the
+parade. The review was a study in contrast, the contrast between a
+birthday parade and that review at the cemetery where the souls of the
+dead were passed in inspection and for whom prayers were offered. The
+parade stretched from end to end of the ground immediately in front of
+the British South Africa Police Fort, taking place upon the very spot
+where the town had so valiantly contested the attack which Commandant
+Eloff had organised. Behind the lines of the men were the white
+buildings of the Protectorate Barracks, while from the flag-mast,
+which stands aloft in the centre of the fort, there floated the Union
+Jack. The scene was indeed a study in contrast. We were at peace now
+with the elements of war within our midst. We were fighting then, a
+grim and determined struggle waging all round us, and in a way this
+birthday parade was the issue of that day's fighting, since had the
+end been otherwise, it might have been Commandant Eloff who passed in
+review order upon the birthday of our Queen Empress. We formed up,
+detachments from the different corps and the artillery upon the right
+of the line. It was only the siege artillery, and nothing very much at
+that. The pom-poms and the guns of the Royal Horse Artillery were
+guarding the front of the town, and could not be spared.
+
+And so we waited, when of a sudden there came a cheer from the rear
+and we realised that General Mahon was approaching. There was no band,
+there were no horses, the entire parade were dismounted. The Colonel
+inspected, the men dressed, and the Colonel returned to the saluting
+base. He seemed conscious of the crowd, and stood as though he
+realised that the parade which he was now holding meant to him so much
+more than the mere abstract honour to the Queen. It signified the end
+of his labours, epitomising his successes, touching with ironical
+glory the honours which the near future must surely bring to him, and
+as he stood he seemed quite nervous. It was one of the few occasions
+upon which I have ever known him to be moved. The men who had come to
+his relief were passing by him, and ever and anon one heard the
+commands of the officers calling to their squadrons as they gained the
+shadow of the saluting base, "Shoulder arms; eyes left." Then Colonel
+Baden-Powell would raise his hand, taking and returning the salutes as
+they were made. In the distance there was a haze of dust through which
+a gaudy sunlight was flickering, and in the distance and, beside us,
+there was the heavy music of the armed tread, as squadron after
+squadron marched by. The air was filled with sound and sentiment, but
+yet the crowd that stood behind was quiet and quite subdued. It was no
+wonder that they were impressed, that they recognised in the rumble of
+the distant feet and in the flowing masses of men the hour of their
+deliverance. Their troubles were indeed past, their siege was over,
+and the moment was approaching when those who had been in their midst
+during so many months would be again upon the move, advancing this
+time against the enemy upon Pretoria. But the hour was not one in
+which to say farewell. It was an hour which lived for itself, an hour
+that bore to each of us some knowledge of our liberty, and a secret
+appreciation of the duties which our Empire asked of us. We were all
+contented, happy in the knowledge that the siege was over, but imbued
+with even a greater happiness since, upon this day, her Majesty was
+sharing with us the joys of our good news. And presently the ceremony
+concluded, and for the remainder of the day we attended sports and
+organised a concert; while that night there was a dinner and a
+pyrotechnic display in Market Square. We dined and drank the Queen,
+and drinking this, streamed to the air where the rockets were already
+rushing to the _ewigkeit_ with the roar of the racing tide. And then
+beneath the steely beauty of the moonlight and the soft radiance of
+countless stars we sang "God Save the Queen" and wandered home,
+chanting as we went the strains of "Rule Britannia." Thus in a cloud
+of loyal enthusiasm were brought about the closing scenes of the Siege
+of Mafeking.
+
+[Illustration: Plan of Mafeking.]
+
+THE END
+
+
+UNWIN BROTHERS, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Siege of Mafeking (1900), by J. Angus Hamilton
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+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
+<title>The Project Gutenberg e-Book of The Siege of Mafeking; Author: J. Angus Hamilton.</title>
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+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's The Siege of Mafeking (1900), by J. Angus Hamilton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: The Siege of Mafeking (1900)
+
+Author: J. Angus Hamilton
+
+Release Date: April 2, 2012 [EBook #39348]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SIEGE OF MAFEKING (1900) ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Christine P. Travers and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
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+</pre>
+
+
+<a id="img001" name="img001"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img001.jpg" width="500" height="347" alt="" title="">
+<p class="smcap">THE COLONEL AT WORK.</p>
+</div>
+
+<h1>THE<br>
+  SIEGE OF MAFEKING</h1>
+
+<p class="p2 center smaller">BY</p>
+<p class="center">J. ANGUS HAMILTON</p>
+
+<p class="p4 center smaller">WITH FIFTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS AND TWO PLANS</p>
+
+<p class="p4 center smaller">METHUEN &amp; CO.<br>
+  36 ESSEX STREET W.C.<br>
+  LONDON<br>
+  1900</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagevii" name="pagevii"></a>(p. vii)</span> PREFATORY NOTE</h2>
+
+
+<p>I have to acknowledge gratefully permission to publish in this book
+certain articles contributed before and during the siege of Mafeking
+to <i>The Times</i> and <i>Black and White</i>. To the editor of the latter
+paper I am indebted also for leave to reproduce photographs taken by
+myself and published, from time to time, in that journal.</p>
+
+<p>I would acknowledge, too, in anticipation, any kindly toleration my
+readers may extend to me for the many shortcomings, of which I am
+dismally conscious, arising from the hasty preparation of this volume.
+When I explain that between the date of my return to England and this
+date&mdash;when I start for China&mdash;barely a fortnight has elapsed, I shall
+make good, perhaps, some small claim upon the indulgence of the
+critics and the public.</p>
+
+<p class="signat">J. A. H.</p>
+<p><i>July 21, 1900</i></p>
+
+<div class="toc">
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="pageix" name="pageix"></a>(p. ix)</span> CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<ul class="none">
+<li>CHAPTER        <span class="ralign10 smcap">PAGE</span>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="roman">
+<li>AT SEA
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page1">1</a></span></li>
+
+<li>A GLANCE AHEAD
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page11">11</a></span></li>
+
+<li>ON THE ORANGE FREE STATE BORDER
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page22">22</a></span></li>
+
+<li>BRICKS OF STRAW
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page34">34</a></span></li>
+
+<li>DIAMONDS AND WHITE FEATHERS
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page41">41</a></span></li>
+
+<li>TWO DAYS BEFORE WAR
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page49">49</a></span></li>
+
+<li>THE SKIRMISH AT FIVE MILE BANK
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page57">57</a></span></li>
+
+<li>THE FIRST DAY OF BOMBARDMENT
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page67">67</a></span></li>
+
+<li>THE ADVENT OF "BIG BEN"
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page78">78</a></span></li>
+
+<li>A MIDNIGHT SORTIE
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page88">88</a></span></li>
+
+<li>CANNON KOPJE
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page97">97</a></span></li>
+
+<li>A RECONNAISSANCE
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page108">108</a></span></li>
+
+<li>THE TOWN GUARD
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page120">120</a></span></li>
+
+<li>WASTED ENERGIES
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page130">130</a></span></li>
+
+<li>SHELLS AND SLAUGHTER
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page140">140</a></span></li>
+
+<li>A SOFT-WATER BATH
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page147">147</a></span></li>
+
+<li>THE ECONOMY OF THE SITUATION
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page152">152</a></span></li>
+
+<li>A VISIT TO THE HOSPITAL
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page158">158</a></span></li>
+
+<li>A LITTLE GUN PRACTICE
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page165">165</a></span></li>
+
+<li>THE ATTACK UPON GAME TREE
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page175">175</a></span></li>
+
+<li>THE ADVENT OF THE NEW YEAR
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page188">188</a></span></li>
+
+<li><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagex" name="pagex"></a>(p. x)</span>  NATIVE LIFE
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page196">196</a></span></li>
+
+<li>BOMBAST AND BOMB-PROOFS
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page202">202</a></span></li>
+
+<li>SOME SNIPING AND AN EXECUTION
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page212">212</a></span></li>
+
+<li>LIFE IN THE BRICKFIELDS
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page220">220</a></span></li>
+
+<li>FROM BAD TO WORSE
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page225">225</a></span></li>
+
+<li>THE FIRST ATTACK UPON THE BRICKFIELDS
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page232">232</a></span></li>
+
+<li>THE SECOND ATTACK UPON THE BRICKFIELDS
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page240">240</a></span></li>
+
+<li>THE NATIVE QUESTION
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page247">247</a></span></li>
+
+<li>POLITICAL ECONOMY
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page253">253</a></span></li>
+
+<li>"A HISTORY OF THE BARALONGS"
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page261">261</a></span></li>
+
+<li>'TIS WEARY WAITING
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page271">271</a></span></li>
+
+<li>TWO HUNDRED DAYS OF SIEGE
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page278">278</a></span></li>
+
+<li>THE EPICUREAN'S DELIGHT
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page283">283</a></span></li>
+
+<li>THE LAST FIGHT
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page290">290</a></span></li>
+
+<li>RELIEVED AT LAST
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page311">311</a></span></li>
+
+<li>THE END
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#page319">319</a></span></li>
+</ul>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexi" name="pagexi"></a>(p. xi)</span> LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND PLANS</h2>
+
+<ul class="none">
+<li>&nbsp; <span class="ralign10 smcap">PAGE</span></li>
+
+<li>THE COLONEL AT WORK.
+<span class="ralign10 normal"><a href="#img001"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></span></li>
+
+<li>MAJOR LORD EDWARD CECIL, C.S.O.
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#img002">45</a></span></li>
+
+<li>OUTPOSTS AND ENTRENCHMENTS, SOUTHERN FRONT.
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#img004">55</a></span></li>
+
+<li>HEADQUARTERS
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#img005">68</a></span></li>
+
+<li>CANNON KOPJE
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#img006">98</a></span></li>
+
+<li>MAJOR GODLEY ON THE LOOK-OUT
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#img007">112</a></span></li>
+
+<li>EFFECTS OF SHELL FIRE. I. BEFORE
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#img008">144</a></span></li>
+
+<li>EFFECTS OF SHELL FIRE. II. AFTER
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#img009">146</a></span></li>
+
+<li>BOERS INSPECTING BRITISH KILLED
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#img010">184</a></span></li>
+
+<li>THE COLONEL ON THE LOOK-OUT
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#img011">192</a></span></li>
+
+<li>WAR CORRESPONDENTS AND THEIR BOMB-PROOF SHELTERS
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#img012">212</a></span></li>
+
+<li>PLAN OF THE BRICKFIELDS
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#img013">222</a></span></li>
+
+<li>CAPE BOYS HURLING STONES AT THE BOERS
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#img014">224</a></span></li>
+
+<li>KILLING HORSES FOR THE GARRISON
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#img015">292</a></span></li>
+
+<li>THE BRITISH SOUTH AFRICAN POLICE FORT
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#img016">298</a></span></li>
+
+<li>"MAFEKING," THE AUTHOR'S DOG
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#img017">324</a></span></li>
+
+<li>PLAN OF MAFEKING
+<span class="ralign10"><a href="#img018">338</a></span></li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page1" name="page1"></a>(p. 1)</span> CHAPTER I<br>
+<span class="smaller">AT SEA</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date">R.M.S. <span class="smcap"><i>Dunvegan Castle</i></span>,
+  <i>September 16th, 1899</i>.</p>
+
+<p>A breeze was freshening, tufting the heaving billows with white crests
+and driving showers of spray and clots of foam upon the decks of the
+<i>Dunvegan</i>. Passengers stood in strained attitudes about the ship,
+fidgeting with the desire to be ill and the wish to appear
+comfortable&mdash;even dignified. In the end, however, circumstances were
+too strong for the passengers, transforming them, from a state of calm
+despair, into a condition of sickness and temporary dejection. Every
+one was perturbed, and those delicate attentions which the sea-sick
+demand were being offered by a much-worried deck steward. Here and
+there groups of more hardy voyagers were spending their feeble wit in
+unseasonable jokes; here and there bedraggled people, wet with spray
+and racked by the anguish of an aching void, were clutching at the
+possibility of gaining the privacy of their cabins before their
+feelings quite overpowered them. In this mad rush, not unlike the
+scramble of a shuttlecock to escape the buffetings of the battledore,
+I also joined, fetching my berth with much <span class="pagenum"><a id="page2" name="page2"></a>(p. 2)</span> unfortunate
+sensation. Alas! I am a wretched sailor, and travelling far and near
+these many years, crossing strange seas to distant lands at
+oft-recurring periods, has not even tutored me to stand the stress of
+the ocean wave. I cannot endure the sea.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Dunvegan Castle</i> was steaming to the Cape, carrying the mails,
+together with a number of tedious and most tiresome people, whose
+hours aboard were passed in periods of distracting energy&mdash;in deck
+quoits, in impossible cricket matches, in angry squabbles upon the
+value of the monies which, day by day, were collected by the crafty
+from the foolish and pooled in prizes upon the daily run of the
+steamer. It was said that these were pleasant gambles, but the
+Gentiles paid and the Hebrews, returning to their diamonds, their
+stocks and shares, scooped the stakes. It is a way that the people of
+Israel and Threadneedle Street have made peculiarly their own; and,
+indeed, the multitude and variety of Jews upon this evil-smelling
+steamer suggested that she might have held within her walls the
+nucleus of an over-sea Israelitish colony, such another as the
+Rothschilds founded.</p>
+
+<p>Time was idle, dreary, and so empty! There was nothing to do, since
+nothing could be done. The monotony was appalling, and if this were
+the condition in the saloon, how distressful must have been the lot of
+the third class, who constituted in themselves, as good a class of
+people as that contained in the saloon. Surely in these days of
+systematic philanthropy something more might be done to brighten the
+lot and welfare of third-class passengers. Is it, for example, quite
+impossible to supply them with that not uninteresting development of
+the musical-box&mdash;the megaphone? Of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page3" name="page3"></a>(p. 3)</span> course it should be quite
+possible; but antiquated, even antediluvian, in its arrangements, the
+Castle Company cannot initiate anything which has not yet been adopted
+by the other lines of ocean shipping. And yet I have been told by
+numerous merchant captains that it is the steerage which provides the
+profits, making lucrative the business of carrying cargoes of goods
+and human freight from our shores to more distant lands. But that also
+is the way of the world; yet when a rude prosperity enables the
+emigrant Jew and Gentile to throng the saloons, making them altogether
+impossible for the gentler classes, we shall find the economy of the
+third class appealing to an ever-increasing and ever-superior body of
+people until these "superior" people will not endure the dirt,
+unwholesome surroundings, and fetid atmosphere of the steerage
+accommodation of ocean-going steamers, but will cry to Heaven upon the
+niggard's policy which controls the vessels.</p>
+
+<p>As the days wore away, and Madeira came and went, even the flying
+fishes ceased to attract, and the noises of the ship grew more
+distant, the people less obtrusive. Moreover, I became at rest within
+myself, and the gaping, aching void which has filled my vitals these
+many days, became assuaged. It was then we began to inspect the
+passengers; to consider almost kindly the African Jew millionaire who
+ate peas with his fingers and mixed honey with his salad, thought not
+disdainfully of the poor lady his wife, who, suffering the tortures of
+the damned when at sea, shone at each meal valiantly and heroically
+until the menu was pierced by her in its entirety, and she made still
+further happy by the administration of an original preventative
+against <span class="pagenum"><a id="page4" name="page4"></a>(p. 4)</span> <i>mal de mer</i> of sweet wine biscuits bathed in
+plentiful and sticky treacle. It was her way of pouring oil on
+troubled waters. Oh, those were dreadful people, never ill, always
+eating, ever complaining of a curious dizziness which, nevertheless,
+occasioned them no loss of appetite. Surely they, of all others, were
+indeed of the specially select! Then there was Mr. Clarke, a friend of
+the two Presidents, who, undaunted by the most violent motions of the
+steamer, kept to the deck in a constant promenade, discoursing
+amicably the while, and punctuating his utterances, of a somewhat
+patriarchal order, with brief pauses, in which he stroked, with much
+dignity, a long white beard. He was a dear old man, and, unlike other
+Boers, he did not quote from the Scriptures, a concession which, to be
+properly appreciated, demands the lassitude and extreme prostration of
+violent nausea. There is something inordinately irritating about the
+man who proposes to soothe the irruptions attendant upon sea voyages
+by the assurance that such discomfiture is to be endured, since in
+Chapter i., verse 1, of a pious writer, the Lord hath there written
+that the ungodly shall be everlastingly punished. Personally I
+objected only to the form of punishment.</p>
+
+<p>The friend of the President, a fine specimen of sturdy masculinity,
+touching eighty-two years of age, was quite the most impressive figure
+aboard this particular Castle packet. He had been a sojourner in the
+Orange Free State for forty years, coming to it from Australia shortly
+after the riots at Ballarat goldfields. The old fellow had fought
+against the Boers, championed their arms against the Basutos, raided
+the blacks in Queensland, and tumbled through a variety of enterprises
+ranging from mining <span class="pagenum"><a id="page5" name="page5"></a>(p. 5)</span> in Australia to successful sheep farming
+near the Fickersburg. I liked him, taking an intense anxiety in his
+future movements, and wondering whether this fine old specimen of life
+would also become our enemy. Who could tell! So much depended upon the
+situation, so much upon the action of the President and the will of
+Providence. He stood, as he himself was apt to remark, upon the border
+of the next world&mdash;looking back upon a span of four score years,
+possessing a knowledge of the affairs of these African Republics which
+had obtained for him the friendship of President Steyn and President
+Kruger; indeed, they had been comrades-in-arms, Oom Paul and himself,
+while he had seen Steyn spring into manhood from a stripling, and when
+his thoughts dwelt upon those days the voice of the old man became
+flooded with emotion. These tears of memory were a sidelight to his
+real character, and I was convinced that if he shouldered arms at all
+these earlier friendships were held by such ties as were too sacred to
+be violated. In his heart he hated fighting, yearning merely for the
+attentions of his children, the cool delights of his mountain home. In
+his domestic environment he was a happy man, since prosperity had
+brought him certain cares of office, much as the dignity of his age
+had brought him the respect of his fellow-burghers. And yet he figured
+as an illustration of countless hundreds, each one of whom was in
+close relationship with the crisis in the politics of the country.</p>
+
+<p>Morning, noon and night he strolled, the one figure of interest in the
+ill-assorted company of passengers which the good ship&mdash;to my nostrils
+an evil-smelling tub&mdash;was carrying to the Cape. There were few others
+of importance upon this <span class="pagenum"><a id="page6" name="page6"></a>(p. 6)</span> journey. There was a colonel of the
+Royal Engineers, who had a snug billet in the War Office, and who was
+leaving Pall Mall to inspect the barracks at Cape Town, St. Helena,
+Ascension, and all those other places to which certain preposterous
+War Office officials devoted that attention which should so much more
+properly have been paid to the defenceless condition of the frontiers
+in South Africa. But then, after all, what is the destiny of the War
+Office unless to meddle and make muddle? If Colonel Watson might be
+said to have represented the Imperial Government among the passengers,
+Mynheer Van der Merure, Commissioner of Mines in Johannesburg, might
+be considered as representing the Pretorian Government. It seemed to
+me that these two worthies were quite harmless, representing, each in
+his own way, the acme of good nature, the gallant&mdash;all colonels
+imagine that they be gallant&mdash;colonel by reason of his advanced age;
+the worthy&mdash;all commissioners imagine that they be
+worthy&mdash;commissioner because he lived off the spoil of the mines. But
+even the spectacle of these three&mdash;the grand old man, the War Office
+<i>attach�</i>, the wealthy Randsman&mdash;did not suffice to break the hideous
+monotony of a most depressing voyage.</p>
+
+<p>With the peace of nature enveloping us in a feeling of security, it
+was difficult to realise that each day we drew a little nearer to a
+possible seat of war. There was much rumour aboard; the stewards
+hinted that the hold was filled with a cargo of munitions of war. The
+captain flatly denied it, even the War Office pensioner thought it
+improbable. "You must understand, sir," said he one morning, across the
+breakfast table, "that it is contrary to the custom of her Majesty's
+Government, and, if I may <span class="pagenum"><a id="page7" name="page7"></a>(p. 7)</span> say so, sir, especially contrary to
+the custom of her Majesty's War Office, to squander the finances of
+our great Empire upon unnecessary munitions of war because the <i>Times</i>
+and other papers choose to send half a dozen irresponsible individuals
+to South Africa. Now, sir&mdash;pooh!" When Colonel Watson broke out like
+this the friend of the President would intervene, suggesting in his
+kindly, paternal fashion that "the War Office&mdash;given half a dozen
+colonels, gallant or otherwise&mdash;might well afford to follow the lead
+of the <i>Times</i> newspaper." "It has been my experience," the Colonel
+retaliated on one occasion, "that when people begin to interfere they
+cease to understand." It was always quite delightful to watch these
+two cross swords; the elder invariably took refuge in his age when the
+sallies of the War Office could not be directly countered.
+"Experience! You are only old enough to be my son." The Colonel
+spluttered&mdash;colonels do. By these means the elder man usually carried
+off the honours, replying, as it were, by a flank movement to the
+frontal attack of his superior adversary.</p>
+
+<p>The farmer from the Orange Free State talked much to me, giving me,
+towards the end of the voyage, an invitation to his home. It was a
+visit in which I should have found much pleasure, since the splendour
+of his years, his gentleness and nobility of character were
+attractive. It seemed to me that among all sorts and conditions of men
+this one was indeed, a man, and I do most sincerely hope that the end
+of the war may find him still living and enjoying his farm in his
+usual prosperity. He was so set against the war, and dreaded the
+consequences of hostile invasion into the Orange Free State, insomuch
+that he realised, if some immunity <span class="pagenum"><a id="page8" name="page8"></a>(p. 8)</span> were not guaranteed, the
+ruin and desolation which would spread over the land. In August as we
+left England there was nothing known about the future action of the
+Orange Free State. The question was one of debate, altogether
+confused, almost intangible, and this man, knowing Steyn as he knew
+Kruger, was convinced that the Orange Free State would alienate itself
+from the Transvaal difficulty. But who can tell? We look to the sea
+for our answer, and it throws back to us only the echoes of the
+sighing waves, the pulsing throbs of the screws pounding the green
+masses of water in an effort to reach the Cape. Nevertheless, I am
+inclined to believe that there will be war. I hope that there may be,
+since it is to be my field of labour.</p>
+
+<p>The journey nears its end, and the weather breaks, for a few hours
+into grey cold; while the sea, where it laps the bay at Cape Town,
+darkening into thin ridges of foam, tumbling and tossing amid the
+eddies of the bleak water, looks menacing. A fog lies off the land,
+dense and weighty, impeding the navigation and impressing no little
+conception of the perils of the deep upon the minds of timorous
+passengers, and folding the surface of the ocean in its expanse. The
+weather threatens to be wild. All day the sea fog broke and mingled,
+merging, as the day wore on, into one conglomerate mass of cloud,
+impenetrable to the mariner and screening the signs of the sea from
+those who were upon land. Here and there, low down upon the horizon,
+the storm fiend from the shore had broken into the garland of mist
+which hung so drearily upon sea as upon moor, detaching parcels of
+cloud from the main and toying with them with the coy and heartless
+grace of Zephyr! But as yet the wind only came in minor lapses, and
+was followed <span class="pagenum"><a id="page9" name="page9"></a>(p. 9)</span> by intervals in which there was no movement in
+the fog. From the waste of sea came a ceaseless, muffled roar which
+seemed loudest and most full of mystery when carried upon the wings of
+the wind. Then these echoes of mighty waters, tumbling upon the rocks
+off the land, seemed ominous and charged with deadly peril, and, as
+the fog belts lifted or dispersed before the gusts of the wind, the
+sea would look as though swept with growing anger, heaving in
+tremulous passion, until the great reach of quivering waves was
+flecked with white. Closer and closer lapped the tiny waves, until,
+under the pressure of the freshening wind they mingled their crests,
+rising and falling in foam-capped billows of growing volume and
+increasing majesty. Thus developed the storm; the wind beating on the
+face of the waters and breaking against the clouds until rain fell, in
+the end assuaging, by its raging downpour, the tempest of the ocean.
+Down came the storm in one panting burst of tempestuous deluge. The
+heaving waves threw sheets of foam from their rain-pierced summits,
+and the wind whistled and screamed as it swept through the rigging.
+Flashes of lightning and thunder claps parried one another in quick
+succession. The rain fell in torrents, the decks, shining in the
+lightning flashes, roared with rushing water. So that night we rode at
+anchor, rocking idly at our cables within the shadow of the mountain,
+and upon the morrow, beneath the light of coming dawn, we drew nearer
+through the cool greyness of the bounding ocean. At first the figures,
+the walls of the fort, the cranes, the shipping, and the scarred and
+crinkled facing of the mountain were silhouetted in black against the
+grey of early morning, but as the day broke more firmly across its
+slopes, the finer and more subtle <span class="pagenum"><a id="page10" name="page10"></a>(p. 10)</span> light gave to everything
+its actual proportion. All kept growing clearer and yet clearer, and
+more and more thoroughly outlined, until the sun, shooting over the
+horizon, bestowed upon the coming day its first wink of glory.</p>
+
+<p>And so we landed, passing from a sluggish state of peace into a world
+where everything was lighted with martial glamour.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page11" name="page11"></a>(p. 11)</span> CHAPTER II<br>
+<span class="smaller">A GLANCE AHEAD</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">Cape Town</span>, <i>September 20th, 1899</i>.</p>
+
+<p>To be in Cape Town in September would seem to be visiting the capital
+of Cape Colony in its least enjoyable month; since, more especially
+than at any other time in the year, the place be thronged with
+bustling people, who plough their way through streets which, by the
+stress of recent bad weather, are choked with mud and broken by pools
+of slush and rain-scourings. The rain is falling with a determination
+and force of penetration which soaks the pedestrian in a few minutes
+and makes life altogether miserable. Moreover, there are signs of
+further foul weather. There is a white mist upon the mountain and a
+sea fog enshrouds the shipping in the harbour: everywhere it is cold,
+colourless and damp. Everywhere the people are depressed. It is as
+though the wet has drenched the population of the town to the bone and
+drowned their spirits in the cheerless prospect which the rainy
+season in Cape Town provides. If the sun were to shine the aspect
+might be brighter, a little warmth might be infused in the character
+and disposition of the constantly shifting streams of mud-splashed,
+bedraggled <span class="pagenum"><a id="page12" name="page12"></a>(p. 12)</span> pedestrians who, despite the rain and mud and an
+air of general despondency, impart some little animation to the dirty
+thoroughfares.</p>
+
+<p>Other than this air of depression there is but little external
+evidence of the momentous crisis which impends. It may be that the
+Cape Town colonist has forgotten the responsibilities of his colony in
+the cares of his own office, and is become that mechanical development
+of commerce, a money-making man. Who can tell? Is it even fair to
+hazard an estimation of the man in his present environment? But it
+would assuredly seem that the troubles of the Government, the menace
+which is imposed upon the colony by the Bond Ministry, do not touch
+him, do not even stir his loyalty to the ebullition of a little
+doubtful enthusiasm. Just now, although there may be war upon his
+borders, although the spirit of disturbed patriotism be in the air,
+and although his neighbours may be thinking of joining some one of the
+Irregular Corps who are advertising for recruits, the ordinary
+inhabitant of Cape Town is unmoved. He is too lethargic, or is it that
+his loyalty is not of that degree which regards with concern the
+arming of the border republics, the near outbreak of bloody war? It
+would seem that each, after his own caste, be happy if he be left
+alone; the money grubber to gain more shekels, the idler and the
+casual to bore each other with their stupendous, even studied
+indifference to the propinquity of the latest national crisis. Within
+a few days, it may even be within a few hours, our questions with the
+Pretorian Government will have reached their final adjustment or their
+perpetual confusion, and it may be that we shall be at war. It may be
+also, although it be difficult to believe, that a <span class="pagenum"><a id="page13" name="page13"></a>(p. 13)</span> peaceful
+solution will be derived. At this moment the services of such pacific
+measures as can be adopted should be utilised, since if war should
+come within a brief measure the position of the people of this country
+will indeed be grave&mdash;the utter absence of adequate defensive
+measures, the entire lack of efficient military preparations being
+factors which are calculated to incite to rebellion those who incline
+to the Dutch cause, and indeed, most positively, their name is Legion.
+There is, I think, the essence of revolt beneath this heavy and
+depressed condition of the people: it were not possible otherwise, to
+exist within such intimate proximity to a state of war and be unmoved;
+it is not possible either to find other explanation. It may be that in
+their hearts, as in their heads, they are weighing the consequences of
+revolt, succouring one another in their distress of mind and body with
+seditious sympathies, maintaining a spirit of antagonism to the
+Imperial fusion under pretence of the mere expression of a lip
+loyalty. And in their immediate prospect there is everything which may
+be calculated to disturb their equanimity, and to force upon them the
+consciousness of their impotency. It is perhaps this knowledge of
+their actual weakness which subdues them since they cannot afford to
+openly avow feelings which are inimical to us and which would betoken
+their own hostility. Nevertheless, Great Britain can do nothing which
+could encourage these people in their loyalty; nor can they
+themselves, in reality, assist to remove their unfortunate
+predicament, since they must needs sacrifice their possessions to
+substantiate their views, and to do this implies complete
+disintegration of their fortunes. This they will not do; since they
+cannot suffer it. They will remain discontented <span class="pagenum"><a id="page14" name="page14"></a>(p. 14)</span> partisans,
+however; slaves of commerce, restrained by the possibilities of
+further aggrandisement from declaring their mutual connection, and
+manacled by the bonds of free trade and crooked dealings. They will be
+neutral, as indeed the greater proportion of the inhabitants of the
+towns along the coast and within the littoral zone will be, since with
+every feeling of unctuous rectitude in relation to the values of their
+trade, they will leave to the provincial areas, which lie between the
+borders of the Orange Free State and the metropolitan circuits, the
+onus of the situation, the work of supplying active and more potential
+supporters of the Republican arms.</p>
+
+<p>This is the middle of September, and I am assured that the crisis
+should not be expected before the middle of October, inclining to the
+first two weeks of the coming month. If this be possible, and the
+information is difficult to discount, our sin of indifference is the
+greater, our apathy the more criminal. Indeed, everywhere there is
+nothing doing&mdash;God forbid that the steady warlike preparations of the
+Transvaal Government should intimidate us, but let us at least be
+heedful and not over sleepy. If we can gauge the situation by the
+public press of the Empire it is most critical, and the time is rather
+overripe in which we also should indulge in a few military exercises.
+There is a situation to be faced which will tax all the resources of
+the Castle, and strain even the vaunted excellence of the home
+administration&mdash;that army for which Lord Wolseley has claimed such
+splendid mobilisation, such insensate volition. If these fifty
+thousand men were here now the turns of the political wheel would not
+be regarded with such intense apprehension, while in their absence
+there lies perhaps the answer to the rain-drenched <span class="pagenum"><a id="page15" name="page15"></a>(p. 15)</span> dulness of
+the population. The land is naked; from Basutoland to Buluwayo and
+back to Beira, mile upon mile of smiling frontier rests without
+protection of any sort. We are inviting invasion, and it is impossible
+that such a movement will not be attempted. To invade our
+territory&mdash;it will sound so well round the camp fires of the Boer
+laagers&mdash;a mere scamper across the frontier, a pell-mell,
+hell-for-leather retreat to their own lines, and the man&oelig;uvres
+would be executed felicitously and with every sign of success. But
+such a contingency is submerged under an accumulation of theories and
+official explanations each of which deny the possibility of the Boer
+taking upon himself the responsibility of rushing the situation.
+Moreover, it does not seem that the Boers require much instigation to
+attempt such an act. We have laid open our borders to such an
+enterprise, even taking the trouble to leave unguarded many towns
+whose adjacency to the border is singularly perilous. In many cases a
+Boer force need only make a short march to arrive in the very heart of
+some one of these border towns, when, should they appear, the turn of
+affairs could be said to be complex; and some emotions might be felt
+by those worthy and effete military noodles who so persistently shout
+down the "pessimists" who, knowing the country, the ambition and
+resourcefulness of the Boers, persist in declaiming upon the hideous
+neglect which characterises our frontier defences, and strenuously
+assert the probability of Boer invasion into those districts which
+superimpose themselves upon the borders of the Transvaal and Orange
+Free State Republics, and which, possessing values of their own, can
+be held as hostages against the slings and arrows of an outrageous
+fortune elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page16" name="page16"></a>(p. 16)</span> It is the duty of the Crown at the present juncture to bear
+this contingency in mind, to confront it with the determined
+resolution to repair the negligence of the past at once and at all
+costs, and to allow neither the opinion of the Bond Ministry, nor the
+ignorance of the existing military advisers to the Governor, to
+persuade the Executive from adopting the only course which remains to
+us, which is to push men and materials of war to the border with the
+least possible delay. If we do not take these steps now it will be too
+late in a little time, and the course of the war must necessarily be
+the more protracted. There are many who would have us delay lest our
+premature acts should expedite the despatch of the ultimatum, and we
+should lose the opportunity, which the next few days will give to us,
+of receiving delivery of the troops who are already upon the water.
+But the presence of these men means little and forebodes, in reality,
+a slight accentuation of the gravity of the actual situation. It is
+with the forces that we can control at this moment that we must count,
+and it is with them that we must deal. It does not suffice to have
+parade-ground drills in Cape Town as a preliminary flourish; we should
+at least show ourselves as ready as the Boers be willing. This of
+course we cannot do, since, with a handful of exceptions, we have not
+a modern piece of artillery in the country. Moreover we do not quite
+know what armaments the Transvaal Government possess; it is with a
+pretty display of pretence that we conceal the nakedness of our
+borders and bolster up the situation. There is Kimberley,
+Ramathlabama, and Buluwayo&mdash;what <i>is</i> to happen upon the western
+frontier?&mdash;and although it be doubtful if the Boers would pierce the
+Rhodesian border and seize Buluwayo, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page17" name="page17"></a>(p. 17)</span> it is not too much to
+expect that if they should inaugurate any movement into the Colony
+from the Orange Free State, even if their activity only should assume
+the shape of a demonstration against Kimberley, that this southern
+advance would receive sympathetic co-operation from a parallel
+movement in a northerly direction by which they might temporarily
+secure possession of our line of communication and menace Buluwayo by
+encroaching upon Rhodesia.</p>
+
+<p>Then there is the position of Natal, which must be more or less
+hampered by the war in the Transvaal if it does not become actually
+and potentially concerned. That Natal will play an important <i>r�le</i> is
+elaborately evident from the Boer patrols who, even now, are reported
+to be in possession of all strategical points in the mountains, and
+who are also said to be busily engaged in fortifying the rocky
+fastnesses of the Drakensburg Mountains, and to dominate Laing's Nek
+tunnel as well as the line of railway which curvets through the chain,
+by having emplaced some heavy ordnance upon prominent and immediate
+commanding slopes. It would seem as though Natal may play a part, so
+distinctive and so vitally important in its own history as a colonial
+dependency, that the prospect of the war there may become a campaign
+in itself, and one which will be almost detached and isolated from the
+movements in the Orange Free State and Transvaal, where I have reason
+to believe there is some intention of formulating, what may be
+regarded as a dual campaign, which will avoid all invasion of the
+Transvaal territory until the Orange Free State has been completely
+pacified and the lines of communication effectively and securely held.
+In support of this scheme it is generally conceded that it will
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page18" name="page18"></a>(p. 18)</span> be impossible to carry war into the Transvaal until every
+provision has been made against the risk of local rising in the areas
+of the Orange Free State, and thus endangering our lines of
+communication, as well as our flanks.</p>
+
+<p>These, then, are the signs of the day, and in such signs do we read
+something of the terrible struggle upon which we are so soon to be
+engaged, and in appreciation of which, local opinion is in such marked
+contrast&mdash;I almost wrote conflict&mdash;with the opinion and views of the
+special service officers from India and England. To whom, then,
+belongs the honours of accurate estimation; to the man from home as it
+were, or to the man who has passed his life in South Africa and
+understands the Dutchman as the mere military interloper can never
+hope to understand him? There is, I think, no doubt as to what point
+of view be erroneous, and it is because we so persistently ignore the
+worth and reliability of the men who are upon the spot, that we shall
+have the falsity of our intelligence some day brought home to us by
+the tidings of a terrible disaster. South Africa is already the grave
+of too many fine reputations; but let us, at least, hope that we shall
+not add to the disgrace of the private individual any loss of national
+prestige. The wind soughs ominously just now, however, while there is
+a note in it which I do not like, and which I cannot understand. At
+the Castle they talk airily of being home by Christmas! If they be
+sailing within twelve months they will be lucky, and at Government
+House Sir Alfred Milner is beset with the difficulties of his very
+onerous position. For the moment he takes&mdash;I am glad to be able to say
+it, since I would have him upon the side of sound common sense&mdash;a
+somewhat depressed view of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page19" name="page19"></a>(p. 19)</span> the general outlook. Kimberley and
+Ramathlabama were his especial concerns when I called there to-day,
+insomuch that they extend an especial invitation to the mobility of a
+Boer commando, while it is quite beyond his powers to save them from
+their fate. It seemed to me that he despairs of these towns in
+particular, but I will withhold his remarks upon them until I myself
+have been there. Yet it may be taken as granted that, should Sir
+Alfred Milner be concerned for their immediate and eventual safety,
+the gravity of their situation is extreme, pointing even to the
+closeness of the danger which would arise from a Boer invasion into
+those areas.</p>
+
+<p>But in this hurried letter I am dealing with the colony, and
+singularly enough we have to consider how our colonists will behave,
+what may be their attitude, and how near are we to rebellion? It is of
+course an all-important question, and one which, in relation to a
+British colony, is untoward. If I were asked to localise the possible
+area of revolt I should decline, since the question be so serious and
+infringes so much upon the life and existence&mdash;the central forces&mdash;of
+the colony that it would be difficult, definitely and evenly, to
+demarcate any zone of loyalty, as opposed to any area of disaffection,
+without unduly trespassing upon the sentiments of less favoured
+districts. But I do think that the possibilities of this question are
+enormous, emanating as it does from the life teachings and doctrines
+of the people of the country, and however much we try to draw a line
+between what constitutes due loyalty and what infringes the spirit as
+well as the letter of the individual's allegiance, we must
+unconsciously perpetrate much injustice either upon the one or upon
+the other side of the question, which, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page20" name="page20"></a>(p. 20)</span> owing to the dualistic
+temperament and inclinations of no small majority of the people, it is
+impossible to avoid, and which will have to be endured by individuals,
+loyal or disloyal, as their penalty. The spirit of the Dutch pioneers
+still impregnates much of Cape Colony; its presence south of the
+Orange Free State and in the actual territory of the colony receiving
+direct support and sympathy by the increasing numbers of the Dutch
+population in these African Republics; an increase which, being
+unrestricted in its development, has spread far and wide until it has
+created a partial exodus from the recognised centres of Dutch
+influence and Dutch population into those areas from which the traces
+of the earliest Dutch occupation were rapidly vanishing&mdash;if they have
+not altogether disappeared&mdash;and which has been the medium of
+resuscitating a feeling of sympathy and clanship which, augmented by
+still closer ties of commerce, has promoted the functions of matrimony
+and friendship and gradually released a current of feeling throughout
+the district which was avowedly Dutch, and, equally avowedly, in
+silent and semi-subdued opposition to the instincts and ideals of the
+Anglo-Saxon colonist. And it is against the rapid spread of this
+feeling which we have to contend, much as we must guard against the
+conversion of these prejudices into tacit support and effective
+co-operation with the armed burghers of the sister Republics should
+their arms secure any initial successes. With this danger in our
+midst, in itself an almost insurmountable obstacle, no precaution
+which could render the safety of these districts the less precarious
+should be omitted; and to effect this&mdash;and it is quite essential to
+our temporal salvation&mdash;men and materials of war should be in
+readiness to forestall, or, at least, to <span class="pagenum"><a id="page21" name="page21"></a>(p. 21)</span> circumvent, the
+consummation of the Boer operations. If we can accomplish even so
+little, it maybe possible to prevent the no small proportion of the
+colonists discharging their obligations to the Crown by combining with
+the Boer forces. To this end our efforts will have to be seriously
+directed, and the sooner this simple fact is realised by the
+authorities in South Africa as in London, the more convincing will the
+scope and measures of our policy become. At present it is chimerical,
+and we hesitate.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page22" name="page22"></a>(p. 22)</span> CHAPTER III<br>
+<span class="smaller">ON THE ORANGE FREE STATE BORDER</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">The Camp, De Aar</span>,<br>
+  <i>September 23rd, 1899</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Africa was streaming past the dusty windows of the railway carriage,
+presenting an endless spectacle of flat, depressed-looking country,
+with here and there a hut, here and there a native. I am in the
+earliest stages of a journey which should lead to Ramathlabama, and
+the command of Colonel Baden-Powell. Slowly and with much effort the
+train drags itself along; the road is steep, the carriages hot and
+uncomfortable, and there is nothing to attract attention, nothing to
+fill the emptiness of the mind. I slept at intervals, to awaken at
+some roadside station where fussy people were struggling to eat too
+much in too short a space of time. There, for a moment, was the
+scamper of bustling, hurrying passengers, who pushed and menaced one
+another in a thirsty rush to the refreshment room; with a cloud of
+officers, orderlies, and troopers I stood apart, listless, bored, and
+travel-stained, feebly interested, more feebly talking in disconnected
+phrases, until, with shrill blasts of his whistle, the guard signalled
+the departure of the train. Then <span class="pagenum"><a id="page23" name="page23"></a>(p. 23)</span> off again, the jerking,
+swaying flight of eighteen miles an hour&mdash;the rumbling monotony of
+express speed which was conducive to drowsiness and nothing more. The
+landscape faded in the distance, a raucous voice sang of 'Ome, while,
+in a monotonous buzz of nothingness, I slept again.</p>
+
+<p>The train was slowly thrusting itself forward as, with much panting
+and purring and some screaming, it cut the borders of the Great Karoo.
+Slowly the wheels clenched the metals as the waggons rocked in a
+lullaby of motion, and the passengers were fanned with draughts of
+scented air. The Great Karoo, lying in the shades of evening,
+hearkening to the secret calling of mysterious voices, heeding not the
+ravages of time, wearing majestically the massive dignity of its
+grandeur, threw back its barriers of resistance to our intrusion and
+delighting our senses with ever-changing and oft-recurring glimpses of
+its beauty. But the picture faded with the passing of the train, the
+golden and crimson delights of the overgrowing flowers gave place to a
+soulless expanse destitute of beauty.</p>
+
+<p>I stopped at De Aar, which is the junction where the Orange Free State
+and Transvaal lines connect with the Cape Colony system. At De Aar I
+was anxious to observe the press of traffic. From Cape Town for
+Kimberley, Borderside, Fourteen Streams, and Mafeking, truck loads of
+horses and mules, waggon loads of general military stores were passing
+northwards to the front. In the interval, there were Imperial troops
+and men of the Cape Mounted Police. Indeed, the scene upon the
+platform was animated by martial spirit. If the train from the south
+was loaded with war material, the trains from the two Republics were
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page24" name="page24"></a>(p. 24)</span> packed with fugitives, among whom were many men who, in the
+hour of necessity, will, it is to be hoped, consider flight as the
+least satisfactory means of procedure. However, no goods are going
+through to the two Republics from Cape Colony, unless Mr. Schreiner
+has passed more ammunition over the Cape lines to the Transvaal. But
+things are working more satisfactorily down in Cape Town since it
+became known that the Cabinet would be discharged by the Governor,
+unless&mdash;&mdash;and to a discerning politician of the Bond, whose income
+depends upon his salary from the House, a blank conveys many wholesome
+home truths.</p>
+
+<p>Travelling, even with the variety of emotion which the Karoo excites,
+is no great comfort in South Africa. One lives in an atmosphere of
+dust and Keating's. If the trains go no faster to Cairo when the rails
+be through, than they do to Buluwayo, the steamers will still retain
+the monopoly of passenger traffic. It takes a "week of Sundays" to
+reach railhead at Buluwayo, but there is some small consideration in
+the fact that such a journey has been made. It will become a feature
+in our Sabbatarian domesticity some day, and among railway journeys at
+the present time it is unique. Where else do express trains arrive
+several hours in advance of their scheduled time? Where else do goods
+trains arrive several days late? These are but the manifold and
+maddening perplexities of railway travelling in Africa. Yet if one
+kicks against the uncertainties of the desert service, there is sure
+to be an Eliphaz somewhere upon the train, whose philosophy being
+greater than his hurry, recognises that the element of expedition,
+when his train does arrive, is greater <span class="pagenum"><a id="page25" name="page25"></a>(p. 25)</span> than the prospect of
+moving at all where no train comes. Time passes somehow on these
+journeys, and the chance prospect of obtaining a good meal, when one
+is dead certain to get a bad one, is enlivening. If it were not for
+such trifles, the journey would have no interest. To look forward to
+luncheon and an afternoon nap, to anticipate dinner and then digest
+it, makes the day run with pleasant monotony into the night. And night
+is worth the inspection. The beds in the train are comfortable enough,
+but the night is vested with misty beauty, and its fascination woos
+the traveller from his rest. There is the roar of the engine, the
+rumble of the carriages, the buzz of insects, and the faint rustle of
+the night wind over the plains. Then, looking into the night, one
+falls asleep, tired and stunned by the spectacle of the never-ending
+desert. But, in the morning there comes a change. The stretches of the
+Karoo are past, and breakfast at De Aar is in sight.</p>
+
+<p>At De Aar&mdash;a sea of tents with here and there a man&mdash;there begins the
+outward and visible signs of preparation against the necessities of
+the coming struggle. There are men and arms at De Aar and munitions of
+war, comprising the Yorkshire regiment, a wing of the King's Own Light
+Infantry under Major Hunt, and a section of the Seventh Field Company
+of Engineers under Lieutenant Wilson; but their numbers are
+impossible, much as their supplies be limited and seriously
+insufficient; and, as a consequence, I must not talk much about the
+interior linings of the British camp which has sprung up at De Aar,
+and which, within a few days of what must be the turning point of the
+present crisis, is so little able to cope with the exigencies of the
+situation. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page26" name="page26"></a>(p. 26)</span> It is a protective measure, this little camp at
+the junction of the divergence in the railway system of the colony,
+placed in its present situation to guarantee the safety of the
+permanent way, and to ensure a modicum of safety to the traffic which
+is crowding north over the points at the meeting of the rails. It is a
+gorgeous piece of impudence; this minute establishment of British
+soldiers, and if it be impressed with the might and majesty of our
+Imperial Empire, it is also beset with the innumerable difficulties
+and trials which attend an isolated State.</p>
+
+<p>We are guarding the lines of communication between De Aar Junction and
+Norvals Pont, the bridge across the Orange River which unites the
+territory of the Orange Free State with the land of the Colony,
+between De Aar and the Camp at Orange River, between De Aar and many
+miles to the south in the direction of Cape Town. I believe that the
+practical influence of this particular unit extends so far south as
+Beaufort West, where the custody and patrol of the line is handed over
+to the care of the railway authorities, whose men are detailed to the
+all-important duty of guarding the culverts and bridges of the system.
+The greatest menace to our weakness in the present situation springs
+from the vast lines of communication over which we must watch and
+which, although lying well within our own borders, are endangered
+through the contributary sympathy of the Dutch who, resident and
+settled within our own Colony, and boasting some sort of idle
+observance of the obligations entailed upon them by such residence,
+have seldom by word, and not at all in spirit, forsworn their entire
+and cheerful assistance to the cause of the Transvaal. In any other
+campaign these fatigues <span class="pagenum"><a id="page27" name="page27"></a>(p. 27)</span> would be unnecessary, and the
+services of the innumerable small detachments delegated to the duty
+would be released for more active work, but with this war the safe
+maintenance of our lines of communication will become a problem of
+most vital concern, and will be necessarily imbued with absorbing
+interest. Moreover, whatever the nature of the scheme for efficiently
+guarding these lines may be, due attention must be paid and every
+consideration given to the superior mobility of the Boer forces to
+that of our own troops, an advantage which will increase their
+facilities and chances of success should they exert themselves to
+harass any particular section of our inordinately long lines of
+communication.</p>
+
+<p>With the formation of a camp at De Aar, the trend which our campaign
+may assume becomes more definite. De Aar is but a little removed from
+Norvals Pont, an important bridge into the Orange Free State, which it
+is proposed to protect from the immediate base of the troops at De
+Aar, or to hold altogether from an ultimate base in the same direction
+at Colesberg. I propose to visit there before the next mail departs,
+since it be rumoured here that the town of Colesberg has been left
+entirely undefended by the military authorities, and that the end of
+the bridge, remote from this border and within the limits of the
+Orange Free State, is in the hands of an armed patrol from that
+Republic. When these things happen, and De Aar becomes the centre of a
+big base camp, the position will constitute another link in the chain
+of towns which are to be occupied by the Imperial forces along the
+western and southern borders of the Orange Free State, and whose
+occupation, should the troops arrive in time thus to execute the
+initiative, indicates our probable line of advance to be from a
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page28" name="page28"></a>(p. 28)</span> number of points, so that General Joubert will be unable to
+concentrate his troops before any one force. Upon our side, also,
+those frontier detachments that may be in occupation of the towns,
+will harass Transvaal and Free State borderside, suppress any rising
+within our own border areas, and be entirely subsidiary to the main
+columns, which will be simultaneously thrown forward from these three
+or four special points on the same extreme line of progression.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, this plan of operations accentuates the detached and
+especial character of the Natal Field Force, restraining them to
+service in that colony, and restricting their activities to that
+sphere. These troops will occupy Laing's Nek, the ten thousand men
+already assembled in that Colony being reinforced before hostilities
+are declared, until the Field Service footing of the Natal Field Force
+will equal that of an army corps. The critical points in the present
+situation are the western and eastern borders of the Transvaal, where
+the young bloods from the backwoods are mostly gathered, and in their
+present state eminently calculated to force the hand of Oom Paul into
+an impromptu declaration of belligerency. The movements of the Natal
+forces will be confined for the moment to holding Laing's Nek,
+maintaining communication with the permanent base at Ladysmith and
+Pietermaritzburg, and in occupying Dundee, Colenso, and all such towns
+as fall within the limits of its exterior lines.</p>
+
+<p>From De Aar a division will support the left flank of the advance of
+the First Army Corps, divided, for purposes of more speedy
+concentration upon its ultimate base, into two divisions, which will
+reunite at Burghersdorp, <i>vi�</i> the railways, to Middelburg and
+Stormberg Junction from their immediate bases of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page29" name="page29"></a>(p. 29)</span>
+disembarkation at Port Elizabeth and East London. The total force will
+then advance in exterior lines upon the Orange Free State, maintaining
+the railway system upon their individual western flanks, so far as
+possible, as their individual lines of communication.</p>
+
+<p>While the Second Army Corps supports the situation in Natal, it is
+hoped that our forces in the Orange Free State border will either
+crush or drive the Boers back upon their ulterior lines towards
+Bloemfontein, which, with the assistance of the De Aar flanking column
+traversing the watershed of the Modder River in the direction of
+Kimberley, and in possible co-operation with a force from that base,
+they should be in a position to occupy. The capital will be held by
+the De Aar and Kimberley divisions, upon whom will then fall the work
+of protecting the lines of communication of the Southern Army Corps as
+it advances.</p>
+
+<p>After supporting De Aar, Kimberley, and the lines of communication
+with defensive units, and maintaining a western column by employing
+the service of the Mafeking force, the First Army Corps will begin the
+move upon Pretoria, in collaboration with the Second (Natal) Army
+Corps, the former once again advancing in twin columns from a mutual
+base. The western border will probably be held from Kimberley to Fort
+Tuli by the forces composing the western column, while a flying column
+is to be in readiness lest a wider area be given to the theatre of
+war, and it become necessary to cross the Limpopo River. It would
+appear, too, that there is also some possibility of a column moving
+from Delagoa Bay. By this advance Pretoria becomes the objective of
+the campaign after the occupation of the Orange Free State, but this
+depends to a great extent upon <span class="pagenum"><a id="page30" name="page30"></a>(p. 30)</span> the policy pursued by General
+Joubert and the nature of the Natal operations. If the Boers give way
+and, acting upon interior lines, fall back upon Pretoria, as General
+Jackson fell back upon Richmond in 1864-1865, the Transvaal capital
+will at once become the objective of the British forces advancing upon
+exterior lines, the object of the campaign, once the Transvaal has
+been invaded, being to force a battle upon the combined forces of the
+Boers or to beset Pretoria. It will thus be seen that the theory of
+the British advance favours the concentration of troops upon the
+Transvaal and Orange Free State frontiers so that the Boer forces may
+be dislocated, retaining the railways and their lines of communication
+and, leaving the actual protection and pacification of the frontier to
+the local mounted police and to the special service corps assisted by
+a few detachments of Imperial troops, while no progressive movement
+will be made from any one point until the exterior line, upon which
+the entire advance will be conducted, has been thoroughly established.
+For the nonce extraordinary precautions are being taken to conceal the
+movements of troops, and I have withheld from publication at this
+moment much which could be given in support of the lines by which I
+have suggested our advance will be governed. This plan of campaign
+reads very prettily, but it seems to me, that we are making no
+allowances for possible disasters, for possible defeats, for
+unavoidable delays, which, should they occur, will hamper the mobility
+of our advance and restrict the celerity of our movements to a great
+and most serious extent. Despite the fact that the massing of troops
+at the selected points between De Aar and Mafeking, between Cape Town,
+Port Elizabeth, East London, and the ultimate and interested bases
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page31" name="page31"></a>(p. 31)</span> will proceed almost immediately, the successful evolution of
+our plans, the wisdom or foolishness of which are so soon to be put to
+the test, demands much greater forces than are calculated to be
+available during the next few weeks. At present, and until the latter
+days of October, the combined strengths of the Regular and Irregular
+forces in South Africa will not equal twenty thousand men, and yet we
+are dabbling with and making preparations against a plan of campaign
+which requisitions two Army Corps at least, and will probably require
+the services of not less than one hundred thousand men. I dread to
+think of what may happen if war should come within a few days, but we
+can do nothing but face what is a most intolerable position, and one
+which most easily might have been avoided. The outlook in the absence
+of efficient men and stores is indeed disheartening.</p>
+
+<p>Since I arrived upon the Orange Free State border I have omitted no
+opportunity to discuss with the Boers the question of the war. A
+friendly Boer, hailing from Utrecht, suggested the probable direction
+which the Boer plans, so far as they concerned Natal, might assume,
+and while they appear to be feasible, they reveal how curiously
+predominant among them is the idea that their arms will again defeat
+the British troops. The Transvaal Boers from Vryheid and Utrecht
+propose to attempt raids upon Natal and Zululand as the preliminaries
+to a rush upon Maritzburg and the southern district of Natal, by
+Weenen and Umvoti; Orange Free State Boers from the border areas will
+harass our soldiers as they move towards Laing's Nek, and, thus
+drawing the attention of the British troops, the road will be clear
+for those marching south on their attack upon <span class="pagenum"><a id="page32" name="page32"></a>(p. 32)</span> the capital of
+Natal. All approaches to Laing's Nek upon the Dutch side of the
+border, already alien, have been fortified, fourteen guns being
+actually in position at the more important points. The British troops
+soon after leaving Ladysmith will have the Transvaal Boers on one
+side, the Free State Boers upon the other, and long before the
+Imperial troops can occupy the extreme border a commando of Boers from
+Wakkerstroom will have concentrated upon it. In the opinion of the
+Boers the effective occupation of Laing's Nek by either force will
+decide the war. The Boers all seem convinced that they can sweep the
+British forces from South Africa. The procedure of a campaign which
+finds much favour in their eyes includes the rising of the Swazis, the
+Zulus and the Basutos, who will be permitted to devastate Natal and as
+much of the south as they can penetrate, and whom they claim will be
+easily stirred against the Rooineks. The Boers will then feint with a
+small force upon the centre of our military occupation, while their
+entire army marches down upon Port Elizabeth, East London, or Cape
+Town, or proceeds by railway if they can secure the lines. They will
+hold open no lines of communication, because by that time Imperial
+arms will have been defeated, and it will only remain for President
+Kruger to dictate peace from Cape Town.</p>
+
+<p>This is actually the opinion of a Boer who administers for the
+Transvaal Government an important district, and who is under orders to
+proceed to the Natal border without loss of time. Surely he must be
+consumed with delusion and impotent fanaticism; nevertheless, educated
+Boers from the border side and living in the Cape Colony, who have
+come to the camp to invite the officers to a cricket match or some
+buck <span class="pagenum"><a id="page33" name="page33"></a>(p. 33)</span> shooting, have all expressed this view. At present I
+have not met the Boer who can conceive the defeat of his own
+countrymen, while both Imperial and Republican Governments count upon
+the assistance of the natives. Upon the other hand, however, I am
+informed that there are many Boers who do not wish to fight, since
+they recognise the futility of any effort which they can direct
+against British troops; but, at the same time, should they be called
+out upon commando, there is no fear of their declining to obey, while,
+so far as my inquiries go, they have failed to elicit anything which
+would show the Boers to be moved by any view so eminently sound as
+this would be.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page34" name="page34"></a>(p. 34)</span> CHAPTER IV<br>
+<span class="smaller">BRICKS OF STRAW</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">The Camp, Orange River</span>,<br>
+  <i>September 26th, 1899</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Soldiers and sand&mdash;clouds of sand whirring and eddying through the
+air, drifting through closed windows, piling in swift-mounting heaps
+against barred doors. That is the camp here, stretching upon both
+sides of the railway line in orderly rows, flanked upon either
+extremity by a ragged outspan of waggons, empty to-day but soon
+creating work for numerous fatigue parties when the orders come to
+push forward the supplies. At present it is only a small cluster of
+tents, many more tents than men&mdash;this to confuse the friendly Boers
+who, visiting the railway station refreshment bar for the purposes of
+espionage, stop to drink in an effort to gauge the strength of the
+camp by counting the ranks of dirty white tents which flap and quiver
+in the breezes. Such an impossible little camp, but so impressed with
+the true spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Kincaid, R.E., commands at Orange River, and his force
+comprises a few companies of the Loyal Lancashire Regiment, a troop or
+two of the Cape Police District II., sections of the Field Company of
+Engineers, a composite field battery and a few stores&mdash;but <span class="pagenum"><a id="page35" name="page35"></a>(p. 35)</span> a
+general numerical insufficiency of men and munitions. Major Jackson,
+with Major Coleridge, commands the companies of the Loyal Lancashires
+that were detailed with him from Kimberley, where his regiment lies,
+for duty at this camp. Surgeon-Major O'Shanahan takes care of the
+field hospital which has been attached to the camp, and Captain Mills,
+R.A., controls the artillery. It is a happy family, this British camp
+in which the necessity for hard work is understood and the members of
+whose circle willingly endure the difficulties and privations of their
+situation. From the ends of the earth they have come together to be
+dumped down upon the Orange River flats, where for many days they will
+remain an important unit in the scheme of preparation, but one which
+stands alone and aside from the general hurry and scurry of our
+belated movements. There is a bridge across the Orange River at this
+point, and it is the duty of protecting it and guaranteeing it from
+the attentions of the Boers, guarding its approaches by cunningly
+contrived gun emplacements and enveloping its definite security in a
+network of defensive measures, which is, for the time, the sole
+objective of the various officers and detachments that compose Colonel
+Kincaid's command.</p>
+
+<p>The conformation of the country abutting upon Orange River presents
+those composite peculiarities of construction which contribute more
+generally to the setting of the high veldt. Orange River is broken by
+hills and river-beds, dry courses with rock-strewn banks, patches of
+sand, sparsely grassed and destitute of bushes. The land to the west
+rolls smoothly to the watershed of the river, breaking into bush and
+short rises about the banks of the stream. The <span class="pagenum"><a id="page36" name="page36"></a>(p. 36)</span> water clatters
+among stones and rocks to the north-west, leaving to the south-west
+and due west the same barren open sand flats. Upon the east there is a
+slight contrast to the evenness of the pastureless country which meets
+the sunset; but the fall of the land due south, south-east,
+south-west, is unchanging, the compass shifting due east and
+north-east before the abrupt and rugged lines of the country are
+exposed. Then, and then only, does the face of the country reveal its
+uncouth and uncomfortable character. East, whence the waters stream
+beneath the railway bridge, the watershed is herring-backed,
+concealing, beneath rough folds of rising ground, stretches of bush
+veldt and stony patches. High ridges debouch at right angles to the
+stream, with uncertain contours and abrupt declivities; detached
+kopjes rise from upon the face of the country, claiming classification
+with the ages around them, but standing aloof with forbidding mien&mdash;a
+formidable menace to the chance of successful storming. Parallel hills
+and ridges distinguish the hinterland of this watershed so far inland
+as the areas of the Orange Free State, while the broken and dangerous
+character of the country east-north-east, continuing until the
+watershed of the Modder River, still further prolongates these
+disturbing features. The valley of the river, within a mile from the
+stretch of flats which rolls away from the bases of the hills,
+converges until the sides lie within a few hundred yards of each
+other. There the stream rushes and roars with some force, until the
+wider reaches of the plain give to the pent-up waters a greater space
+of revolt. From the mouth of the valley the river wanders with easy
+indifference across a broader course to the west; gathering its volume
+from the seasons, and leaving <span class="pagenum"><a id="page37" name="page37"></a>(p. 37)</span> in the hot weather a margin of
+shining stones upon both sides of the river bed. The hills are in
+pleasant contrast to the even tenour of the veldt, and the cool waters
+of the river invite repose. Small game lurk within the cover of the
+scrub, mountain duck haunt the mountain cataract; cattle roam across
+the land, snatching mouthfuls of dry herbage, while just now the sides
+of the hills throw back the echo of the military occupation, the
+noises of the camp, the calls of the horses upon the picket lines, the
+heavy thudding of the picks, the shrill rasping of the shovels in the
+places where the men are throwing up the necessary field works.</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere is the spectacle of orderly bustle. The summits of the
+hills are crowned with earthworks, brown lines of trenches traverse
+the valley, block houses command the entrances of the bridge. These
+are the signs of the times, encompassed in an unremitting rapidity of
+execution. Colonel Kincaid rides from point to point, throwing advice
+here, praise there, and expressing general satisfaction over the
+labours of his men, as the scheme of defences runs to its conclusion.
+Out across the plain, upon Reservoir Hill, the sappers are
+constructing an entrenched position under the direction of Captain
+Mills, R.A., and especially designed to protect the water supply.
+Roads have been cut across the rear face of the hill, a breastwork of
+stones and earth encircles the Reservoir, and gun emplacements flank
+either extremity. It is a pretty work, carefully conceived, skilfully
+constructed, commanding the portion of the camp, and sweeping the
+approaches to the bridge. From the top of Reservoir Hill, no great
+eminence, the surrounding country is easily inspected, and the more
+one scans and studies the peculiarities of its <span class="pagenum"><a id="page38" name="page38"></a>(p. 38)</span> formation, the
+more one becomes impressed with the fact that it presents the gravest
+obstacles to the British principles of military operations. A
+well-equipped and mobile force will hold the hills for eternity&mdash;but
+God help the troops who are launched against these awful kopjes which
+create the strength of such positions. The officers commanding these
+detached units along this border have received instructions to prepare
+extensive lines of fortifications round their bases, and at De Aar, as
+at Orange River and elsewhere, these commands have been complied with,
+until now the positions need only the service of some good artillery
+to be made impregnable. When cables be at the disposal of a possible
+enemy, it is as well to be reticent upon the cardinal weaknesses
+within our lines, but already there are signs of the extreme haste
+with which the troops have been despatched to the front. No unit would
+appear to be complete, despite the months of warning in which there
+has been ample opportunity to prepare. Everything is rushed through at
+the last, and although urgent orders be issued to make ready against
+attack, no artillery is available for the purpose. Everything is
+obscured in idle talk or deferred by empty promise, and the
+authorities appear to be continuing a policy which gives to the Boers
+some justification of their hopes of success. The Imperial
+authorities, in relying so much upon the moral effect of their
+artillery, appear to forget that the better it is, the more important
+the results it achieves; the more important the position to be
+defended, the better it should be. The Boers lose nothing by
+possessing modern weapons of defence. But with a wing only of the
+King's Own Light Infantry to occupy De Aar, and four companies of the
+Loyal Lancashires <span class="pagenum"><a id="page39" name="page39"></a>(p. 39)</span> to hold Orange River, the need of strong
+artillery support is manifest. It has been laid down that the
+proportion of guns to men is as near as possible three guns to one
+thousand men, but this proportion must depend upon the nature of the
+service upon which the force is to be employed, the topography of the
+theatre of war and the quality of the troops. A force intended more
+for the occupation of strong positions, must have a larger proportion
+of guns than an army intended for offensive operations in the field.
+De Aar, as one base of operations toward the lines of least resistance
+to the western, southern, and south-eastern approaches to the Orange
+Free State, is even more important than our position at Orange River,
+which is intended, in the event of any campaign, to protect the
+railway bridge and the lines of communication with the north. But at
+De Aar the lines of railway, which converge upon it, link Pretoria and
+Bloemfontein to Cape Town, connect the north with the south, join Cape
+Town with the south and south-east by a stretch of line almost
+parallel with the southern border of the Orange Free State. Yet, so
+dilatory have been the efforts of headquarters to obtain the necessary
+artillery, that, having reduced South Africa to a condition of war,
+they split up between De Aar, Orange River, and other defenceless, but
+important, strategic positions along the western border, improvised
+field batteries drawn from any garrison lumber room which came handy.</p>
+
+<p>The artillery at present upon this border is, as a consequence, the
+seven-pound muzzle-loader which was obsolete when the passing
+generation of officers were at the "shop." The inadequacy of the
+artillery is a matter of the gravest concern, since, even if the
+troops at these places be sufficient to police the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page40" name="page40"></a>(p. 40)</span>
+disaffected areas, and to hold in check the local disposition to
+rebel, in face of the weapons of precision with which the Boer forces
+be armed, it would be impossible, should they move forward, for the
+British artillery to maintain any position which was incumbent upon
+the possession of good artillery. So well is this realised by our
+Intelligence Department, that elaborate precautions are taken by that
+Bureau, as well as all commanding officers, to prevent the enemy from
+discovering that, in its main part, the strength of the batteries in
+opposition has been drawn from derelicts in the garrison stores. These
+improvised field batteries might be of service in maintaining the line
+of communication if any advance of British troops be made, but as an
+actual factor in any defensive or offensive movements which the forces
+may undertake, their restricted utility escapes all serious
+consideration, and puts our present artillery almost at once out of
+action. The physical configuration of the country urgently calls for
+the immediate despatch of modern weapons, similar to those which the
+Sirdar used in his Soudan campaign. In addition to this an exchange,
+piece by piece, between these seven-pounder muzzle-loading
+monstrosities and the converted twelve-pounders, breech-loaders and
+high-velocity quick firers, might be seasonably effected. Five-inch
+howitzers, too, should also be sent forward. But the lack of reliable
+artillery is scandalous, and the sooner that guns, of a calibre which
+is in a true proportion to the importance of the positions which they
+will command, arrive upon the scene, the less uncertain will be the
+results of any actual contact between our forces in their present
+deplorable condition and those of the African Republics with whom we
+are so soon to be at war.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page41" name="page41"></a>(p. 41)</span> CHAPTER V<br>
+<span class="smaller">DIAMONDS AND WHITE FEATHERS</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">The Camp, Kimberley</span>,<br>
+  <i>September 28th, 1899</i>.</p>
+
+<p>This usually dull and dirty mining station has now been occupied by a
+small detachment of British troops. The force arrived here from the
+camp at Orange River within the week, and include the 1st Loyal North
+Lancashire, with its usual complement of machine guns, No. 1 Section
+of the 7th Field Company of Royal Engineers, 23rd Company of Garrison
+Artillery with 2�5 seven-pound muzzle-loaders on mountain carriages
+(which are almost useless and certainly obsolete weapons), an
+organised Army Medical Staff, and a transport most indifferently
+equipped if it be intended for immediate and prolonged field service.
+Yet it is claimed that nothing has been omitted which could make this
+force an imposing factor in the chance of attack to which, from its
+exposed situation, the hapless Kimberley is threatened. The Loyal
+Lancashire Regiment is in full strength, but the battalions have been
+divided between the positions here and the camp just south of the
+Orange River. It is, of course, doubtful whether much be gained by
+splitting up our forces <span class="pagenum"><a id="page42" name="page42"></a>(p. 42)</span> along the border into small units,
+but at the present juncture, when so few troops be in the colony, this
+policy is receiving its own justification. We are all urgently hoping
+for the arrival of troops, since if there were a general advance of
+the Dutch troops, a contingency not by any means altogether remote,
+upon any one of these well-defined but indifferently manned places,
+the task of maintaining the advanced lines would be a severe strain
+upon the efforts of the very limited number of men that are available
+at each point. It is surely only within the limits of the British
+Empire that a frontier line over 1,500 miles in extent would be kept
+absolutely without any defensive measures; while it is Boer activity
+during the past few weeks that has induced the Colonial authorities to
+adopt their present precautions. Our troops are now more or less
+efficiently prepared at certain points along this Western boundary,
+and, if no order has yet come for their mobilisation, the steps
+necessary to effect it have all been completed. At Kimberley, in the
+few days which have elapsed, wonders in the preparation of the town's
+defences have been worked, and the alarm which caused so much panic
+there before the arrival of the soldiers has now, in part, subsided.</p>
+
+<p>For many hours before the arrival of the troops at Kimberley crowds of
+interested spectators besieged the railway station and thronged the
+dusty thoroughfares of the town. The Imperial men detrained very
+smartly to the sound of the bugle, off-loading the guns and ammunition
+to the plaudits and delights of an admiring crowd. The actual
+detraining took place at the Beaconsfield siding, two miles from
+Kimberley, the men not making their camp in the town until the next
+morning. For the time the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page43" name="page43"></a>(p. 43)</span> transport was stored in the goods
+sheds, and the troops arranged to bivouac beside the railway. The
+traffic manager had prepared fires and boiling water before the men
+came, so that soon after their arrival they were all served with
+dinner. The detailing of guards, posting of sentries, and other
+evolutions incidental to open camp, permitted Kimberley to indulge its
+taste for military pomp and vanities. Imperial troops have not been
+here since two squadrons of the 11th Hussars passed through from
+Mashonaland in November, 1890, and the presence of the troops has
+inspired the townfolk with a magnificent appreciation of the gallant
+men who have come up for their protection. It is hoped that special
+means will be taken to interest the troops in the few hours which they
+have free from work. At present all attention is being devoted to the
+construction of the defences of the town, to the formation of adequate
+volunteer assistance, to the arrangement of a complete system of alarm
+and rallying spots. Lieut.-Colonel Kekewich, in command of the
+Imperial camp here, is anxious to assist the people in rifle practice
+and field-firing; while the Diamond Fields Artillery and the De Beers
+Artillery are to be called out for temporary service in conjunction
+with the Imperial Artillery.</p>
+
+<p>The rumour that a Boer force is within the vicinity of Kimberley has
+done much to assist in the speedy formation of local forces, and now
+that the train mules and private bullock teams have been requisitioned
+for the Imperial service, there is much solemn speculation upon the
+date of hostilities. The fact is that no one here can, with any
+certainty, predict an hour. A shot anywhere will set the borderside
+aflame. Moreover, the Boers are daily growing more <span class="pagenum"><a id="page44" name="page44"></a>(p. 44)</span> impudent.
+At Borderside, where the frontiers are barely eighty yards apart, a
+field cornet and his men, who are patrolling their side of the line,
+greet the pickets of the Cape Police who are stationed there with
+exulting menaces and much display of rifles. But if the Dutch be
+thirsting in this fashion for our blood, people at home can rest
+confident in the fact that there will be no holding back upon the part
+of our men once the fun begins. Seldom has such a determined and
+ferocious spirit animated any British force as that one which is now
+stimulating the troops in South Africa. Every man is sick of the
+Cabinet's delay, but they find consolation in the fact that the slow
+movement of the Ministerial machine is undertaken to avoid any
+precipitation of the crisis before the forces to be engaged have
+arrived upon the scene. Then it is every man's ambition to take his
+own share in "whopping" Kruger.</p>
+
+<p>I did not hurry to leave Kimberley; but the place where the diamonds
+come from, the least admirable of any town on earth, is no longer
+essential to my existence. It has neither charm nor elegance, and it
+is sufficiently irregular in its construction to be the most barbarous
+example of architecture in South Africa. It greets the traveller
+enveloped in the haze of heat, and it bids him farewell through a
+cloud of sand. But if one has once imagined what the appearance of the
+mining town may be, let him give it a wide berth. It is a conglomerate
+jumble of tin houses with dusty streets dedicated to modern industry,
+and palpitating with the mere mechanical energy of native labour.</p>
+
+<a id="img002" name="img002"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img002.jpg" width="500" height="349" alt="" title="">
+<p class="smcap">MAJOR LORD EDWARD CECIL, C.S.O.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Kimberley, however, was a convenient immediate base between Orange
+River and Mafeking. Around these two places rumour was spreading a
+well-woven <span class="pagenum"><a id="page45" name="page45"></a>(p. 45)</span> net of probabilities, intimate yet inherently
+impossible. War, bloody and fierce, was alternately looming large in
+the horizon just above their situations, so for the moment I tarried,
+watching the approach of impending battle from afar off. It was a fine
+feeling, the constant thrill caused by the mere vividness of martial
+rumours. They came from Buluwayo in the North, they came from Cape
+Town in the South, they were brought daily from Bloemfontein; and if
+they gave infinite zest to the passing hours, it was but the
+happenings of the hour that they were doomed to be misbelieved. To
+listen to the gossip and rumours of Headquarters at once became the
+most serious interest which our life contained just now. Spies are
+seen everywhere. Within the shade of every shadow there is said to
+lurk a Boer secret service agent, and, as a consequence, the attitude
+of the public is one in which each figuratively lays a grimy finger to
+his nose and breathes blasphemies in whispers to his confiding friend.
+The spy mania which swept through France but a few weeks ago has
+appeared here, endowed with magnificent vitality. At Mafeking it has
+dominated both the military and the public, and, as an illustration, I
+append the official notice, on page 46, in which many of these gentry
+are warned from the town by Lord Edward Cecil, Chief Staff Officer to
+Colonel Baden-Powell.</p>
+
+<div class="quote" style="width: 50%; margin-left: 25%;">
+
+<a id="img003" name="img003"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img003.jpg" width="150" height="152" alt="Decoration." title="">
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">NOTICE.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr10">
+<p class="center"><b>SPIES</b></p>
+<hr class="hr10">
+
+<p class="center">There are in town to-day nine<br>
+  known spies. They are hereby<br>
+  warned to leave before 12 noon to-morrow<br>
+  or they will be apprehended.</p>
+
+<p>By order,</p>
+<p class="signat">E. H. CECIL, Major,<br>
+  C.S.O.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">Mafeking,</p>
+
+<p>7th Oct., 1899.</p>
+
+<p class="center smaller">THE NOTICE TO SPIES ISSUED BY COL. BADEN-POWELL.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Kimberley has not yet gone so far as this notice, but a similar step
+is in serious consideration, and the notice will soon be promulgated.
+What with spies, war scares, reports of Boer invasion, and of active
+hostilities having commenced, the Western border is living in a seethe
+of excitement, and appreciating the crisis with but doubtful
+enjoyment, and many signs of such indisputable terror. Kimberley has
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page47" name="page47"></a>(p. 47)</span> called forth its volunteers, who in name are glorious, but
+in utility uncertain. The Town Guard, after fortifying itself with
+much Dutch courage, has taken unto itself a weapon of precision of
+which it knows nothing. Infantry and musketry drill have not existed
+for the town of diamonds; they are for the Cape Police, for the
+Mounted Rifles, for Imperial troops; but for those who are regular in
+their mining, but irregular in their drill, there is none of it. These
+heroes shake with terror in private, but they gnash their teeth with
+impotent valour in public; at heart they are rank cowards, for the
+most part leaving to the few decently spirited the duties of volunteer
+defence, and to the soldiery and constabulary the rigours of the
+coming battle.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing perhaps has been so discreditable as the hurried flight of men
+from these towns which are within the area of possible hostilities. It
+is perhaps different where they belong to the Transvaal, but one would
+expect Englishmen, who have seen their womenfolk to places of
+security, to proffer such service as could be turned to account in
+these hours of emergency. It is an unpleasant fact to reflect upon
+that the leaders of the general panic and consequent exodus from these
+towns are mostly Britishers. From sheer force of numbers the
+white-feathered brigade merits solicitous contempt.</p>
+
+<p>Such is Kimberley in the passing hour, and as I waited there to see
+whether the rumours would crystallise into actualities, the word was
+passed round that three commandos of the Boers were concentrating upon
+Mafeking. Heavens! how the specials skittled! By horse and on foot, by
+cab and cart, they dashed to the station. Lord! and the train had gone
+some hours! But, with the instinct of true <span class="pagenum"><a id="page48" name="page48"></a>(p. 48)</span> war-dogs, they
+fled in special expresses to the scene where attack was threatened.
+They might have crawled from Kimberley to Mafeking on hands and knees,
+for Boers may camp and Boers may trek, but war is still afar off. Had
+we not travelled in such haste, the journey might have proved of
+interest, but impatience made the time speed quickly, and the frontier
+posts upon the road went by unnoticed. Just now these frontier
+stations are of public interest. At Fourteen Streams, at Borderside,
+at Vryburg, Boer commandos have laagered within a few yards of the
+frontier fence, and since human nature is ever prone to politeness, it
+has become the daily fashion for Boer and Britisher to swear at one
+another across the intervening wires. John Bosman, a Borderside
+notoriety, implicated in a late rising of the natives against Imperial
+authority, is in command of one hundred and fifty "cherubs," as the
+Boer captain dubs his gallant band. Matutinal and nocturnal greetings
+have enabled the two forces to become acquainted with one another, and
+it is held to be a sporting thing for men, from either force, to
+invade each other's territory, inviting blasphemies and creating some
+excitement, since at Borderside the friendly relations between the two
+countries be altogether gainsaid.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page49" name="page49"></a>(p. 49)</span> CHAPTER VI<br>
+<span class="smaller">TWO DAYS BEFORE WAR</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">The Camp, Mafeking</span>,<br>
+  <i>October 9th, 1899</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Mafeking lies a day's journey by the train from Vryburg, and was once
+the terminus of the Cape railway system pending its extension
+northwards. Just now it is the embodiment of a fine Imperialism. There
+is the dignity of empire in the shape of her Majesty's Imperial
+Commissioner, Major Gould Adams, C.B., C.M.G.; the majesty of might,
+as suggested by Colonel Baden-Powell, of the Frontier Force; by
+Colonel Hore, of the Protectorate Regiment; by Colonel Walford, of the
+British South Africa Police; by Colonel Vyvyan, base commandant; and
+there are, too, the various strengths attached to the respective
+commands. For weeks this little place has been terrorised by Boer
+threats, until the presence of the military has reassured them. Now,
+however, the veldt beyond the town has been effectively occupied by
+the different commands, while within the town, or beyond its outer
+walls, noise and bustle everywhere embody the grim reality of war. It
+has not been possible to visit the different camps, in time for this
+mail, since the exigencies of war have interfered with <span class="pagenum"><a id="page50" name="page50"></a>(p. 50)</span> the
+dispatch of the English letters from the more remote districts, and
+until the country is more settled the night train service is
+altogether discontinued. This week's mail is two days in advance of
+its usual fixture; but perhaps we are fortunate, since the mail coach
+to Johannesburg has discontinued running, its last journey from
+Mafeking being confined to taking back to the Transvaal the few things
+which belonged to it in Mafeking. The supplementary coach was behind,
+its harness was stored in sacks upon the top, and thus it made its
+departure. It had better have remained at Mafeking, for no sooner had
+the coach passed the border-line than its mules were commandeered for
+transport by order of the Transvaal Government.</p>
+
+<p>Mafeking has entered into warlike preparations with commendable zeal,
+but in reality men are uncertain whether to face the music or to skip
+with their women and children. Ostensibly they wish to bear the brunt
+of an attack upon their town, but as time wears on and the numbers of
+the Boer force concentrated upon the border increase, the number of
+men available for actual volunteer service grows beautifully less.
+Mines have been laid down, fortifications thrown up, the volunteers
+and local ambulance services have been called out, and an armoured
+train patrols the line. The staff officers are everywhere, a crowd of
+journalists drifts about smothered beneath a variety of secret
+reports. Every one wears a worried look, and still the expected does
+not happen. To break the monotony of false alarms, of the sound of
+armed feet marching anywhere, of bells by day and rockets by night, of
+irresponsible gossips chattering upon subjects they do not understand,
+of the plague of locusts thick as fleas on Margate Sands (a plague as
+great as <span class="pagenum"><a id="page51" name="page51"></a>(p. 51)</span> the military bore)&mdash;there is lacking but one
+thing&mdash;<span class="smcap">WAR</span>. The troops want it to prove their efficiency, the
+journalists demand it to justify their existence, the countryside
+approves since it has sent the price of foodstuffs and of native
+labour to a premium, the Boers want it as the first step in that great
+scheme by which they hope to reduce London to ashes and sweep the
+red-vests of Great Britain into complete oblivion.</p>
+
+<p>But if the path of glory lies in that direction for the Boer
+sharpshooter, Mafeking will present him with a splendid spectacle just
+so soon as the curtain rises upon the drama of mortal combat between
+Boer and Britisher. It is a straggling town this Mafeking, and covers
+an area wider than its dignity demands. But should Commandant Cronje,
+who is hovering upon the border at Louw's Farm with 6,000 Boers, come
+down, in that spirit of unctuous rectitude which epitomises the
+Scripture and so distinguishes the Boers, a bill will be settled by
+this little town against the man who, already the hero of many
+historical iniquities, baulked Jameson of his raid.</p>
+
+<p>Upon this point Colonel Baden-Powell's notice to the inhabitants is
+instructive:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p class="center">NOTICE.</p>
+
+<p class="center smcap">DEFENCE MINES.</p>
+
+     <p>"The inhabitants are warned that mines are being laid at
+     various points outside the town in connection with the
+     defences. Their position will be marked, in order to avoid
+     accidents, by small red flags.</p>
+
+     <p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page52" name="page52"></a>(p. 52)</span> "Cattle herds and others should be warned
+     accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Mafeking: Dated this 7th day of October, 1899."</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>If this throws a sidelight upon the situation here, the second notice
+paints in the background with gloomy shadows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+     <p>"<span class="smcap">Notice.</span>&mdash;It is considered desirable to state to the
+     inhabitants of Mafeking what is the situation up to date.</p>
+
+     <p>"Forces of armed Boers are now massed upon the Natal and
+     Bechuanaland Borders. Their orders are not to cross the
+     border until the British fire a shot, and as this is not
+     likely to occur, at least for some time, no immediate danger
+     is to be apprehended. At the same time a rumour of war in
+     Natal or other false alarm might cause the Boers upon our
+     border to take action, and it is well to be prepared for
+     eventualities.</p>
+
+     <p>"It is possible they might attempt to shell the town, and
+     although every endeavour will be made to provide shelter for
+     the women and children, yet arrangements could be made with
+     the railway to move any of them to a place of safety if they
+     desire to go away from Mafeking, and it is suggested that
+     some place on the Transvaal border, such as Palapye Siding,
+     or Francistown, might be more suitable and less expensive
+     places than the already crowded towns of the colony. The men
+     would, of course, remain to defend Mafeking, which, with its
+     present garrison and defences, will be easy to hold. Those
+     desirous of leaving should inform the Stationmaster,
+     Mafeking, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page53" name="page53"></a>(p. 53)</span> their number of adults and children,
+     class of accommodation required, and destination.</p>
+
+<p class="signat">"<span class="smcap">Colonel Baden-Powell</span>,<br>
+  "Colonel Commanding Frontier Forces.</p>
+<p>"October 7th, Mafeking."</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>One turns from this to learn that streets in the town are barricaded,
+that the houses are sandbagged, that the railway is patrolled by an
+armour-plated train, which is imposing if incapable of much
+resistance. It is fitted with Nordenfeldt and Maxim quick-firing
+machine guns, and provided with a phonophone and an acetylene
+searchlight which stands like a fiery dragon at one end of the car.
+The train is in three parts, the engine being placed between two
+trucks. Each of the vehicles is about thirty feet long, mounted on
+four pairs of wheels, and is capable of holding sixty men. The entire
+train is covered over with &frac34;-inch steel armour-plate over double
+iron rails, but at some recent trial the bullets from Lee-Metfords and
+Martinis penetrated at 200 yards' range through all thicknesses of
+armour.</p>
+
+<p>Mafeking is situated upon a rise about three hundred yards north of
+the Molopo River, and from time to time its history has been
+associated with military enterprises. It is not an unimportant town,
+and in that day when it has been connected by railway with the
+Transvaal and its present system has been improved, its commercial
+importance will receive material increase. The present railway, which
+cuts through Mafeking in its journey to Buluwayo, is to the west of
+the town, running north and south and crossing the Molopo River by an
+iron bridge, at which point the trend of the railroad inclines to the
+west. To the west of the railway again is the native stadt, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page54" name="page54"></a>(p. 54)</span>
+extending to both sides of the river, and commencing about half a mile
+from the railway. The stadt extends to the west from the base of a
+rise beyond the bed of the river which, at present, covers the
+exterior line of the western outposts. Near the railway the ground
+slopes gradually for a considerable distance, while the country around
+Mafeking is flat in general, but across the Molopo, to the south and
+south-east, it commands the town, while the ground to the west of the
+stadt commands the stadt. The native village rests upon this western
+face, and, owing to the rough character of the country upon which the
+stadt lies, this native town has received the name of "The Place among
+the Rocks." About a mile from the town, and slightly east, there is an
+old fort called Cannon Kopje, a hideous collection of stones, which is
+held by a detachment of the British South Africa Police. It has an
+interior diameter of some thirty yards. The native location lies
+between Cannon Kopje and the town, on the southern bank of the river.
+The native stadt consists of Kaffir huts. Further east, and between
+the native location and Cannon Kopje, on the northern bank of the
+river, extend the brickfields, while a little further in the same
+direction is MacMullan's Farm. Between the farm and the ground to the
+north-east is the racecourse and the waterworks, which are connected
+by a pipe with The Springs, a natural water-hole to the east of the
+town. Cannon Kopje is due south of the town, the cemetery north, the
+native stadt west, the racecourse east. Between these points there are
+a few buildings which serve as local landmarks. There is the Convent
+to the north-east corner, Ellis's Corner south-east, the Pound
+south-west, and the British South Africa Police Barracks west.</p>
+
+<a id="img004" name="img004"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img004.jpg" width="500" height="351" alt="" title="">
+<p class="smcap">OUTPOST AND ENTRENCHMENTS, SOUTHERN FRONT.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page55" name="page55"></a>(p. 55)</span> The town of Mafeking has been built upon a rock, the centre of
+the town being the market square. Buildings extend at all points from
+the square, running into the veldt, showing an irregularity of design
+and no architectural perfection. The town is principally composed of
+bungalows, built of mud-bricks, with roofs of corrugated iron. The
+population in time of peace includes some 2,000 whites and some 6,000
+natives. Just now there are perhaps 1,500 whites, 8,000 natives, the
+ordinary population of the native village being swelled by the influx
+of some native refugees from the Transvaal. The perimeter of the
+defences is between five and six miles. The armoured train protects
+the north-west front. Between the railway on the north-west and the
+Convent, there are some trenches, built with an eye to their future
+use. Upon the western and eastern bases of the town there are further
+trenches, manned by the Protectorate Regiment, the Town Guard, and
+other local volunteer corps. The town was garrisoned by the Cape
+Police under Inspector Marsh and Inspector Brown. Colonel Walford held
+Cannon Kopje with the British South Africa Police. Colonel Hore
+commanded the Protectorate Regiment, which was scattered about the
+defences of the town under its squadron officers. The western outposts
+were entrusted to Major Godley, while in this direction there were
+also the Women's Laager and the Refugee Laager in Hidden Hollow. To
+the south-west was Major Godley's headquarters. Below this, and
+further to the west, was Captain Marsh's post, upon the other side of
+which, along the eastern front of the town, there are many forts in
+process of construction. There are De Koch's, Musson's, Ellitson's
+Kraal, Early's Corner. These forts will be garrisoned by the Town
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page56" name="page56"></a>(p. 56)</span> Guard, and it is hoped that they will be provided with
+adequate protection from the enemy's artillery. The Railway Volunteers
+garrisoned the cemetery and controlled an advanced trench about eight
+hundred yards to the front. In the meantime, every effort is being
+made to press forward the work of constructing the defences, and every
+one appears to be willing to assist. The aspect of the town is
+gradually changing, and in the little time that is left to us we hope
+to ensconce ourselves behind something of an impregnable defence.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page57" name="page57"></a>(p. 57)</span> CHAPTER VII<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE SKIRMISH AT FIVE MILE BANK</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">The Camp, Mafeking</span>,<br>
+  <i>October 14th, 1899</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Early this morning a mounted patrol under Captain Lord Charles
+Bentinck reported the Boers in strong position to the north of the
+town, and engaging them at once a general fight ensued.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Baden-Powell, upon receiving this information, instructed
+Captain Fitzclarence, D Squadron Protectorate Regiment, which is
+commanded by Colonel Hore, to cover the right flank of the armoured
+train, which had already moved out to support the patrol of A
+squadron, and which, under the direction of Captain Williams, British
+South Africa Police, drove the Boer artillery from two positions.</p>
+
+<p>It may be said that this movement began the more serious and certainly
+the more determined portion of the engagement. Captain Fitzclarence
+was accompanied by seventy men. Upon the termination of the fight he
+had twelve wounded, two dead, and two others wounded so seriously that
+they since died. The firing-line at no time contained more than two
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page58" name="page58"></a>(p. 58)</span> troops, who, in extended order, and having seized the little
+cover which was available, hotly contested the position against four
+hundred Boers. Upon the arrival of the squadron under Captain
+Fitzclarence the Boers again began to fall back, and withdrawing their
+right flank from its propinquity to the armoured train, they projected
+their entire force well beyond the right flank of Captain
+Fitzclarence. The two forces both in extended order, the one falling
+back upon the lines of a position which had been carefully selected
+and which was admirably adapted to their methods of fighting, the
+other pursuing, then prepared to settle matters between themselves.
+Had Captain Fitzclarence but realised it, and had this young officer
+not been so intrepid, he would have recognised in this Boer movement
+the ruse by which they hoped to entice the "Red necks" within range of
+a position from which they could be more effectually surrounded. The
+motive in their movement to the rear was to secure the ample
+protection which was offered to them by the low ridge covered with
+timber, scrub, large masses of rock, and cut up by many little sluits,
+which extended along the line of their retreat. When once the Boers
+had gained this ridge they faced about, though it must not be imagined
+their retirement was in any way a mad gallop. They fell back in as
+good order as our squadron advanced, but so soon as they had lined up
+upon the ridge it could be seen how very greatly the Boer detachment
+out-numbered the men opposed to them. Moreover, in a little their
+artillery again spoke for itself, impressing the situation with still
+greater gravity. When the Boer guns opened fire Captain Fitzclarence
+very wisely availed himself of the shelter of three native huts, for
+the better protection of the horses and any <span class="pagenum"><a id="page59" name="page59"></a>(p. 59)</span> wounded that
+might come on. Leaving his horses here, he advanced with his men in
+extended order, until he had secured a line of front immediately
+adjacent to the Boers. Indeed, our firing-line was at first only four
+hundred yards from the ridge; but, after a short experience of such
+close quarters, it was found to be wiser to take up a position some
+four hundred yards further off. The action of Captain Fitzclarence in
+endeavouring to meet the Boer commando was one of those inopportune
+acts of gallantry where loss, should the fight be successful, is
+overlooked. Technically speaking, of course, the strategy was all at
+fault, and it soon was seen how very serious the situation of Squadron D
+had become. By good luck I had joined this squadron in its move to the
+front, and it was very interesting to observe how a force, whose
+composite qualities were quite unknown, showed itself to be worthy of
+the utmost respect, and a corps upon which every reliance could be
+placed. Our men did not seem to mind the formidable odds against which
+they contended. The only disconcerting thing at the outset of the
+action being the position of the artillery on the Boer side, but for
+some reason the Boers ceased their shell fire very shortly after the
+action had begun. This again is another of those extraordinary
+blunders which creep into most fighting. The Boers might have wiped
+Squadron D out of existence by playing their nine-pounders upon our
+position. As it was, the Boer commandant withdrew his artillery from
+the fight and relied solely upon his rifles. From the little ridge,
+which, when our own firing-line had fallen back, was barely five
+hundred yards distant, there came a shower of Mauser and Martini
+bullets. The direction from which the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page60" name="page60"></a>(p. 60)</span> fire came at first
+suggested that the Boers were undecided as to the area of the position
+which they would occupy, since shortly after the action began the
+enemy's line of fire expanded until it extended beyond our front. For
+the moment the firing-line developed, continuing to expand until it
+became evident that the fire of their either flank was here most
+effectually enveloping the rear of our position, and endangering our
+line of retreat as well as those who had been sent to the improvised
+hospital in the native huts. But it was impossible to avoid such a
+contingency with the numbers against which we had to contend. Indeed,
+there was no point from which this enveloping movement could be
+escaped, since the men with Captain Fitzclarence were already unduly
+extended. The rifle fire was very heavy.</p>
+
+<p>From the ridge of the Boer position our complete formation and the
+situation of each unit could be seen. It merely required a little
+sharpshooting, keen sight, and sufficient energy to cause a disaster.
+Our men lay upon the ground seeking cover where they could find it,
+but they had neither the trees, nor the low-lying shrubs, nor the
+rocks, nor the sluits which had lent themselves to the Boers' shelter.
+They simply lay, a determined body of men, individually keen for
+distinction, and individually keen to put the Boers out of existence.
+The firing became hot and so rapid that in a very short time the heavy
+drain upon our ammunition was beginning to have effect. This again
+establishes the position of D Squadron. There were no supplies, nor
+was there any artillery support until too late. There was no
+ambulance, and no effective preparation for retirement. The horses
+behind the huts, the men in the front, were each in a position from
+which it certainly seemed that escape <span class="pagenum"><a id="page61" name="page61"></a>(p. 61)</span> was impossible. The
+Boers, upon the contrary, had a train of supplies and an excellent
+line of cover for retreat.</p>
+
+<p>The first Boer shell killed two horses and reduced to ruins a hut from
+the group which had given some protection to the wounded. The second
+shell fell wide, exploding, with no effect, into a sand heap. Between
+the intervals of shelling, the fire from the Boer Maxims whistled
+across the open spaces between the two firing-lines with a discord
+which was altogether out of harmony with the calmness and coolness of
+our men who, so soon as they had settled down to the serious business
+of the engagement, did not seem at all to mind the firing.</p>
+
+<p>Two cousins, Corporal Walshe and Corporal Parland, Irishmen, were shot
+dead very soon after the engagement opened, but the absence of
+ambulance arrangements prevented those who were wounded in the
+advanced position from falling back to the rear. With a quiet and
+unsuspected courage they just stopped where they were shot until they
+could muster sufficient strength to drag themselves to the rear. Each
+wounded form became, as it crawled along, the objective of the Boer
+rifle fire, and no few of those who had been hit in action were hit
+again as they made their way to the field hospital. Here Major
+Anderson, with whom I remained from the moment of my arrival until we
+retired&mdash;who told me afterwards that it was a mere chance which caused
+him to accompany the squadron to the field, since in the confusion and
+din no one had thought to give him his orders&mdash;was busily dressing the
+men as they came in. The total area of the improvised dressing station
+was perhaps half a dozen yards; into that crowded six or seven horses,
+seven or eight wounded men, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page62" name="page62"></a>(p. 62)</span> the Surgeon-Major, his orderly,
+and all those others who made their way through the firing-line from
+time to time. There seemed to be indescribable confusion in this
+little spot. The wounded men lay between horses' legs, rested upon one
+another, crouched against the walls of the huts, each recognising that
+the situation was one of gravity, and endeavouring to assist so far as
+he was able; those who were not too severely wounded helped to undress
+those who had been less fortunately hit, and to each as he fell back
+from the firing-line to have his wounds dressed, there was thrown a
+merry jest from his comrades. The nature of the wounds created no
+little interest among the men, since it was the first time that any
+one had seen the effect, upon human beings, of the Mauser bullets. One
+man as he came back was advised not to sit down; another man, with
+extraordinary coolness in seeing the nature of his wounds, which were
+seven, exclaimed with a quaint blasphemy, that it still might be
+possible for him to enjoy the functions of a married man. But if this
+were the scene at the hospital base, the scene at our firing-line and
+at that upon the Boer side was very different. We possibly occupied a
+line of front some eighty yards in extent, and as the Boers saw that
+the hospital hut was becoming the centre of our position, so they
+extended their lines until a direct cross fire from the extremities of
+the two flanks were added to the direct fire from the centre; each
+man, therefore, was under a converging fire from three distinct
+points, and had it not been that the Boers' aim was not so good as
+their range our losses would have been much more serious than has
+happily proved to be the case. We could see the Boers sitting in the
+branches of the trees; we could see them crouching beneath bushes;
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page63" name="page63"></a>(p. 63)</span> we could detect them, from the fire of their rifles, in the
+shelter of the rocks and in the depths of the sluits. It soon became
+the first serious consideration with our men to try to hit them as
+they sat in the branches of the trees, and it was because Private
+Wormald caught sight of a piece of a paper as it dropped from a tree
+that he was able to shoot the Dutchman who was known to have shot the
+two cousins. It was almost a unique method of warfare. Anon and again
+our fellows enjoyed a little Boer potting among the foliage of the
+trees. Here and there a body was seen to fall heavily from a branch,
+or to spring up and fall heavily into a bush; that was as much as we
+could gauge of the effect of our own handiwork. Those who were behind
+the stones were possibly as safe as those who were in the sluits, but
+through the lack of any effective support our shooting, good as it may
+have been, was not sufficiently strong for us to maintain our
+position. If D Squadron were to save itself from an unfortunate
+disaster it seemed that it would have to fall back. The wounded men
+had come in so rapidly from the front, and ammunition had been so
+heavily expended, that many of those situated upon the extreme flanks
+of our position were completely without ammunition. In one case five
+men had no ammunition left, and one volunteered to go to the rear to
+obtain some from those who had been wounded, and were consequently out
+of action. He successfully accomplished this errand, sustaining,
+however, such wounds as must prove fatal.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Fitzclarence maintained his splendid isolation as long as
+possible, and just as every one was wondering why, in the name of
+Heaven, no artillery had been sent to support the squadron in a
+position <span class="pagenum"><a id="page64" name="page64"></a>(p. 64)</span> it was never intended to occupy, a gun detachment
+was seen to gallop into action on the extreme right flank. Between our
+men and the gun perhaps a mile stretched, and when we could see that
+they were preparing to fire, each for a brief moment stopped to
+congratulate his fellow upon the succour at hand. In this they didn't
+think of themselves, but they hoped that with the aid of the gun they
+might still be able to maintain their position and give the enemy a
+hiding.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly a cloud of smoke hung over the gun and a shell shrieked
+through the air. We rapidly speculated upon the amount of damage it
+would make, when, with noisy force, it burst among us. We thought at
+first that the shell had fallen short, and we hoped the next would
+reach the enemy, but when Lieutenant Murchison, who was in charge of
+the gun, dismissed his second shell, and it was so well directed as to
+fall upon one of the three huts behind which we were sheltering, the
+luckless position of D Squadron received unmerited but instantaneous
+aggravation and aggrievement, since it was turning the tables with a
+vengeance upon the enemy when the guns coming to our support set,
+forthwith, to shell us. The menace which our own artillery had thus
+unconsciously become to one portion of our wounded men about these
+huts had to be immediately removed, and I was one of two who were
+permitted to carry intelligence of his mistake to the officer in
+charge of the seven-pounder. In galloping across to the position of
+the gun, the third shell thrown in this direction burst just past my
+horse's head, the force of its wind almost lifting me from the saddle.
+The moment was of interest, and I only realised my escape when, upon
+returning, I found the base of the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page65" name="page65"></a>(p. 65)</span> shell and my helmet lying
+quite close to each other. When a new direction had been given to the
+guns, and their fire brought to bear upon the position which the Boers
+occupied, the rifle fire from the front of the ridge gradually
+slackened, while, under cover of the very excellent work which this
+gun was executing, our men fell back upon the hospital. Here an order
+had just arrived instructing Fitzclarence to send back his wounded to
+the armoured train, those uninjured covering the movement. While the
+squadron was engaged in completing this order, no shots were fired
+from the position of the Boers, and we concluded that they also were
+engaged in withdrawing at discretion. Captain Fitzclarence, Lieutenant
+Swinburne, and myself were the last to leave the line of action,
+tailing off ourselves in the same open order that the remainder of the
+squadron had been ordered to preserve. As we retired Captain
+Fitzclarence put three wounded horses out of their misery, leaving
+their bodies for the vultures that were already wheeling in circles in
+the realms of space above us. These were the last shots fired in this
+action, although through mistake, the Boers had fired upon the
+ambulance train, mistaking it for a new instrument of destruction.
+Subsequently we heard that the Boers buried their dead at
+Ramathlabama, and we also have heard that all the houses in that place
+have been seized as accommodation for the 107 Boers who were wounded
+in the fight. These numbers may probably be exaggerated, but there is
+no cause to doubt that their loss was much greater than ours, since
+the proportion of their men to ours was greater than twelve to one.
+Saturday thus initiated the Boer war along this frontier, and after
+the morning's excitement the rest of the day passed without incident.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page66" name="page66"></a>(p. 66)</span> Colonel Baden-Powell, Colonel Hore, and Colonel Walford, the
+one as the colonel in command, the others as the commanding officers
+of the Protectorate Regiment and the British South Africa Police,
+congratulated their men upon the stand which they had made in the
+morning, and the courage which they had displayed. Brevet-Major Lord
+Edward Cecil, C.S.O., described Captain Fitzclarence's movement as
+brilliant. It is a question whether this movement was not, at least,
+characterised by an equal amount of foolhardiness. However, the
+officer himself showed such coolness in this his baptism of fire as to
+deserve much congratulation upon his individual gallantry.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page67" name="page67"></a>(p. 67)</span> CHAPTER VIII<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE FIRST DAY OF BOMBARDMENT</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">The Camp, Mafeking</span>,<br>
+  <i>October 22nd, 1899</i>.</p>
+
+<p>There was some sign that the engagement of Saturday between the
+Protectorate troops and the Boer forces investing Mafeking would have
+been the precursor of a series of minor fights, which, if not of much
+importance in themselves, yet would have been of interest and
+encouraging to the command generally.</p>
+
+<p>As it happens, however, the engagement of Saturday is the first, and,
+up to the present, the only action of any importance, of any interest
+whatsoever, that has been brought about between the two forces.
+General Cronje is evidently a man of some humanity, though it is
+perhaps possible that the motives which direct his present policy of
+exceeding gentleness towards the "Rooineken" that he be besieging in
+Mafeking, aims at procuring for himself, when the inevitable does
+come, terms perhaps not quite so extreme as would have been the case
+had the Boer commandant not conducted his operations in accordance
+with the articles of war.</p>
+
+<p>During the progress of the Sunday following the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page68" name="page68"></a>(p. 68)</span> engagement at
+Five Mile Bank, Commandant Cronje made a curiously sincere, but not
+altogether unhumorous demand for our unconditional surrender. Colonel
+Baden-Powell very properly felt he was unable to comply with any such
+demand, and with the exchange of notes of a courteous character this
+incident closed.</p>
+
+<p>During Sunday the town put the finishing touches to the earthworks,
+lunettes, and to the gun emplacements, which will form a more or less
+complete chain of fortifications around the town. So much as possible,
+and so far as it lay within the knowledge and experience of the Base
+Commandant, Colonel Vyvyen, and Major Panzera, each distinct earthwork
+was made shell-proof.</p>
+
+<p>From the outside the town looks as if a series of gigantic mounds had
+been suddenly created. At different points tiers of sandbags, several
+feet high, protect the more exposed places, and to these again has
+been added, as an exterior facing, banks of earth. Within such a
+position as I am now describing there is a deep trench, which is of
+that depth which enables a man standing upright to fire through
+loopholes between sacks of sand. Behind the trench is a low shelter of
+deals with an upper covering of sandbags, intending to serve the
+garrison of the fort as protection against shell fire.</p>
+
+<p>To those points which are exposed to the more direct attack of the
+enemy, a Maxim has been detached or a seven-pounder emplaced. The Town
+Guard man these positions: the work of patrolling, of forming Cossack
+posts, of maintaining the outer lines of sentries, being undertaken by
+the Protectorate troops and the Bechuanaland Rifles.</p>
+
+<a id="img005" name="img005"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img005.jpg" width="500" height="351" alt="" title="">
+<p class="smcap">HEADQUARTERS, BOMB-PROOF SHELTER.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>An elaborate system of signals has been arranged. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page69" name="page69"></a>(p. 69)</span> A red
+flag will fly from Headquarters should the Boers be coming on, and an
+alarm will be rung in the centre of the town. The streets have been
+barricaded with carts, and all open places protected by traverses of a
+useful character. Mines have been placed within and without the town,
+and an improvised field telegraph or the telephone has been connected
+with every point which lies beyond the immediate precincts of the
+defences. Every possible precaution that human ingenuity can devise
+and the resources of the town supply for the protection of the place,
+is in order.</p>
+
+<p>Thus did Mafeking prepare for the Boer bombardment, and upon the
+Monday following this took place; but it is perhaps no exaggeration to
+say that nothing so ludicrous in the history of modern warfare has
+been propagated as the gigantic joke which Commandant Snyman, who
+directed the fire of the artillery, played off against us that day.
+For many weeks we, along this frontier, had heard what the Boers
+proposed to do once war should be declared. These forecasts had indeed
+been sanguinary; the heads of the English people, had we believed in
+these rumours, were to lie upon the veldt like the sand upon the sea
+shore.</p>
+
+<p>The bombardment as such was totally ineffective, and so curiously
+amateur, so wholly experimental, as to move one to astonishment rather
+than derision. It began at 9.15 a.m., and the first shell fell blind.
+The second and the third also pitched short, but once the bombardment
+had been initiated, the feelings of those who had dreaded such an
+event, more on account of their women and children than on account of
+themselves, were unperturbed. When the shells began to fall into the
+town it was found that they were of such <span class="pagenum"><a id="page70" name="page70"></a>(p. 70)</span> poor quality as to
+be incapable of any explosive force whatever. Judging from their
+effect the area of damage was not three square feet.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after the first few shells had been dropped the Boers found
+the range, and from Signal Hill, their position to the east of the
+town, threw several shells at the hospital and monastery. Strange as
+it may seem our most grievous cause of complaint against the Boer plan
+of war is that they do not respect sufficiently our Red Cross flag.
+Commandant Snyman had given us no time in which to remove our women
+and children, and, as a consequence, we established somewhat hurriedly
+a laager, in which they were confined and which it was hoped would be
+beyond the fire of the Boer, since we afforded it the protection of
+the Red Cross flag. This, so far as the laager was concerned, luckily
+proved to be the case, since on the occasion that Commandant Cronje
+sent in to apologise for the firing upon the Red Cross by his younger
+roughs during the Five Mile Bank fight, Colonel Baden-Powell took the
+opportunity of pointing out to him the precise significance of this
+flag, and the exact whereabouts of the buildings which enjoined its
+protection. In the absence of direct evidence of the enemy's intention
+upon this day, in the repugnance with which one would charge them with
+wilful abuse of the Red Cross, it is good to believe that Colonel
+Baden-Powell's letter was not communicated to Commandant Snyman
+previous to this action, for from the moment that this officer opened
+the bombardment until his artillery ceased fire for the day, each
+individual missile was thrown directly across the hospital and
+monastery. It was unfortunate that these buildings should have been in
+the line of fire, and it was a fact greatly to be deplored <span class="pagenum"><a id="page71" name="page71"></a>(p. 71)</span>
+that the hospital should be filled, at such a moment, with women and
+wounded, the former magnanimously devoting themselves to the work of
+looking after those who had been disabled in Saturday's engagement. It
+was perhaps unavoidable, with such a line of fire, that the shells
+should not drop upon the hospital and monastery. Fearing this as we
+did, the garrison was filled with consternation when, so abruptly that
+we had scarcely realised what had been the actual object of the
+nameless dread by which the camp was suddenly depressed, the
+inevitable happened and we knew that a shell had burst within the
+hospital itself. Had this shell been of the quality and explosive
+character that we had been led to expect, one entire side of the
+hospital would have been reduced to ruins; as it was, however, the
+area of destruction most remote from the point of penetration was not
+three feet in circumference. A little of the masonry was destroyed, a
+few boards of the floor ripped up, and that was all. Dust and dirt,
+however, covered everything.</p>
+
+<p>Two more shells penetrated the same building in the course of the
+attack&mdash;the one burst in the principal waiting-room, the other played
+havoc with the children's dormitory. Fortunately no one was injured,
+and it was a happy omen for future shelling that throughout the whole
+of the first bombardment no human life was lost in Mafeking. There
+were no casualties, and three buildings, the hospital, the monastery,
+and Riesle's Hotel, alone were struck. The dead comprised one chicken.
+There were many narrow escapes. My horse was fastened to the
+hitching-post outside Riesle's Hotel at the very moment that a shell
+burst against the steps of the verandah, but this animal would seem
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page72" name="page72"></a>(p. 72)</span> to enjoy a happy immunity from shell fire, since at the Five
+Mile Bank engagement there was a shell which burst within three or
+four feet of him.</p>
+
+<p>Our guns made no return whatever to the fire of the Boers, beyond a
+chance shot which exploded by accident. After this very ineffective
+and amusing bombardment had continued for some hours the enemy ceased
+firing, and from their position only 2,000 yards from the town, and to
+which they had moved from Signal Hill, where the attack had begun, the
+usual messenger, half herald, half spy, was despatched to our lines.
+It has become quite a feature of the Boer operations against Mafeking
+for them to enjoy at every few hours a cessation of hostilities under
+a flag of truce, and, I regret to say, that these constant messages in
+the middle of an action, from the Boer Commandant to Colonel
+Baden-Powell, are sent with an ulterior motive. The Boer Commandants
+would appear to lack that experience of the conditions of warfare
+which should enable them to perceive the folly and futility&mdash;if not
+the guilt&mdash;of such procedure as they have been following since
+operations against this town began. It was, perhaps, as much through
+our own ignorance of the character of the enemy whom we were fighting
+as anything, that they secured any profitable information by these
+tactics, since we had expected that they would observe the unwritten
+regulation which restricts the progress of a flag of truce to a point
+half-way between the lines of the two forces. Upon no occasion at this
+period in the investment did the Boers recognise this custom, but
+securing cover where they could they crept down to our lines under
+protection of the white flag. By these means they secured valuable
+intelligence.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page73" name="page73"></a>(p. 73)</span> The Boer emissary was allowed safe conduct into our lines, and
+was escorted by Captain Williams, of the British South Africa Police,
+who was in command of the armoured train, and Lieutenant the
+Honourable Hanbury-Tracy of Headquarters Staff, who had been sent out
+to meet him. The messenger was conducted to Colonel Baden-Powell, who
+received through this medium a second demand for unconditional
+surrender. Commandant Snyman presented his compliments to Colonel
+Baden-Powell, and desired to know if, to save further bloodshed, we
+would now surrender. Colonel Baden-Powell received this message with
+polite astonishment, and while not telling the deputy of Commandant
+Snyman that his shell fire had only spilt the blood of a fowl, and
+knocked small pieces out of three buildings, replied, that so far as
+we were concerned, we had not yet begun. While the Headquarters Staff
+were deliberating upon the reply to such a momentous message, the
+messenger was regaled with beer and bread and cheese. He was escorted
+back at 4.45 p.m., and for the time being shell fire ceased.</p>
+
+<p>On Monday the armoured train took up a position in advance of the
+town, and in such a manner that it was completely sheltered from the
+Boer position. It so happened that the Boer messenger came directly
+upon this train, which was patiently waiting for the enemy's line of
+fire to be advanced a few hundred yards further, before opening its
+artillery. The little ruse which we had so carefully planned was thus
+forestalled, and to prevent further disclosures being made the herald
+was therewith blindfolded. It was a strange spectacle to see this Boer
+being brought through our lines with a somewhat soiled handkerchief
+across his eyes. His flag of truce comprised <span class="pagenum"><a id="page74" name="page74"></a>(p. 74)</span> three
+handkerchiefs tied to a bamboo, and as he came forward it waved with a
+motion in which fright played as great a part as dignity.</p>
+
+<p>The Boer Commandant had evidently determined to shell Mafeking from
+three positions, but force of circumstances, and the undesirability of
+throwing up earthworks under the telling fire which would have been
+poured into him from our own trenches, prevented him bringing his
+heavy artillery into position. He had stormed Mafeking from Signal
+Hill with a twelve-pound Krupp, but when he advanced into a range of
+2,000 yards he fell back upon a seven-pounder, and a nine-pound
+high-velocity Krupp. These guns were quite unprotected by earthworks
+and could be easily seen from the town. Indeed it was the possibility
+of their being put out of action by our guns which instigated the
+Commandant to secure a cessation of hostilities by despatching his
+messenger upon some fatuous errand to Colonel Baden-Powell while he
+and his entire force busied themselves in erecting breastworks about
+his field pieces.</p>
+
+<p>The Boer emissary arrived at 2.30 p.m., and no sooner had he been
+received by us than the Boers began to work with pick and shovel,
+continuing their labours throughout the conference. By the time that
+their herald had returned two emplacements had been prepared and their
+locality partially concealed by a quantity of small bushes and scrub
+with which they had been covered.</p>
+
+<p>It may be that Commandant Snyman was unaware of the breach of faith he
+was committing in working upon his trenches under a flag of truce. It
+is our hope that this should prove to be the case, since we would not
+willingly believe that the Boers <span class="pagenum"><a id="page75" name="page75"></a>(p. 75)</span> be so lost to the sense of
+fairness which should underlie the provisions which prevail during any
+cessation of hostilities as to promote a condition of truce for
+interests of their own. But should this be, indeed, the extent of the
+ignorance of the Boer Commandant upon the conditions governing war,
+let us trust that he may soon furbish up his knowledge upon these
+especial points.</p>
+
+<p>When the messenger returned to his lines, the Boers proceeded to
+advance in force upon the waterworks, and, driving in our outposts,
+they have since maintained a control over our water supply. The town,
+therefore, is wholly without water from this source, although we be
+not in any way frightened at the loss of the springs, since many wells
+have been opened out and many promising springs have been located
+within the radius of the town, some of which watered the troops of the
+Warren expedition. When we consider that to the majority this is their
+first experience of war, and that the length of the siege is unknown
+and more than likely to be protracted, it must be admitted that
+Mafeking is bearing itself wonderfully well. The few women and
+children who remained here show a dauntless front, while the men are
+only too anxious, and indeed too willing, to indulge in some sniping
+on their own account.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the position of Mafeking at the present moment is one
+which, if giving no cause for alarm, is at least unsatisfactory. Our
+wires are still cut to north and south. Our line is up, and all around
+us the Boers are supposed to be encamped, yet as the days go on it is
+becoming harder and harder to realise that we are seriously engaged in
+war, and we are more inclined to believe in the cheery <span class="pagenum"><a id="page76" name="page76"></a>(p. 76)</span>
+optimism of Colonel Baden-Powell. It is very like some gigantic
+picnic, although it may doubtless be food for disquieting reflection.
+Occasionally we sleep out at night, and are in the trenches all day,
+but upon the whole it is quite impossible to believe that we are
+engaged in repelling an enemy who already are investing us.</p>
+
+<p>To get away from the hotels, to get more into contact with the spirit
+of the siege, I have been camping out for some days at the most
+outlying position upon the west facing of the town, but even by such
+means it is infinitely difficult to find much that is instinctive with
+active and actual campaigning. We perform the duties of a vedette,
+watching by day and night, sleeping at oddly-snatched moments, ever
+ready, and straining our vision in wild efforts to find trace of the
+foe. But it amounts to but little in the end.</p>
+
+<p>Since Monday we have seen small detachments of the Boers daily, we
+have even exchanged outpost fire with them, while we have on three
+different occasions turned our guns upon their position at the
+waterworks; but these occurrences are purely incidental and not wholly
+relative to the main features of the situation. It has become quite
+necessary for us to justify our own existence, and since there be but
+such vague signs of war around us, this desire has become infinitely
+more difficult of fulfilment. As the time passes we receive messages
+daily from different units in the Boer commando to friends in
+Mafeking, which are sometimes amicable, sometimes impudent in
+character; but to increase the irony of our situation, if we be
+engaged in the press of battle at dawn, it is certain that at dusk we
+shall be dining with no small degree of luxury at the hotel.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page77" name="page77"></a>(p. 77)</span> At present there has been no misery, for there has been no
+war, and apart from the five lives that have been lost already,
+Mafeking to-day is as it was a month ago. It would seem as though this
+gigantic war, which so many people have been urging upon the
+Government, in relation to the operations of the enemy along this
+frontier may develop into a series of cattle raids by armed Boers. But
+if there be little in the immediate situation to alarm us, there is
+behind the rose and silver of the clouds a dark spot, a spot which
+growing bigger, ever bigger as the days go by, implies that signs of
+the times are not wanting to prove that our official optimism,
+forecasting the siege as but of three weeks' duration, is based upon
+anything less secure than the imaginings of a man who, knowing the
+hollowness of his words in his own heart, seeks but to cheer the
+hearts of the garrison. There was little sign of readiness in the
+Imperial troops, little to show that they can relieve Mafeking before
+the year dies out in the birth of the closing twelve months of the
+nineteenth century. But it were heresy to say so now. The idle singer
+of an empty day dares not pronounce the denunciation of his country in
+her hour of danger. Nevertheless, if Mafeking be not relieved before
+the Christmas season, the hour of our existence will be an hour of
+travail, impressed with the echoes of much suffering and saddened by
+the memories of many who will be dead. But for the time we will ignore
+the gravity in our situation, mock at our splendid isolation, our
+scanty resources, since to dwell too long upon the guilty splendour of
+the naked truth is to beget an earnestness which will depress our
+spirits, allowing us to read out the future of the siege in words of
+deadly omen.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page78" name="page78"></a>(p. 78)</span> CHAPTER IX<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE ADVENT OF "BIG BEN"</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">Mafeking</span>, <i>October 25th, 1899</i>.</p>
+
+<p>To-day is the third day of the bombardment by which Commandant Cronje
+is attempting to realise his threat of reducing Mafeking to ashes. Up
+to the present it has been impossible to consider very seriously the
+attempt of the Boers to besiege Mafeking. The earlier bombardment and
+the series of events which have occurred during the interval have not
+augmented the gravity of the situation. The Boer Commandant
+endeavoured to carry out his word by opening the second bombardment of
+Mafeking upon the day which he had notified Colonel Baden-Powell. We
+had been incredulous at the threat of the Boers to send to Pretoria
+for some siege guns. Monday, therefore, was a day of some anxiety for
+us, and each was curious to know what result the enemy's fire would
+produce. Upon this occasion, however, the townsfolk had reckoned
+without taking into account the intentions of Colonel Baden-Powell,
+and it was a very pleasant surprise to find that the bombardment of
+Mafeking by the Boers had been converted into the bombardment of the
+Boers by Mafeking. At a very early hour, two guns, which had been
+placed <span class="pagenum"><a id="page79" name="page79"></a>(p. 79)</span> near the reservoir, opened fire upon the enemy's
+artillery in position at the water springs. The artillery duel which
+was thus started continued for some hours, and if it did not do much
+damage to either side it made manifest to the Boers that the defences
+of Mafeking were not altogether at their mercy. About noon, however,
+the Boers, who had been observed to place some guns in position upon
+the south-west side of the town, threw shells at Cannon Kopje. Here
+again, fortunately, no material damage was done.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhat early in the afternoon, the look-outs reported tremendous
+activity in the Boer camp. Across the veldt, those who cared, might
+have seen the enemy engaged upon some enormous earthwork, which the
+general consensus of opinion very quickly determined to be the
+emplacements for the siege guns. They were about three miles away from
+the town, and in a position different from that from which the guns
+had shelled the kopje in the morning. The frequency with which shells
+had exploded within the limits of Mafeking, had rendered the people
+somewhat callous of the consequences, and despite an official warning
+which was issued to the town, a large number of people stood
+discussing, in excited groups, the value of this news, while no small
+proportion of the population had gathered upon the west front to watch
+with their glasses the completion of the enemy's earthworks. It was
+three miles across the veldt, a mere black shadow upon the skyline,
+distinguished by its proximity to a local landmark, the "Jackal Tree,"
+where the Boers had intrenched their Creusot gun. It was not so much
+that there were no other guns around us which had drawn the crowd, as
+the morbid curiosity to see for themselves what <span class="pagenum"><a id="page80" name="page80"></a>(p. 80)</span> perhaps in a
+few hours they might never see again. At different points upon the
+eastern and western heights the Boer guns had been stationed. To the
+south-east there was a twelve-pounder at a very convenient range, and
+so placed as to act as a flanking fire to the direct onslaught of "Big
+Ben." Upon the extreme east there were two seven-pounders, one in
+position at the water springs, the other covering the entire front of
+the town. Upon the west and to the north the enemy had similarly
+placed their guns. There was a seven-pounder emplacement, with a
+Nordenfeldt support due west, 1,400 yards from the native stadt. Below
+that, and between it and the north, the Boers had a Maxim. It is,
+perhaps, somewhat extraordinary that an enemy who has procured the
+best available artillery advice, should proceed to attack the town in
+such a fashion, and much of the failure which has distinguished the
+Boer bombardment is due to the fact that, instead of concentrating
+their fire upon a series of given spots, they have maintained
+simultaneous shelling from isolated points. As their shells fell, the
+damage which they caused was scattered over a wide area, and confined
+to a building here and there. Indeed, the greater portion of the
+shells had merely ploughed up the streets. However, it was not to be
+confirmed that afternoon. An hour after noon on the following day the
+alarm rang out from the market place, the red flag was seen to fly
+from headquarters, and the inhabitants were warned to take immediate
+cover. Within a few minutes of the alarm, the proceedings for that day
+began, and the first shell thrown from the Boer battery burst over our
+camp. Presently on the distant skyline a tremendous cloud of smoke
+hurled itself into the air. The very foundations upon <span class="pagenum"><a id="page81" name="page81"></a>(p. 81)</span> which
+Mafeking rests seemed to quiver, all curiosity was set at rest, and
+there was no longer any doubt as to the nature of the new ordnance
+which the Boers had with them. With a terrific impact the shell struck
+some structures near the railway, and the flying fragments of steel
+spread over the town, burying themselves in buildings, striking the
+veldt two miles distant, creating a dust, a horrible confusion, and,
+an instant, terror throughout the town. For the moment no one seemed
+to know what had happened, when the sudden silence which had come upon
+the town was broken by the loud explosion of the shell as it came in
+contact with some building. It was a scene of unique interest, the
+rush of air, the roar of its flight, the final impact, and the massive
+fragments of steel and iron which scattered in all directions, gave no
+time for those who had been exposed, to realise the cause of the
+disturbance. Much as people throng to the spot where some appalling
+catastrophe has occurred, so, a minute after the shell exploded,
+people appeared from all directions to run to the scene, and although
+the shell had caused no very great damage, the noise which it had
+made, its unusual size and explosive force, did not tend to pacify
+people. Many were convinced that Mafeking was doomed, and although no
+loss of life occurred, there were few who did not think that their
+days were numbered. In the course of the afternoon, after a rain of
+seven-and nine-pound shells, the Boers opened with this gun again, and
+although happily no loss of life occurred, the missile wrecked the
+rear of the Mafeking Hotel, falling within a few feet of Mr. E. G.
+Parslow, the war correspondent of the <i>Chronicle</i>. The force of the
+explosion hurled this gentleman upon a pile of wood, blew the walls
+out of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page82" name="page82"></a>(p. 82)</span> three rooms, set fire to a gas engine, and effectually
+littered the yard of the hotel. With the curious inconsequence which
+has marked the Boer proceedings in their investment of Mafeking, the
+enemy threw no more of these heavier shells during the afternoon,
+contenting themselves with discharging at odd moments those of lesser
+calibre.</p>
+
+<p>The two shells which had been fired during the afternoon gave the
+inhabitants of Mafeking some little ground by which to judge the
+nature of the bombardment on the morrow. After the cessation of
+hostilities word was passed round that the two shells which had been
+launched at Mafeking were a 64lb. howitzer and a 94lb. breech-loading
+siege gun, and that it might be reckoned that these were but the
+preliminary shots by which to measure the range. Officially it was
+notified that every precaution must be taken to remain within the
+bomb-proof shelters which the inhabitants of Mafeking had been advised
+to construct. It is the presence of these pits which explains the
+slight loss of life that has occurred during the Boer bombardment of
+Mafeking. Up to to-day the effect of the terrible hail of shells which
+has poured into the town has been but a few slight wounds. But there
+could be no doubt that the more serious fighting was at last to take
+place, and it seemed to us only natural to expect a general advance
+upon Mafeking in the morning. The night passed with every man sleeping
+by his arms and at his post. The women and children had been removed
+to their laager, the horses were picketed in the river-bed, and once
+again all preparations for defence, and all those measures which had
+been taken to secure immunity from shell fire were, for the last time,
+inspected. Firing began very early on Wednesday morning, a <span class="pagenum"><a id="page83" name="page83"></a>(p. 83)</span>
+gun detachment under Lieutenant Murchison opening with a few shells
+from our position to the east of the town. When the light had become
+clear the Boers brought their new siege guns once more into play. We
+estimated at nightfall that the enemy must have thrown rather more
+than two hundred shells into Mafeking, and if Mafeking be saved for
+future bombardment its salvation lies in the fact that it is,
+relatively speaking, little more than a collection of somewhat
+scattered houses with tin roofs and mud walls. Any other form of
+building would have been shaken to its foundations by the mere
+concussion of these bursting shells. Where bricks would have fallen,
+mud walls simply threw down a cloud of dust. But if Mafeking be still
+more or less intact, it can congratulate itself upon having withstood
+a most determined and concentrated shell fire.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to defend the action of the Boers in laying upon
+Mafeking the burden of these siege guns. We have heard no little from
+Commandant Cronje upon the rules of warfare, as set out by the Geneva
+Convention, by time-honoured practices, and by that sense of custom
+and courtesy which at the present day still brings back some slight
+echo of the chivalry which distinguished the wars in dead centuries.
+Nevertheless, there is a grim and ill-savoured travesty in the Boer
+bombardment of this town. We do not complain, and we must be forgiven
+if we find some ironical and melancholy interest attaching itself to
+our situation. Three times has Colonel Baden-Powell pointed out to
+Commandant Cronje the buildings which enjoy the immunity of the Red
+Cross flag, yet these buildings are still deliberately made the
+objective of the Boer artillery; twice have we received flags of truce
+from the Boers, ignoring altogether the fact that they were <span class="pagenum"><a id="page84" name="page84"></a>(p. 84)</span>
+but the clumsy subterfuge by which an unprincipled enemy secured to
+itself some new and advantageous position for its guns; then, as a
+crowning act of mercy, we have this Boer Commander, so blatant a
+gentleman that he is by sheer force of his aggressive impudence worthy
+of our attentions, training upon a defenceless town a 64lb. howitzer
+and a 94lb. breech-loading siege gun, pieces whose action is relegated
+by these self-same observances of civilised warfare to towns who
+possess, in the first place, strong fortifications; in the second,
+masonry and concrete in their construction.</p>
+
+<p>After the early morning hours had been whiled away Commandant Cronje
+made preparations for a general advance upon the town under the
+protection of his cannon fire. This was the moment which each of us
+had longed for. As the Boer advance seemed to be concentrated upon the
+eastern side, I proceeded to the redan at De Koch's Corner under Major
+Goold-Adams, and, later on, to another a little lower down in the same
+quarter of the town under Captain Musson. At this time, any one who
+can, is supposed to bear arms to defend our position, and, so as to
+more completely identify themselves with the movement for protection
+of this place, the correspondents that are here are each carrying
+their rifle and bandolier, and taking up their stand in some one of
+the trenches. The correspondent of the <i>Chronicle</i>, Mr. E. G. Parslow,
+the correspondent for Reuter's, Mr. Vere Stent, and myself, requested
+Captain Musson, a local dairy farmer, who has been placed in charge of
+one of the redans upon the east front, to allow us to assist him in
+the protection of his earthwork, and it was from there, as a
+consequence, that I watched the bombardment of Mafeking, taking an
+active part in any rifle practice which Captain Musson permitted
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page85" name="page85"></a>(p. 85)</span> to his men. At Major Goold-Adams's there had been stationed a
+Maxim detachment, and it was not long before its sharp rat-a-tat-tat
+was heard speaking to the enemy. The warm reception which was accorded
+to the Boers from this redan soon began to draw their fire. With "Big
+Ben" discharging its 94lb. shells in every quarter of the town, and a
+12-pounder from the north-west dropping shrapnel with much
+discrimination over that quarter, the enemy upon the east side soon
+followed the example so shown them and discharged shells at the redans
+along their front. The range was singularly good, and in a very few
+minutes shells were dropping over and in very close proximity to our
+two redans. Between the two, and but a little removed from the line of
+fire, was the building of the Dutch Reformed Church, and several of
+the shells intended for the Maxim in Major Goold-Adams's fort found
+lodgment in its interior. The front of this church had been penetrated
+in several places by the shells, when the gun was slewed suddenly
+round upon the hospital and a shell fell in an outhouse attached to
+the monastery with disastrous effect. When the smoke had cleared away
+little was left of the building beyond a pile of smoking ruins. Above
+Captain Musson's redan our untimely visitors constantly burst and
+scattered, and we began to realise fully the value of the bomb-proof
+shelters. In a little while, however, the Boers relaxed their shell
+fire, and beyond maintaining sufficient fire to cover their advance,
+the heavier guns were for the time silent. With this, the Boers began
+to open out in extended order upon the east side of the town,
+advancing on our west to within 900 yards of our defences. At each
+point the Boer advance was protected by the guns, the heavy artillery
+to the south-west seeming to be the centre of a circle <span class="pagenum"><a id="page86" name="page86"></a>(p. 86)</span> of
+armed men, who were advancing slowly upon this gallant little town. At
+no time did the enemy, however, beyond the few upon the west side,
+come within effective range of our rifles or our Maxims, contenting
+themselves with taking up positions at 2,000 yards, and dealing out to
+us prolonged rifle fire with some intermittent shelling. The firing
+was very rapid, very general, and more or less impotent. Indeed their
+expenditure of rifle ammunition and their extreme prodigality in
+shells was as much playing into our hands as reaping them any
+advantage.</p>
+
+<p>By night we reckoned that over two hundred shells had been fired
+alone, though it was very doubtful whether there be two hundred pounds
+worth of damage to credit to them. We have had two men wounded, while
+here and there it is believed that certain of the enemy received their
+quietus. Whether we beat them off or whether they lacked the spirit to
+attack us it be impossible to determine, and it is enough to say that,
+whatever may have been their intention, Mafeking remains as it was
+before the first shot was fired. At night, after the attack, Colonel
+Baden-Powell issued a general order congratulating his forces and the
+people in Mafeking upon their calmness during the heavy fire to which
+they had been subjected.</p>
+
+<p>As we are situated at present, it is impossible for us to leave our
+trenches in order to give battle to the enemy, but we are still buoyed
+up by the hope of being able before long to take in our turn the
+offensive. In the meantime, most of us live with our rifles in our
+hands, our bandoliers round our shoulders, existing upon food of the
+roughest kind, peering over sandbags at the distant position of the
+Boers, or crouching in the shell-proof trenches as their shells
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page87" name="page87"></a>(p. 87)</span> burst overhead. There is much gravity in our isolated
+position; there is the danger that, by good luck more than by skill,
+Mafeking may be reduced, but there is no reason to fear that the
+determination and courage of the town will give way. Above all else
+that may be calculated to endure.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page88" name="page88"></a>(p. 88)</span> CHAPTER X<br>
+<span class="smaller">A MIDNIGHT SORTIE</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">Mafeking</span>, <i>October 28th, 1899</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Last night there occurred one of those isolated instances of gallantry
+by which the British sustain their high reputation. For some days, in
+fact ever since the Boers secured their siege guns from Pretoria, the
+enemy has been building a circlet of trenches around Mafeking. At the
+least distance they are perhaps 2,500 yards, unhappily beyond the
+reach of our rifle and Maxim fire. We have seen them lounging in their
+breastworks, we have seen them gathered around their camp fires, and
+the inability of Mafeking to shake off these unwelcome intruders has
+been daily a source of irritation. We have not, of course, allowed
+them to enjoy, undisturbed, the seclusion of their own earthworks,
+and, as a continual goad in their side, little expeditions have been
+despatched to make night fearsome to our besetting foe.</p>
+
+<p>Another of these midnight sorties was undertaken last night, proving
+in itself to be the most important move on our side since Captain
+Fitzclarence and his men engaged the Boers two weeks ago. The same
+officer, 55 men of D Squadron Protectorate <span class="pagenum"><a id="page89" name="page89"></a>(p. 89)</span> Regiment, with
+Lieutenant Murray and 25 men of the Cape Police, were the prime movers
+in an attempt to rush the first line of earthworks of the Boer
+position. Shortly after 11 o'clock Captain Fitzclarence, Lieutenant
+Swinburne and their men started on the perilous undertaking. In the
+faint light of the night we could see their figures from our own
+redans, silently hurrying across the veldt. In the blue haze of the
+distance a black blur betokened the position of the enemy, and it
+seemed that at any moment the hoarse challenge of the Boer outpost
+would give the alarm. The men crept on in slightly extended order,
+holding themselves in readiness for the supreme moment. Nearer, and
+yet nearer, they drew to the Boer entrenchments. The silence was
+intense. The heavy gloom, the mysterious noises of the veldt at night,
+the shadowy patches in the bush, all seemed to heighten the tension of
+one's nerves. In a little while our men were within a few yards of the
+enemy; then furtively each fixed his bayonet to his rifle, and as the
+blades rang home upon their sockets the gallant band raised a ringing
+cheer. Instantly the Boer position was galvanised into activity,
+figures showed everywhere, shots rang out, men shouted, horses
+stampeded, and the confusion which reigned supreme gave to our men one
+vital moment in which to hurl themselves across the intervening space.
+Then there was a loud crash, for, as it happened, many of our men were
+nearer the entrenchments than had been anticipated, and their eager
+charge had precipitated them upon some sheets of corrugated iron which
+the Boers had torn from the grand stand of the racecourse for
+protection from the rain. With our men upon the parapet of the trench,
+a few rapid volleys were fired into the enemy, who, taken completely
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page90" name="page90"></a>(p. 90)</span> by surprise, were altogether demoralised. Those in the first
+trenches seemed to have been petrified by fright. Where they were,
+there they remained, stabbed with bayonet, knocked senseless with the
+rifle's butt, or shot dead by the fire of their own men. Captain
+Fitzclarence himself, with magnificent gallantry and swordsmanship,
+killed four of the enemy with his sword, his men plying their bayonets
+strenuously the while. This was the first trench, and as the fight
+grew hotter, some little memory of their earlier boasts, inspired the
+Boers to make a stand. They fought; they fought well. Their vast
+superiority in numbers did not enter into their minds, since
+Commandant Botha told Lieutenant Moncrieff, who had charge of the flag
+party that arranged for an armistice upon the following morning, that
+he thought that at least a thousand men had been moved against his
+position. The long line of front held by the enemy flashed fire from
+many hundred rifles. Houses in the town caught the bullets, the low
+rises to the east of the position threw back the echo of the rifle
+shots. Our men became the centre of a hail of bullets. The Boers fired
+anywhere and everywhere, seeming content if they could just load their
+rifles and release the trigger. Many thousands of rounds of ammunition
+were expended in the confusion of the moment, the enemy not even
+waiting to see at whom, or at what, they were aiming.</p>
+
+<p>After the first fury had been expended, our men charged at the bayonet
+point right across the line of trenches. It was in this charge that
+the Boers lost most heavily. So soon as the squadron reached the
+extremity of the Boer position they retreated independently, their
+movement covered by the flanking fire of the Cape Police, which added
+still further to <span class="pagenum"><a id="page91" name="page91"></a>(p. 91)</span> the perplexities of the enemy. The galling
+fire of the Cape Police disturbed them for some time longer than was
+required in the actual retirement of the force.</p>
+
+<p>The Boers had been completely unnerved by the onslaught of the
+Protectorate men, and a feature of the hours which elapsed between the
+final withdrawal of our force from the scene of conflict, and the
+advent of dawn, was the heavy firing of the enemy, who still continued
+discharging useless volleys into space. The loss to us in this
+encounter had been 6 killed, 11 wounded, and two of our men taken
+prisoners, but the gravity of the loss which the enemy sustained can
+be most surely measured by the fact that, until a late hour this
+afternoon, they could not find the spirit to resume the bombardment.
+It is said in camp here that one hundred Boers will have reason to
+remember the charge of the Protectorate Regiment.</p>
+
+<p>The way in which these respond to the duties asked of them is shown by
+their conduct during this night attack. Nevertheless, when the
+enrolment of the Protectorate Regiment began in August, 1899, any
+practical opinion upon the future value of its individual units, as
+upon its possible mobility, was the merest hazard. When Colonel Hore
+accepted the command of the regiment, and endeavoured, by every means
+in his power, to promote its development, there were many who
+expressed, after witnessing the preliminary parade of the recruits at
+Ramathlabama Camp, the verdict that the short space of time which was
+allowed to the officers to knock the squadrons into shape would not
+permit the men attaining any proficiency whatsoever. In those early
+days of the war volunteers came from near and far, from Johannesburg
+upon the one side, from Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, and East London
+upon the other, to enlist <span class="pagenum"><a id="page92" name="page92"></a>(p. 92)</span> in the service of her Majesty.
+Time-expired men threw up their billets when the opportunity presented
+itself of rejoining the colours, and while enlistment was proceeding,
+the immediate vicinity of Ramathlabama and the roads from the
+Transvaal into Mafeking presented the appearance of a district which
+has been made the final destination of some mining rush. Pedestrians
+from the Transvaal humping their swags, passengers by train from the
+south, well-to-do youngsters from different parts of the Protectorate
+or from the back-lying areas of the colony, all made their roads
+converge upon Mafeking. At that time, however, when the work of
+enlisting was in its infancy, and the services of able-bodied men were
+much required, the Colonial Government, at the instigation of Mr.
+Schreiner, whose dubious policy was cheerfully endorsed by his
+colleagues, refused to allow her Majesty's soldiers, who were in
+process of enlistment for that special purpose, to afford Mafeking the
+moral value of their presence. No sooner had word reached the ears of
+the Colonial Cabinet that the work of recruiting was proceeding around
+Mafeking, than the recruiting officers were ordered to withdraw
+immediately from the precincts of the colony so long as they continued
+to act in a way which might give some possible offence to the dear
+friend, guardian, and patron saint of Cape Colony, Paul Kruger. After
+a very decorous and manly remonstrance, Colonel Hore withdrew his
+headquarters and his men sixteen miles across the border to
+Ramathlabama Camp, from which point the enlistment of the Protectorate
+Regiment was continued.</p>
+
+<p>The Protectorate Regiment is strictly an irregular soldiery, composed
+of men drawn from every rank <span class="pagenum"><a id="page93" name="page93"></a>(p. 93)</span> of African life, many of whom
+are gentle by birth and education and possessed of no little means. In
+the ranks of the regiment there are those who have been at the
+university and public schools; there are also mechanics, miners, farm
+hands, and men who have known office life. The nationalities of the
+men are as varied as their occupations in peace times are diffuse.
+There are a few Americans, some Germans, and Norwegians, although for
+the most part the regiment is British; as a whole, perhaps, it is an
+ill-assorted assembly of adventurers, animated with the same love of
+fighting and the glories of war, of lust and bloodshed which
+characterised the lives of the buccaneers of old. In other days, and
+in other lands, they would be sailing the sea for treasure, or
+combining in the quest for gold in some hidden extremity of the
+world's surface. The prospect of free rations, of uniform, and
+allowance of pocket money, was of course sufficient to draw a few;
+but, as a body, the idler upon the farm, the bar-loafer from the town,
+and the thoroughly incompetent are as distinguished by their absence,
+as the general tone of the regiment is suffused with martial ardour.
+It is quite impossible to treat these men with the cast-iron
+regulations which enthral the Imperial soldier. He does not understand
+the petty exactions, the never-ending restraint which would be imposed
+upon him had he accepted the conditions which govern and regulate life
+in our army. He experiences and gives voice to a very genuine aversion
+to fatigues of every description, and it has required the exercise of
+much tact and no little personal persuasion to induce the men to
+become reconciled to the labours of their calling. They have accepted
+with some diffidence the fact that it is necessary for <span class="pagenum"><a id="page94" name="page94"></a>(p. 94)</span> them
+to fulfil, at the present moment, many irritating, but essentially
+important fatigues which may not have entered into their original
+forecast of the duties which would be allotted to them. They
+frequently indulge in outbursts of choice expletives, at the expense
+of their non-commissioned officers, while they do not hesitate to
+correct, or at least to argue about what they imagine to be wrong in
+the execution of some order.</p>
+
+<p>The conditions under which these men were enrolled were supposed to
+admit those only who could ride as well as shoot, and before the
+initial tests were applied the standard of the regiment upon paper was
+exceptionally high. After the first parade, however, it was seen that
+by far the great majority of the regiment was incapable of managing
+their horses. Upon parade, when horses and men were put through
+cavalry exercises, detached and riderless steeds would be seen
+galloping and bucking in all directions. However, those who were
+unproficient did not propose to allow their cattle to hold the mastery
+for any longer than was absolutely necessary, and many was the tough
+fight fought to a bitter end between the raw recruit and his unbroken,
+unmanageable mount. After many days and an inordinate amount of hard
+work, the troop officers managed to lick their men into a very
+presentable appearance until, with the beginning of the war, the
+squadrons of the Protectorate Regiment were as capable and efficient a
+body of irregular mounted infantry as any that had been enrolled by
+local movement in South Africa. During the siege there has been no
+chance to continue those early exercises, and it is not at all
+unlikely that when they become mounted once more the former
+difficulties will again assert themselves <span class="pagenum"><a id="page95" name="page95"></a>(p. 95)</span> and, bearing this
+in mind, it is difficult to conclude that as a fighting force they
+will not be more at home upon their feet than in the saddle, since
+they will find their attentions occupied as much by the management of
+their steeds as with the handling of their weapons.</p>
+
+<p>If they be not quite so mobile in the field as more experienced
+troops, there is no doubt that they present a determined front to the
+fire of the enemy. They have a keen relish for any preparation which
+appears to lead to some immediate collision, while they profess an
+equally profound disgust at their enforced inactivity. How these men
+might act if, through the smoke-filled air, they saw an array of
+sparkling bayonets, or heard the serried ranks of hostile lines
+advancing to the charge, it is impossible to say; but in the few
+fights which we have had the personal element has been strong, and the
+individual courage high. We have lacked the spectacle of the
+many-coloured, steel-edged columns impelled forward by the impulse of
+some dominant power, with the dusty faces of the men, the stumbling,
+sore-stricken feet, the gasping breath of the stragglers who tired,
+dead beat, and thirsty, limp to the rear; but the play of human
+passion in our little fighting force has not been absent. We have had
+the wager of life against life, the angry, turbulent crash of
+fierce-blooded men, fighting under the shadow of death, with their
+emotions strained as they struggled in the very atmosphere of passion.
+And it has done us good to see how reliable the force has been about
+which so much doubt existed. Unlike the Imperial service, these
+irregular corps act as much for the unit as they do for the mass, as
+animated by terror or by valour, by a fatal despair, or by a blooded
+triumph, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page96" name="page96"></a>(p. 96)</span> they fight for an individual supremacy. That is the
+moment of their triumph, and it is these splendid qualities of savage
+and physical animalism which makes it more easy to treat them with a
+wider latitude than is usual. Their magnificent hardihood, their
+splendid fighting gifts, their lurid blasphemy, their admiration for
+officers who are men, their appalling debauchery, gives to them the
+ideal setting of the rough but very gallant soldier of fortune, who,
+scorning his enemy and hating a retreat, has played so omnipotent a
+part in the history of the universe.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page97" name="page97"></a>(p. 97)</span> CHAPTER XI<br>
+<span class="smaller">CANNON KOPJE</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">Mafeking</span>, <i>October 31st, 1899</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Cannon Kopje is in itself a hideous cluster of stones, perched upon a
+rocky ridge, which commands the town, a mile across the veldt. It is
+impossible to conceive any more positive death-trap than that which
+was contained in this kopje, and whatever may have been the
+determining element in its original construction, it is infinitely to
+be regretted that the possibilities of its being under shell fire were
+never very seriously contemplated. It was thrown up during the Warren
+expedition, and much as these things go, was neither removed nor
+replaced until Monday's bombardment established its complete
+uselessness under shell fire, and the folly of which Colonel
+Baden-Powell was guilty in leaving it unprotected. It is too late to
+say much now, but we have paid a heavy price for our neglect and
+carelessness. We found it here when we came; we put men into it, we
+are maintaining men there, and it is essential to the safety of our
+town that we should still hold it. Since the action an effort has been
+made to improve it; a splinter-proof shelter has been thrown across
+the trench, and traverses have been thrown <span class="pagenum"><a id="page98" name="page98"></a>(p. 98)</span> out, but the work
+of the past few days has perhaps prepared the kopje for further
+shelling at the enemy's convenience. As a <i>pi�ce de r�sistance</i> in the
+defence of Mafeking, Cannon Kopje is the most strategically important
+position near Mafeking, and we may reckon that, at the moment when
+these wretched shepherds who are besieging us, secure this fort, to
+Mafeking itself there remains but a few hours.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Walford had under his command at the fort forty-four men with
+a Maxim detachment from the Protectorate Regiment. The fairest
+estimate of the men against him would place the Boer forces at no less
+than eight hundred with four guns. Sunday night, the look-out from
+Cannon Kopje saw a body of Boers making their way to a point somewhat
+nearer the town than had hitherto been their custom, and our
+expectations having been aroused by this movement we were inclined to
+believe that the enemy might attack upon the following morning. Our
+anticipations were further grounded upon the fact that the Boers to
+the south-west of the town, had by no means despised the claims of
+Cannon Kopje upon their attentions, and to every three shells which
+their guns had thrown into the town during the days which the siege
+had lasted, one, in a proportion of one in three, had been fired at
+Cannon Kopje. It has gradually come to be considered, therefore, that
+Cannon Kopje was a point against which the Boers would, sooner or
+later, direct an attack, since its capture was necessary to the
+successful execution of any general movement against the town.</p>
+
+<a id="img006" name="img006"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img006.jpg" width="500" height="350" alt="" title="">
+<p class="smcap">CANNON KOPJE.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The detachment of Police, who formed the garrison at Cannon Kopje,
+upon this day performed a most brilliant service for the town by
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page99" name="page99"></a>(p. 99)</span> their determined and gallant stand. Perhaps in war more
+than in anything else, chance is a greater arbiter than we like to
+consider, and if it had not been for the chance attack against Cannon
+Kopje, which resulted in the defeat of the Boer forces, it is not
+improbable that Mafeking itself would have been invaded by the enemy.
+The subjugation of this point, in reality the turning point in the
+siege, was, however, of vital concern to Commandant Cronje, since it
+had been his intention to bombard the south-east portion of the town,
+and to carry it with a large force which he had assembled during the
+night in the adjacent valley of the Molopo River. When day had dawned,
+the look-out from Cannon Kopje had already reported to Colonel Walford
+that there was unusual activity in the Boer camp; at the moment this
+was stirring news, and indeed the fatigues for the night had been
+barely dismissed when an experimental shell from the Boer artillery to
+test the range, opened the action. During the night, and about the
+close of Sunday, the enemy's artillery had taken up their position,
+and as the grey of dawn ushered in the fatal day, a large force of
+Boers moved out from their laager and occupied any point by which they
+might command the area of the fort. It seemed to me, as I witnessed
+their disposition, that at least a third of the forces before Mafeking
+had been concentrated upon Cannon Kopje, and if so great a tragedy had
+not attended the action, we could have afforded to laugh at the
+efforts of an enemy so hopelessly incompetent as the Boer force has
+proved itself to be. Against a mere gun emplacement and forty-four
+men, shell fire from four guns was directed, and the services of eight
+hundred men utilised. In the extreme <span class="pagenum"><a id="page100" name="page100"></a>(p. 100)</span> west there was "Big
+Ben" and a seven-pounder; in the extreme east there was a
+twelve-pounder. Within a circle from these two points, and within
+effective range, a seven-pounder and quick-firing Maxim-Nordenfeldt
+had been stationed. The big gun took no part at all in this attack
+upon the kopje, but at every moment that the enemy's shell fire
+lapsed, the Boer marksmen opened with their Mauser rifles. Their rifle
+fire stretched from the extremities of either flank and enfiladed the
+interior trenches of the kopje. Nothing perhaps in the history of
+their operations along this frontier, was so calculated to prove
+successful as the Boer attack upon Cannon Kopje. They had the guns,
+the men, and they held all commanding points, while they themselves
+were snugly ensconced behind cover almost impervious to shell fire.
+With these advantages it would seem morally impossible that forty-four
+men could withstand the unceasing stream of shells, the mist of
+bullets, which comprised the zone of fire of which the kopje was the
+centre. Had these men wavered, such a thing is easy to explain; had
+they fallen back upon the town, their movement would have been in
+order. But by preference they stopped at their posts, the mark for
+every Boer rifle, the objective of the enemy's shell fire, until so
+great had been our execution upon the enemy that the Boers themselves
+proclaimed an armistice under the protection of the Red Cross flag.
+When this was decreed one-fourth of the detachment in the kopje were
+out of action, and eight of these were killed. But the lamentable list
+of fatalities had been piled up only at great cost to the enemy, since
+around the circle of the fort, and not four hundred yards away, we
+could see the Boer ambulances picking up their <span class="pagenum"><a id="page101" name="page101"></a>(p. 101)</span> dead and
+wounded. It has been stated that they lost one hundred men, and that a
+further fifty were seriously wounded, but this is preposterous; while
+if we err at all towards our foe it is in the computation of the
+losses which we claim to have inflicted upon them. It is almost
+impossible to kill a Dutchman on the field, since they are as
+pertinacious and industrious as beetles in seeking cover. We saw two
+waggon loads pass from their firing-line to their laager, but I am
+inclined to doubt if we killed and wounded forty of the enemy. To have
+scored that number in the face of the most remarkable fusilade of
+bullet and shell which was directed against the fort is a wonderful
+feat, since it should not be forgotten that to every shot which we
+fired, there were at least four hundred barrels emptied at our
+marksmen in return. Such was the unfortunate construction of Cannon
+Kopje, however, and the gross neglect with which it has been treated
+to prepare for the present war, that it was not possible for our men
+to use their loopholes, and as it was most necessary to hold the fort
+each man who fired stood to his feet, and exposed himself above the
+breastwork to the full force of the Boer rifles. The enemy had carried
+out their movement so well, that under cover of their guns, and the
+great annoyance of their enfilading fire, they had made it almost
+impossible for the defenders of the fort to pay much attention to
+their advance. They compelled men to take cover, since if anything
+were seen to move behind the parapet of the fort, the Boers swept the
+area of the position with most cruel and deadly volleys. But cover was
+sought only at intervals, and when the hail of shells became too
+tempestuous, since the brave little garrison were impressed with a
+courage which scorned the fire <span class="pagenum"><a id="page102" name="page102"></a>(p. 102)</span> which was turned upon them.
+When they manned the defences and maintained a sturdy front the Boers
+were nonplussed. They had expected to carry the position whereas they
+were losing men more rapidly than they were killing them. We fired by
+six, we fired independently, and whenever it was possible, the Maxim
+swept the front of the enemy, but, relatively speaking, nothing could
+prevail against the Boer numbers. It was easy enough to hold them in
+check, since the first well-directed volley made them fall back some
+few yards, but the heavy shell fire would sooner or later have told
+its tale. It had already claimed the majority of those who were hit,
+since if the shells did not burst and strike some one of those who
+were lying near, they splintered upon the stones which composed the
+defences of the fort and these splintered in their turn, coming into
+contact with any one who was crouching behind them for shelter. Cannon
+Kopje in itself was a terrible lesson; but it was also a magnificent
+example of gallant conduct in the field. Captain the Hon. D. Marsham
+who was killed, and Captain Charles Alexander Kerr Pechell, who died
+in the course of the morning from wounds received, were individually
+setting as fine an object lesson to their men as could be conceived,
+yet it must not be imagined that the standard of their bravery was
+much finer or much greater than that of their comrades. Colonel
+Walford and Colonel Baden-Powell have each expressed their high
+appreciation of the conduct of the men who survived the attack, and
+although, as befits their rank, the example of the officers was
+admirable, it was no better in reality than the action of the men over
+whom they were commanding. Captain Marsham was struck by a rifle
+bullet in turning to render some assistance to a <span class="pagenum"><a id="page103" name="page103"></a>(p. 103)</span> wounded
+comrade. As he attempted to do this a second bullet passed through his
+chest, and a moment later he was dead, just as a third bullet passed
+through his shoulder. It was as fine a death as any soldier could
+perhaps have chosen, and it had the crowning mercy of being
+instantaneous.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Pechell was busying himself in directing the rifle fire from
+the fort, and thereby directly drew the attention of the enemy. He,
+with a detachment of six men, ranged up from time to time, and picked
+off the enemy with well-aimed volleys. They had taken up their
+position behind the eastern wing of the kopje, engaging a body of the
+enemy whose flank fire enfiladed our position. The first shell which
+came at these six men fell short, and the second and the third
+bursting in the same place, scattered the outer covering of the
+breastwork. Pechell ordered his men to retire from the direct line of
+shell fire, when just as they were shifting their position a shell
+struck the stone parapet, and burst among them. Private Burrows was
+killed at once, just as he had been admiring the shooting of a
+comrade. Sergeant-Major Upton and Captain Pechell received some
+terrible injuries; poor Pechell died of injury extending from the
+thigh to the shoulder. No one regrets, so much as his comrades,
+Captain Pechell's gallant act, since had he not been endowed with most
+magnificent courage he would have preserved discretion in the method
+by which he exposed himself to the enemy, and by the death of these
+two officers, Captain Marsham and Captain Pechell, her Majesty loses
+two officers of exceptional promise and soldierly qualifications.</p>
+
+<p>The casualties of this action alone were eight <span class="pagenum"><a id="page104" name="page104"></a>(p. 104)</span> killed and
+three wounded, four being killed upon the spot, four dying of their
+wounds within twelve hours of the action. Captain Marsham,
+Sergeant-Major Curnihan, Private Burrows, and Private Martin were
+killed in the fort; Captain Pechell, Sergeant-Major Upton, Private
+Nicholas and Private Lloyd died of wounds; Sergeant-Major Butler,
+Corporal Cooke and Private Newton were wounded.</p>
+
+<p>That night the garrison paid its farewell duties to those gallant men
+who were killed at Cannon Kopje. Their interment took place at six
+o'clock, and as we followed in the wake of the <i>cort�ge</i> we felt the
+shock which brought home to each of us the bitter fact that we should
+henceforth know them no more. The attack of the Boers upon Cannon
+Kopje had been so sudden, so utterly unexpected, and the manner in
+which these men of the British South Africa Police had met their
+death, had been so valorous that the sympathies of the entire town had
+been most keenly aroused and overcome by the appalling swiftness of
+the tragedy; there was no one who did not feel that in some way he was
+himself a mourner even though the men who had been killed were quite
+indifferent to him. Doubtless before the siege terminates we shall
+become accustomed to our situation, and realise that after all it is
+but the natural issue to a condition of belligerency that no one can
+quite tell what sorrow the day will bring forth. But at present these
+tragedies come upon us with a vivid freshness which is almost
+unnerving and which stimulate disquietening fancies in the minds even
+of the most callous.</p>
+
+<p>The cemetery here is in close proximity to the Boer lines, and lies to
+the north of the town. It is a small enclosure banked by white rough
+stones, and set amid <span class="pagenum"><a id="page105" name="page105"></a>(p. 105)</span> green trees, where gentle fragrance
+imparts a balminess to the breeze. It is as quiet and peaceful, by
+force of contrast to the dried-up veldt around, as some oasis in the
+desert. There is a winding path from the hospital to the cemetery; a
+road which at the present moment is flanked in two places by the forts
+of the Railway Division, and kept well defined by the footsteps of
+those who bear their burdens to the tomb. Since the siege began we
+have lost twenty-five, and with one engagement following rapidly upon
+another, nightfall usually ushers in a scene in which a small body of
+men may be seen gathered round an open grave, waiting irresolutely to
+take some share in the rites of the burial service. We paced slowly
+and solemnly along this veldt track, depressed not so much by the fate
+which had befallen them, as by the hideous realism with which the
+appalling uncertainty of war had been brought home to us. In the
+darkness of the evening we could see across the veldt the fires of the
+enemy's position, and as the <i>cort�ge</i> wound its way from the hospital
+we marched to the boom of the Boer artillery, while passing bullets
+sang the notes of our evening hymn above our heads, and dropped about
+us in the sand. Along the eastern front of the town as it lay behind
+us, an occasional blaze of light in the sky told us where the shells
+of the enemy were bursting, and to many came the thought that perhaps
+even of those who had remained to do their duty in the trenches, there
+were some who, less fortunate than others, might have already kept
+their last vigils. In time we reached the grave side, then as we
+gathered round the open spaces which had been so quickly prepared,
+those who felt their loss the keenest, those who had been comrades and
+close friends of the killed, paid their last homage <span class="pagenum"><a id="page106" name="page106"></a>(p. 106)</span> to their
+memory by placing some little trinket, some slight token of personal
+friendship and affection, upon the winding sheet. At this juncture,
+when war is all around us, when every able-bodied man is standing to
+his arms, it is not possible to provide the dead with anything better
+than a simple sheet. The men who fall in these days are interred in
+their blood-stained uniforms, since there be no time in which to dress
+their bodies. Those upon whom the funeral service was about to be read
+lay in two waggons, silent shrouded witnesses to the fleeting vanity
+which attends all heroes. Around the entrance to the cemetery the
+officers of the staff, the commanding officers of the outposts,
+representatives of every corps and every troop had foregathered,
+following closely upon the heels of those who, bearing the grim
+burdens upon their shoulders epitomised in their action the horrors of
+war. It seemed as we stood there waiting, listening to the solemn
+words of the service, punctuated now and then as they were, by the
+screams of shells, by the angry snap of the Mauser, and the droning of
+the Martini bullets, that these men who were now dead had achieved the
+full honour of their calling. Indeed, many were there who would have
+given gladly their own lives in exchange for that of their friend,
+while there was not one who did not feel that the manner in which
+their end had come to them was impressed with all that was most noble.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment after the service had concluded, we stood listening to
+the strains of the Last Call. As its solemn notes died away, and we
+retraced our steps to the various trenches and earthworks which, for
+the moment, gave us shelter, we little imagined that within a few
+hours, those of us who were correspondents <span class="pagenum"><a id="page107" name="page107"></a>(p. 107)</span> would follow the
+body of one from amongst ourselves once more upon this road. The
+following night Lieutenant Murchison, who was in charge of the guns,
+wilfully shot with his revolver Mr. E. G. Parslow, war correspondent
+of the London <i>Daily Chronicle</i>. The horror of such a crime still
+hangs over us, and is not in any way diminished by the fact that an
+officer who had already distinguished himself by his career, should
+now be awaiting the verdict of a Field Court Martial upon the gravest
+charge in the criminal calendar. Poor Parslow had endeared himself to
+everybody by the genial sympathy which he extended to those who were
+themselves in trouble. He had won the admiration of many by the
+calmness with which he conducted himself under the heaviest fire.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page108" name="page108"></a>(p. 108)</span> CHAPTER XII<br>
+<span class="smaller">A RECONNAISSANCE</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">Mafeking</span>, <i>November 7th, 1899</i>.</p>
+
+<p>A short canter from Mafeking across the sloping expanse of the veldt
+and the interior lines of its western defences lie before one. It can
+be said that Cannon Kopje to the south-west and Fort Miller to the
+north-west are the two most outlying extremities of the outposts on
+this front. Between them there is an almost unbroken chain of
+earthworks, manned by detachments from squadrons of the Protectorate
+Regiment, from the British South Africa Police, from the Cape Police,
+and even from the Native stadt. These men live the lives of soldiers
+whose every moment is engaged in watching a foe that might at any
+opportunity which is given them charge down upon our lines. Unlike the
+Boers, we do not despise the native interests, and much of the
+weakness of our position emanates from the fact that we have
+incorporated within the mystic circle of our armed defence the most
+outlying areas of the native reserve. These, indeed, can very properly
+be considered the exterior lines of the western outposts. It would
+have been a very simple thing for Colonel <span class="pagenum"><a id="page109" name="page109"></a>(p. 109)</span> Baden-Powell to
+have ordered the destruction of the Native stadt, compelling its
+inhabitants to seek what protection they could from the inclemency of
+the elements, from a benign Providence, and the rapacious Boer.
+Mafeking, without the Native stadt, could have been much more easily
+defended, since the base of the slopes, across which our advanced
+trenches now extend, would have been defended from the ridges of the
+acclivities which rise from them. This would have given to the
+advanced outposts some commanding heights from which the western
+plains could have been more easily swept. As it is, however, the
+policy which Colonel Baden-Powell is adopting towards the native
+tribe, whose huts were here many generations before white men ever set
+their feet in this part of the country, is one which extends to them
+the same Imperial protection as he has extended to the colonists in
+Mafeking. Where the Native stadt had been included in any portion of
+the defences, the Baralongs have been assisted to defend, and have
+been instructed in the means by which they might secure immunity for
+themselves and for their stadt.</p>
+
+<p>The entrenchments of the Boers rise like mole-hills from the surface
+of the plain, although there is a curious regard for what has been
+humorously termed "three mile limit." The valley of the Molopo River
+sets a background to the Boer position, the placid waters of the
+stream wind through their lines, while their chief laagers have been
+constructed upon the ridges of its watershed. From Cannon Kopje a
+commanding view of the whole country on all sides of Mafeking may be
+obtained, the Boer laagers giving to the expanses of the valley the
+aspect of a mining camp. From different points of observation the
+daily <span class="pagenum"><a id="page110" name="page110"></a>(p. 110)</span> life of the enemy can be noted. In the early morning
+the smoke of many fires swings in thin spirals to the sky, and the
+silence of the plain is broken by the echoes which echo back the
+noises of the camp. It would seem that they are as regular in the
+ordering of their camp life as we are. When the sun has warmed the
+air, and evaporated the morning dew from the grass, we can see them
+out-pinning their horses, driving their cattle to fresh pastures, and
+endeavouring by the establishment of sentries and Cossack posts to
+take the siege of Mafeking as a very serious element in their lives.
+Everywhere there is the green of early summer covering the plain with
+the sheen of Nature's youth. Between the lines of the two camps graze
+herds of cattle, in themselves affording tempting bait to the
+predatory instincts of the Boers, who, if they did not lack the
+courage of their desires, would have already attempted to raid the
+browsing oxen. So far as our own outposts are concerned, along this
+line there are many days in which nothing whatever happens, just as
+there are others in which the dawn of day is made hideous by the
+scream of shells, the singing of the Mauser, the angry rustle of the
+Nordenfeldt and Maxim. The Boers have many guns along this side, and
+from time to time they treat us to bombardments, lacking both purpose
+and any definite result, beyond the expenditure of much ammunition.
+When the shells are falling every one who can seeks cover, watching
+with some impatience their passing, and could we in these moments but
+give existence to our wishes, it would be that opportunity might come
+at once to turn the tables upon our enemy. It is neither very
+honourable nor very pleasing to have to preserve discretion as the
+better part of valour, but, while we <span class="pagenum"><a id="page111" name="page111"></a>(p. 111)</span> remain the objective of
+their fire, our pent-up energies are developing a fine hatred against
+the foe. Colonel Baden-Powell has some hope of giving indulgence to
+the spirit which animates his men, and, even if the moment be somewhat
+uncertain, no small contentment is derived from such belief. Morning
+and night we gird our loins for the attack, but night and morning we
+awaken to a sense of infinite disappointment, yet when it comes they
+may expect an avalanche, and, in result, an overthrow.</p>
+
+<p>Day is dreary, sun-swept, dusty, teased with insects, and infinitely
+wearisome, but with the coming of night, the fragrant coolness of the
+air, the soft lisping of the evening breeze bringeth contentment. Each
+evening, when the peace of the camp be settled and the men resting,
+there is always an outpost standing within a few hundred yards of the
+Boer camp. If the night be fine, he lies behind the stones of a
+neighbouring kopje; but whether it be fine or wet, the guard is
+posted; the safety of the camp depending upon his vigilance. Sometimes
+he is relieved hourly, sometimes his watch is of four hours' duration.
+It depends upon the proximity of his post to the enemy's lines, but,
+lying there within earshot of the Boers, it is just possible to
+realise the full gravity of our situation. The element of danger is
+greater in these nocturnal hours, and men go to rest, their spirits
+buoyed up with the infinite zest which comes from anticipating a night
+attack. They sleep beside their arms, their posts are doubled, and the
+officers of the watch make hourly rounds. In the distance, across the
+plain and enveloped with the darkness of the veldt, the difficulty of
+seeing intensified by shadows, the outline of the Boer laagers can be
+demarcated. Their camp fires die down one by one, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page112" name="page112"></a>(p. 112)</span> and
+presently, beyond the restless moving of their cattle, no sign of life
+animates their position. It is in such moments that those who lead us
+deplore the paucity of the numbers under their command, since, were it
+possible to spare the men, there have been several occasions, when a
+midnight dash, after the fashion of Captain Fitzclarence, or the
+repetition of the reconnaissance at daybreak such as Major Godley so
+gallantly led, could have been organised with equally satisfactory
+results.</p>
+
+<a id="img007" name="img007"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img007.jpg" width="500" height="348" alt="" title="">
+<p class="smcap">MAJOR A. J. GODLEY OF THE WESTERN OUTPOSTS ON THE
+LOOK-OUT.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>However, within the last few days, Colonel Baden-Powell has taken
+advantage of the enemy's position upon this front to order the western
+outposts to spend some few hours in worrying the enemy. It was a very
+pleasant little outing for us, and eminently beneficial, since the
+excitement attendant upon such a man&oelig;uvre was as wholesome as a
+bumper of champagne. Word had already reached me of this contemplated
+move upon the enemy, and Lieutenant Paton, of C Squadron, was good
+enough to offer the hospitality of his hut for the night in question.
+We dined, not with the guilty splendour of the Trocadero or amid the
+sombre magnificence of Prince's, but in the rough-and-ready fashion
+which falls to those who, carrying their lives in their hands, have at
+most but a moment to spare for such unimportant incidents as breakfast
+and dinner. As a humble offering to the board I had drawn from the
+Army Service Stores a tin of canned mutton, and procured
+somewhere&mdash;which may or may not have been a private garden&mdash;a luscious
+marrow, and with these I hied myself to Lieutenant Paton's quarters.
+Along this western front there are many delightful and very genial
+officers. There is Major Godley, who is in command of the whole line;
+Colonel Walford, who commands <span class="pagenum"><a id="page113" name="page113"></a>(p. 113)</span> Cannon Kopje; there are
+Captain Vernon and Captain Marsh, who, with Major Godley, are Imperial
+special service men; Lieutenant Holden and my host. The distances
+between their quarters are but slight, and perhaps the most
+entertaining moment in the siege is that which enables us to
+foregather at Major Godley's, chatting with eagerness and charming
+frankness upon the possibilities of the war as they are suggested by
+our immediate environment. By the time that I had arrived Lieutenant
+Paton's boy had prepared a savoury stew, and such was the scarcity of
+fresh meat that we had no hesitation in dedicating the canned mutton
+to some other meal. We ate, and pleasantly indulged in lime juice and
+water, smoking with contented elegance some choice cigarettes. After
+we had dined a short conference was held at Major Godley's, and then
+to rest, perchance to spend the night in sleeping, or perchance, to
+scratch; for fleas and flies, the parasitic mosquito and the insidious
+ant, make both day and night a source of irritation.</p>
+
+<p>The men of C Squadron under Captain Vernon, the Bechuanaland Rifles
+under Captain Cowan, and three guns under Major Panzera and Lieutenant
+Daniels, of the British South Africa Police, were engaged in the
+movement, and distinguished themselves in what they did as well as can
+be expected. At a quarter to two we turned out. Greatcoats had been
+left behind, men slinging their waterbottles and bandoliers upon their
+shoulders. We were to meet at the base of a hill rising a few hundred
+yards across the veldt from Major Godley's. Night hung heavily upon
+us, the sky was dark, and everything seemed to point to the wisdom of
+choosing such a night. We stepped out briskly, although to our
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page114" name="page114"></a>(p. 114)</span> strained nerves the soft tread of the men sounded as the
+rumble of a juggernaut. However, we proceeded very quietly, and the
+sheen of sand, the white lustre of the road, the rustle of the thorn
+bushes were presently left behind as we took our stand in the rear of
+Major Godley's troop. In the valley at the base of the hill we halted.
+Before us, a scarcely perceptible rise silhouetted against the sky,
+the bushes lining the summit throwing themselves into prominence
+against the grey, black, background, while here and there trees tossed
+their arms silently and warningly in the breeze. All around us there
+was the hum of insect life, that monotonous dead level buzz of
+countless insects and the baying of the bull frogs. And we waited,
+when out of the darkness came Major Godley, a tall, thin figure
+impressed with energy and determination, inspecting the lines.</p>
+
+<p>The squadron was dismounted, and had fallen in by troops, the dull
+khaki of the Protectorate Regiment scarcely showing up against the
+grey-blackness of the night; and at either end of the line there was a
+squad of Bechuanaland Rifles and a contingent of natives. As they
+stood there, there were nearly one hundred men, and, though the order
+had been given to be in this position at 2.30, and the hour had come,
+we were waiting for the guns. Presently, as we waited, barely a mile
+from the Boer laager, there was the rumble of artillery in the
+distance. As we heard it officers and men believed that at any moment
+the Boer camp would sound the alarm. We could hear the guns rising
+over hillocks, falling heavily upon stones, or crushing back upon some
+boulder. Indeed there was noise enough to wake the dead themselves.
+The rattle of the limber was only a little more acute than the tension
+on our nerves. Men swore silently <span class="pagenum"><a id="page115" name="page115"></a>(p. 115)</span> at the guns and showed
+their restlessness as the noise grew louder. In a little the Major
+bustled up all eagerness and fluff and worry, and then as the guns
+trailed behind us and the little column moved on, it seemed that every
+step we advanced further would have brought the Boers tumbling about
+our ears. Much as one creeps about a house at night treading on every
+board which creaks in preference to those which do not creak, so was
+the march of the column. As the guns came on they seemed to find
+stones everywhere. Wheels fell into snug hollows, jammed in ragged
+holes, and bumped with such heaviness that the night was made hideous
+by the echo of their rumble. Occasionally we stopped, as though to
+allow the peace of night to settle. Then we moved forward once again
+and in a little we halted for the final stage. The guns took up their
+position to the left of the column, the hundred men lying in extended
+order across the veldt. Before us there was the ridge of rising veldt
+and scrub, and so we rested, fretting with curious impatience at the
+signs of life which began to animate the enemy's camp. When we stood
+up we could see the dull white of their waggons bent in position for
+their laager; we could see the fires within, we could hear in the
+still silence of early dawn the chopping of wood as the axe fell upon
+the logs. The sides of the valley threw back the noise until, echoes
+echoing back, the sound caught our ears, and so we watched and waited
+until gradually dawn came.</p>
+
+<p>The dull-black beauty of the night passed, slipping into grey and
+leaving the uncertain mystery of an early morning sky. A red streak
+across the east threw glimpses of light into the canopy of heaven,
+when, as a signal of its birth, there came the words to <span class="pagenum"><a id="page116" name="page116"></a>(p. 116)</span>
+fire; then the line of creeping figures which had gained the ridge
+pressed their rifles through the scrub and bush which hedged the top,
+and, crouching to the ground, opened the reconnaissance. The objective
+of the night attack which Major Godley was commanding had been to
+effect a reconnaissance in force against the western laagers of the
+Boers. In respect to the constant increase of the force that surrounds
+Mafeking, almost the one means of temporarily checking their advance
+which remains to us is through the medium of these attacks.
+Information had been brought into headquarters that the Boers were
+massing upon the east side of the town, the small laager on the west
+being temporarily evacuated. The night dash would both surprise and
+annoy the enemy, and anything which combined such benign ends was very
+welcome. The guns were to throw a few shells, the men were to fire a
+few volleys; when the squadron would fall back by troops their
+reconnaissance completed. We opened by volleys poured incontinently
+into their camp, but so soon as the guns had discharged the first
+shells into the laager, the little signs of order which had animated
+the natives disappeared, and although they maintained their line they
+began an independent practice. It was the first time that native arms
+had been incorporated with our men, and it is to be hoped, before the
+next experiment is repeated, they will have been got more under
+control. Excellent as they may be on their own account, they are
+almost altogether useless when removed from the immediate spheres of
+utility. Our fire at first was high, and many rounds of bullet and
+shell fire were absolutely wasted. Presently Daniels secured the range
+for the guns, and shells, prettily planted, ruined many waggons. The
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page117" name="page117"></a>(p. 117)</span> sortie, so far as we were concerned, proceeded merrily,
+doing no material damage, but making a hell of a lot of noise. The
+glories of the early morning were soon enveloped in the heavy smoke
+from the rifles of the natives, who still continued blazing
+independently and indifferently at the enemy's position and who also
+generally struck the earth a few yards short of their own front of
+fire. The opportunity which was thus afforded of both surprising and
+annoying the enemy was very welcome, and the night dash was entered
+into with infinite zest. So soon as the guns had discharged their
+first shell our men began to fire by volleys, but the sortie had not
+progressed very far when the activity in the Boer lines showed that
+they were preparing to repel a force much larger than the mere
+reconnoitering party which was actually before them. In the uncertain
+light of rising morn a body of 600 Boers could be seen riding from the
+main laager upon the western front to the support of the minor camp.
+We have hitherto thought the Boers timid at close quarters, but in
+this case there was every sign of haste and eagerness on the part of
+the reinforcements to arrive upon the scene of action. We could see
+them dismounting as they came up and run to the laager, some of them
+firing as they ran, others of them forming into detached parties and
+firing from isolated positions. After volleying for some minutes our
+men fulfilled the object of their morning excursion and were preparing
+to retire by troops, when, owing to the presence of the
+reinforcements, firing became general. Our rifles replied to their
+rifles, our two seven-pounders replied to their guns, but beyond this
+nothing was permitted to interfere with the successful completion of
+our work. It mattered very little to us how fiercely the enemy's
+Nordenfeldts spat out <span class="pagenum"><a id="page118" name="page118"></a>(p. 118)</span> defiance or what their rifles said,
+for we fell back steadily, the different troops doubling fifty, one
+hundred, and one hundred and fifty yards each time. The fire as the
+various troops took up the retirement became very hot, the enemy
+cheerfully Mausering into space. For some hours after our men had
+gained the security of their own trenches the enemy maintained a heavy
+fire upon the several outposts along the western front. During the
+retirement of C Squadron Major Godley had ordered Captain Cowan to
+occupy Fort Eyre, a rifle trench, with a detachment of Bechuanaland
+Mounted Rifles, so that he might check any signs of advance which the
+enemy might display. In consequence of this, Major Godley, Captain
+Cowan, Lieutenant Feltham, and their men experienced as severe a fire
+as any which has, at present, been received from the Boers. The enemy
+made a determined rifle attack upon the work, but lacking the courage
+to charge, after some few hours' rifle firing, they withdrew.</p>
+
+<p>These little encounters are all that the outposts have with which to
+pass their time, and the success with which they have been conducted
+has been sufficient to check the enemy, and to cause him to reflect
+upon the relative value of the means at our command. The defence of
+the western front lies wholly in the hands of men from the
+Protectorate Regiment and a few native contingents. The Town Guard is
+not <i>en evidence</i> upon the west side, the area of their exertions
+being confined to the more immediate precincts of the town. And by
+this it does not seem that the Town Guard will have much opportunity
+to distinguish itself, since, unless its members volunteer to take
+part in any sniping expedition, those manning the interior line of our
+trenches, which are those <span class="pagenum"><a id="page119" name="page119"></a>(p. 119)</span> occupied by the Town Guard, have
+received positive orders to withhold their fire until the enemy is
+upon the point of rushing the town. Several times it has been thought
+that this was going to happen, and the local defensive force had hopes
+of justifying its existence, but hitherto the valour which underlies
+the good intentions of the Boers is not sufficient to inspire them to
+convert an excellent suggestion into a practical experiment. Thus
+despite the Boer telegrams to Europe there has been no battle round
+Mafeking; a few slight skirmishes upon our part, much proud boasting
+upon the part of the Boers is the limit of mutual operations which
+have centred around Mafeking. We are waiting, and in the interval,
+preparing. That is all which can be said.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page120" name="page120"></a>(p. 120)</span> CHAPTER XIII<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE TOWN GUARD</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">Mafeking</span>, <i>November 15th, 1899</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The straits of a beleaguered city are only just beginning to come to
+Mafeking. A retrospect of the history of the Franco-Prussian war
+reveals how very great were the sufferings of those unfortunate people
+who were unlucky enough to be besieged by the Prussian armies. Their
+difficulties, the dangers to which they were constantly subjected,
+their constant struggle against the extortionate demands of the few
+who had been able to "corner" the provisions can perhaps be taken as
+conveying a general impression of the hardships of a siege. Yet,
+however, when we come to consider the siege of Mafeking in its more
+elemental details, the picture is not unlike those presented by the
+farcical melodrama. It is now nearly six weeks since Mafeking was
+proclaimed as being in a state of siege, and, although there has been
+no single opportunity of any commercial reciprocity between ourselves
+and the outside world, the ruling prices are at present but very
+little above normal, distress is wholly absent, danger is purely
+incidental, and, indeed, it would seem, as Colonel Baden-Powell said
+in a recent order, that "everything in the garden <span class="pagenum"><a id="page121" name="page121"></a>(p. 121)</span> was
+lovely." This somewhat happy state of things is, of course, to be
+attributed to the extraordinary foresight and sagacity which
+characterises the arrangements that the well-known firm of contractors
+in South Africa, Julius Weil, concluded for provisioning the town.
+Immense stocks of foodstuffs had been stored in the town before the
+war, and it is the knowledge of the valuable stores which are lying
+here which has inspired the Boers to court us so assiduously. The tale
+might have been different had the Colonial Government been permitted
+to arrange for any such emergency as a siege. In this respect, so
+completely opposed to any preparation were Mr. Schreiner and his
+Cabinet, that it was not even possible to procure through such an
+agency any adequate means of defence, much less to obtain the
+essential food supplies. When Kimberley appealed to Mr. Schreiner for
+permission to send up from Port Elizabeth some Maxims which had been
+ordered by the De Beers Company, the licence was refused on the ground
+that there was no cause to strengthen the defences of that town, nor
+any reason to believe that the situation demanded such precautions.
+The Colonial Government repeated their policy in relation to Mafeking,
+and when urgent appeals were sent to Mr. Schreiner, to the Castle
+authorities, and to Sir Alfred Milner, the influence of the Cabinet
+was such that no notice was taken of their request.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing perhaps can excuse such an obstructive policy as that which
+was followed by the Colonial Government upon the very eve of
+hostilities. It is only when we come to deal with the situation which
+their neglect has created that we can adequately measure the full
+extent of their culpability. The claim of so important a centre as
+Mafeking upon <span class="pagenum"><a id="page122" name="page122"></a>(p. 122)</span> their attention was wilfully ignored with a
+persistence which is positively criminal, and when taken into
+consideration with the repeated warnings which were sent to them by
+leading members of the community of Mafeking it is difficult to
+believe that the Colonial Cabinet, by so flatly contravening the
+spirit of their loyalty to the Imperial Crown, were not directly
+conniving with a hostile oligarchy for the downfall of this colonial
+town. Had Mafeking been anything but Anglo-Saxon at heart, had it
+possessed that proportion of debased Dutch and renegade British
+colonists which is to be found in Vryburg and those other hostile
+areas in our own colony, the story of Mafeking would have been a story
+of treachery and deceit, of broken allegiance, and of palsied faith.
+As it was, when the petition for extra armaments was ignored, the
+town, disdaining the danger which confronted them, proceeded to stand
+their ground, and to show, at any rate, a firm front to any enemy that
+might assail them. While Colonel Baden-Powell organised the defences
+of the Western Border, the men of Mafeking, under the supervision of
+Colonel Vyvyen, base commandant, strongly entrenched the position of
+their town, which hitherto had been open to every corner of the earth.
+In times of peace Mafeking is a collection of buildings placed upon
+the veldt, lacking both natural and artificial protection, the centre
+into which all roads come and from which all classes of people go. It
+is a thriving mid-African township which, more by good management than
+by good luck, has become at the present time an important outpost of
+our Empire. In these days, when the boom of cannon destroys the
+silences of our splendid isolation, and the scream of shell disturbs
+the harmony of night, Mafeking rests with patient steadfastness behind
+its <span class="pagenum"><a id="page123" name="page123"></a>(p. 123)</span> hastily improvised earthworks, seeking shelter when the
+shells of the enemy press too hotly upon one another, yet always ready
+for work at the outposts, prepared for the fitful turbulence of our
+invading foe. Possibly from the Boer trenches Mafeking may look an
+armoured citadel. Possibly it is the sturdy appearance of our ramparts
+which have caused the Boers to bring their heavy artillery to bear
+upon our mud brick walls. Yet there is humour in this situation, since
+the gravity of our position accentuates the grim travesty of our
+defences. We have not so much as appears, and it would be unfair to
+give such a moment as the present the correct estimate of dummy camps
+which have been built, dummy earthworks which have been thrown up, of
+dummy guns which are in position. The situation between the Boers and
+ourselves may be likened to a game of poker, Mafeking possessing no
+hand, yet retains the privilege of bluffing. In the end it will be
+seen that the dignity of our impudence has swept the board, although
+we may be excused from wishing to renew the game. But there is perhaps
+a finer spirit in the tribute which this place has paid to Queen and
+country than mere courage. We have the faith of our affections, the
+steadfastness of a duty which, if inspired, is equally impressed with
+reverence. Such strain as the siege has put upon the loyalty of the
+colonists of Mafeking has been welcomed by reason of the opportunity
+which it has given for the many who have never seen the Queen to show,
+their honourable allegiance to her Majesty.</p>
+
+<p>From time to time Colonel Baden-Powell has issued orders
+congratulating the townspeople upon their spirit, and commiserating
+with them upon their unfortunate predicament. They are indeed
+deserving <span class="pagenum"><a id="page124" name="page124"></a>(p. 124)</span> of great sympathy, since the manly way in which
+they have come forward in support of the situation has very materially
+aided the successful resistance given by Mafeking. The forts upon the
+eastern facing of the town are manned altogether by the Town Guard;
+these are particularly warlike when beneath the protection of their
+bomb-proof shelters, and it would be almost a pity should the siege
+close without any opportunity arising of testing their efficiency.
+Throughout day and night they are compelled to remain idle in their
+trenches, and from 9 till 6, and again from 6 till 9, they are not
+permitted upon any pretence whatever to leave their posts. The life
+they are leading is of the roughest description, and it certainly
+appears that by far the greatest proportion of the hardships of the
+siege has fallen to the share of the Town Guard. At the beginning of
+the siege, when, according to official reports, there was no ground to
+believe that it would be of long duration, few people were animated by
+anything but the plain determination to enjoy any actual hostilities
+which might eventuate. Now, however, as the fifth week of the siege
+draws to an end the rigours of the confinement to which the
+townspeople have been subjected are beginning to tell. The work, the
+most laborious, the least interesting, and totally without
+compensation, is that performed by the Town Guard, and as a body this
+defence force presents strangely contrasting features as the siege
+progresses. Their hours are early and late, they stand to arms at 4.30
+in the early morning, and at intervals during the day the full
+strength of the fort is mustered. There is nothing with which these
+men can occupy their minds, and if their inactivity is beginning to
+irritate them, if the poorness <span class="pagenum"><a id="page125" name="page125"></a>(p. 125)</span> of their food is affecting
+them, it is to be hoped that the work which they are doing now will
+receive full and satisfactory acknowledgment, both at the hands of the
+staff, and of the Government. As a body, the Town Guard is a medley of
+local salamanders, and if it be possible, by the force of their
+surroundings, they should become inspired with soldierly instincts,
+and although after their fashion they may be expected to fight, their
+greatest wish at the present moment is to obtain from the Government,
+imperial, colonial, and military, some adequate explanation of the
+causes determining their present situation. They feel that they have
+been neglected by Mr. Schreiner and I am quite certain that if that
+political chameleon were here now, he would suffer as much by reason
+of his own sins, as for the trouble and worry he has caused the
+industrious, if benighted, citizens of Mafeking. For the most part the
+Town Guard is a collection of civilians, who are accustomed to the
+full enjoyment of comparative affluence, and who, through the
+exigencies of the siege, are at present living under conditions which
+would test the endurance of the most experienced soldier. They are
+penned up within the limits of Mafeking, unable to move with any
+degree of safety, and condemned to an inactivity which is very irksome
+to those who have been pressed as volunteers into the defences of the
+town. They did not expect, in the early days of the crisis, to be
+actively engaged in defending their town, since, with some hope of
+having their views adopted, they repeatedly urged upon the general
+staff the fallacies which distinguished the official forecast of the
+situation, but the staff was incredulous and Colonel Baden-Powell was
+impressed with an optimism which now seems strangely at fault. If
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page126" name="page126"></a>(p. 126)</span> one is to believe important respected members of the
+community here, it would seem that they made special and very urgent
+overtures to the colonel commanding upon the defenceless condition of
+Mafeking, and now, as they stand to their posts, throughout the heat
+of an African summer, beneath the deluges of the rainy season, they
+cull but little satisfaction from the Ministerial refusal adequately
+to protect their town by sending troops and armaments to it. They say
+that they were derided, that no notice was taken of their request,
+that their petition was overruled, leaving to them the work of warding
+off from the town such a day of bitterness, of exceeding danger, of
+very genuine disaster, as might have been expected to result from the
+unprotected condition of the place. The irregular soldiers of the
+Protectorate Regiment do not, perhaps, deserve so much commiseration,
+since in all probability their present circumstances are little worse
+than those which they anticipated when they were enlisting. But there
+is some force in the case which the inhabitants of Mafeking can bring
+against the Colonial Government, and it is to be hoped that the work
+which they are now doing will receive full and satisfactory
+compensation at the final adjustment. But there exists little
+possibility that they will be given any compensation which will be in
+any way commensurate, since to those who have followed the history of
+such Ministerial compensation as comes within the region of political
+economy it will be known that the accidents of war put a somewhat
+close limit upon the accidence of compensation. Their businesses have
+in many cases been absolutely ruined, those who were farmers upon the
+outskirts of the town have had the melancholy satisfaction of
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page127" name="page127"></a>(p. 127)</span> seeing their homesteads set fire to by the enemy and their
+cattle raided. These facts are the simple home truths that do not tend
+to make them appreciative of the honour and glory which falls to them
+by playing so prominent a <i>r�le</i> in the defence of their town. They
+expect, however, to receive medals. Those who were local merchants,
+men of peace for the most part, with no very keen enthusiasm for
+martial glory, have seen the industry of a lifetime completely wrecked
+by the diffidence of the general staff and the unwillingness of the
+Government to take such precautions as would have placed the town
+beyond the probability of attack; but, although every one recognises
+the worthlessness of the material which was placed at the disposal of
+Colonel Baden-Powell, there exists no reason which can defend the
+absence of efficient military stores in the town. Upon the termination
+of the war let us hope that Colonel Baden-Powell will be asked to
+explain, but for the present the townspeople of Mafeking are
+singularly unanimous in their desire to co-operate with the military
+authorities.</p>
+
+<p>Under their direction the Boers have been repulsed for seven weeks,
+just as without the walls of Mafeking an almost impregnable defence
+has been constructed. It is perhaps a detail if our defenders be armed
+with Sniders, Enfields, a few Martinis, and a still less number of
+Lee-Metfords. Moreover, we have none too much ammunition, our
+seven-pounders are incapable of sustaining the brunt of an action
+without being sent to the repairing shop upon its termination, and if
+our Maxims be beyond reproach, our Hotchkiss and Nordenfeldt are both
+obsolete and unreliable. These are the more material elements of our
+defences, and to them may be added the strength of the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page128" name="page128"></a>(p. 128)</span>
+Protectorate Regiment, Cape Police, British South Africa Police,
+Railway Division, the Bechuanaland Rifles, and the numerous native
+contingents numbering, with the Town Guard, some fifteen hundred men.
+Against this we must place an enemy whose tactics are surprising
+everybody, whose artillery fire is admirable, whose guns are numerous
+and first class. They stand off five miles and shell the town with
+perfect safety, while under cover of their fire they project their
+advanced trenches daily a few feet nearer the town. We have
+endeavoured with our artillery and by night sorties to check their
+progress, but the sapping of Mafeking continues, and is, at once, a
+very serious, if not our sole, danger. Should their trenches advance
+much further it will be impossible to move about during daytime at
+all, and, although we have thrown up bales of compressed hay and sacks
+of oats to act as shields against the enemy's bullets, and the flying
+splinters of passing shells, there is no hour in the day in which the
+streets of the town are not sprayed by Mauser bullets. It is not
+possible for us to advance very far from our own lines, since, as
+eagles swoop down upon their carrion, so would the Boers from other
+quarters attempt to rush the town. Yet there is no doubt that such
+movement would be very welcome, affording as much keen pleasure to the
+volunteers of the town as to the newly-raised units of the garrison.
+We nurture a wild desire to attempt to spike "Big Ben," and it may be
+that before long Providence will turn from the side of the enemy by
+presenting us with some such golden opportunity. The big gun is hedged
+around by barbed wire, guarded in front by mines, flanked upon the one
+side by a Nordenfeldt-Maxim and upon the other by a high-velocity
+Krupp. Truly, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page129" name="page129"></a>(p. 129)</span> they could deal out a very warm reception to
+those who chanced their luck, but a little novelty these days atones
+for many hours of tiring inactivity, and if the Colonel chose to put a
+price upon the task there would be no trouble in enlisting for the
+venture some five hundred volunteers. The siege, as it progresses,
+seems to give fewer opportunities for coming into positive contact
+with the enemy; such occasions as there have been are few and far
+between, and, although Colonel Baden-Powell holds out the promise of
+such a venture, it has been so constantly deferred that we are for the
+most part becoming incredulous.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page130" name="page130"></a>(p. 130)</span> CHAPTER XIV<br>
+<span class="smaller">WASTED ENERGIES</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">Mafeking</span>, <i>November 22nd, 1899</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Within a few weeks of Major Godley's daybreak attack upon the western
+laager, it was decided to repeat the experiment against the main
+position of the Boers upon the east side. Had this but come off, from
+the estimate of the men and guns engaged, the movement would have been
+as important as any which have taken place. It had been arranged to
+open a general fire upon the emplacement of the hundred-pound gun and
+the advanced trenches of the Boer position a short time before sunset,
+since the closing of day would make it impossible for the enemy, in
+the absence of aiming-posts and clinometers, to train their artillery
+upon the town. Now that the enemy have begun to sap Mafeking by a
+system of advanced galleries, the military authorities here have been
+waiting for them to come within a certain radius of the town so that
+we might counter-gallery their position and enfilade their trenches.
+From their entrenchment at the brickfields, rather more than fifteen
+hundred yards from the town, Boer sharpshooters have been sniping the
+town with comparative impunity. When this plan was first <span class="pagenum"><a id="page131" name="page131"></a>(p. 131)</span>
+projected, natives, under Corporal Currie, Cape Police, were sent up
+the river-bed, which runs at this particular point within three
+hundred yards of the Boer flank, to build a trench as near as possible
+to the position of the snipers in the brickfields. With the successful
+execution of this piece of work the first steps towards the
+contemplated reconnaissance had been taken, since this new post, which
+was constructed under cover of night, completely outflanked the
+advance trenches of the Boers. When they began to fire upon the town
+in the morning they were somewhat surprised at receiving a volley from
+what appeared to be little more than a mud heap. Corporal Currie and
+his natives drove back the Boers from their advanced post in the
+brickfields to the first line of trenches in their position, and so
+long as we retained the river-bed post the brickfields ceased to give
+shelter to the Boer sharpshooters; moreover, when the Boers had been
+effectually quieted in the brickfields a little more of the original
+conception was carried out. Captain Lord Charles Bentinck and A
+squadron and Captain Fitzclarence with the Hotchkiss detachment were
+sent to support the native outposts, while a seven-pound gun under
+Lieutenant Daniels moved into an emplacement in the river-bed. Major
+Panzera took command of the gun which was to support the Maxim under
+Major Goold Adams in the north-east corner of the town. In conjunction
+with this, the extreme eastern flank of the town was defended by a
+detachment of the Cape Police with a Maxim, and a supplementary force
+of the same police, under Inspector Marsh, were entrenched across the
+eastern front of the native location. Thus upon Monday night were the
+plans arranged. Shortly before midnight Major <span class="pagenum"><a id="page132" name="page132"></a>(p. 132)</span> Panzera, who
+has charge of the artillery, gave me a courteous permission to
+accompany Lieutenant Daniels to his emplacement in the river-bed, from
+which point it was possible to move to our advanced trenches further
+up the stream. Mafeking had gone to rest when the gun started, and
+although the wheels were padded and every precaution taken to muffle
+the noise, it seemed that at any moment, the town would have been
+aroused. In a little the immediate precincts of Mafeking had been left
+behind, and the challenge of the last sentry answered. As we moved
+down to the river-bed the gun detachment hung upon the rear of the gun
+straining to prevent the shake and rumble of its descent. Silently we
+crept on; no murmur of human voices, no steel rang a "care-creating"
+clatter, no rumble of tumbril or gun broke through the darkness to the
+sentries of the enemy; in about an hour the gentle lapping of the
+river told us that the journey was at an end, and as we crossed the
+stream and reached the party working upon the emplacement there was
+much feeling of relief that the enemy had not sounded the alarm. While
+Lieutenant Daniels arranged the emplacement of the gun, he permitted
+me to try my hand at superintending native labour. There were thirty
+of them, who, commencing about midnight, were to have completed by
+daybreak, the task upon which they were engaged. It reminded me of the
+days at college when the house whips stood over the team urging them
+and coaching them in their game. There was every necessity for speed,
+and as the night was cold one made the most of the opportunity. The
+working party was divided into those with picks and those with
+shovels&mdash;the one breaking up the ground, the others heaping up the
+earthwork. In addition to the natives who were <span class="pagenum"><a id="page133" name="page133"></a>(p. 133)</span> digging there
+was a small party filling sacks with sand which, when they had been
+filled, were piled up around the rapidly-rising parapet of the gun. As
+they worked they sang, droning a war-song which seemed to give zest to
+their labours. As an experience it was rather fine to feel that even
+in this perfunctory fashion one was attempting work of some
+importance. About the scene there was the usual feature of the veldt
+by night: there was the subdued murmur of the waters tumbling gently
+over stones or causing stray groups of bullrushes to shiver; then from
+the bank there spread the veldt, rising in soft-clad hillocks, or
+falling in snug hollows, the green expanse tinted with the silvery
+light of the moon. Beyond ourselves and our cordon of sentries there
+should have been no one, although occasionally we thought that, just
+above the skyline, lights played about the shadowy outline of the Boer
+gun. But if they heard us they took no notice, and as dawn broke
+across the east the finishing touches to the gun were quickly given.
+Brown earth was strewn upon the whitened patches of the bags which had
+not been properly covered, the humidity of the fresh-turned soil
+mingling with the fumes of working natives. For the night's work, as
+we gathered our tools together, the best evidence of our labours was
+the grim muzzle of the gun which leered through its embrasure. It
+spoke defiance, and as the day which then was breaking, drew to its
+close we should know whether its sense of might had been effectually
+established. And so we returned to town talking upon the strength of
+the emplacement and upon its strategic value. As we left the gun we
+were alone, when suddenly, without a sound, the figure of the Colonel
+was seen coming across the veldt. He <span class="pagenum"><a id="page134" name="page134"></a>(p. 134)</span> passed us quickly, and
+as we followed him we wondered what he knew, but before noon those who
+had been informed of the contemplated attack had learned the news. As
+he had crept up the lines he had passed detached parties of Boers
+withdrawing from the extreme rear of their position. The explanation
+was obvious, but he stayed until daybreak to make certain of his
+ground, and by the light of early dawn the trenches which we were so
+shortly to fire upon were found deserted. Thus do the spies work
+within our camp, taking to the enemy news of everything which
+happened, and thus does the Colonel circumvent them. However, if we
+did not attack them with our guns, for the remainder of the day the
+advanced squadrons in the river-bed justified their position by
+keeping down the crew from the big gun. They poured in volleys at
+1,400 yards, and, for the first time in the siege, no shells were
+thrown. As they retired from their trenches, so they withdrew their
+gun, and we had a day of peace.</p>
+
+<p>But how wearily the time passes; moreover we are still enduring the
+straits of a siege and the torments of a bombardment. For almost seven
+weeks we have defied an enemy who encircle us upon every side, and who
+has summoned to its aid, for the purposes of breaching our trivial
+earthworks, the finest guns from their arsenal in Pretoria. The Boers
+outnumber us in men and in artillery, and not a day has passed since
+the siege began that they have not thrown shrapnel and common shell,
+omitting minor projectiles, into the town. And still we live, with
+just sufficient spirit to jeer across our ramparts at the enemy. They
+Mauser us, and shell us; they cut our water off, and raid our cattle;
+they make life hell, and they can do so, so long as it may please
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page135" name="page135"></a>(p. 135)</span> them; but no one was ever so deluded if they think that by
+such means Mafeking surrenders. From time to time we have given them a
+taste of our quality, and if on occasion we have lost some few, it is
+a source of melancholy satisfaction to know that their loss has been
+the greater. It is not long since the Boers attempted to blow the town
+to atoms through the agency of dynamite, though, <i>similia similibus
+curantur</i>, they went to heaven prematurely by an undesirable
+explosion. It was night, and the town was just about to rest, when it
+was shaken to its foundations by a most deafening roar; sand and
+stones, fragments of trees came down as hail from the skies, the whole
+place being lighted with the lurid glow of blood-red flame. To the
+north of Mafeking, and so close to the cemetery that it might have
+been a pillar of fire coming to earth to claim its own, an immense arc
+of fire and smoke was ejected out of the ground. After it there came
+silence, broken here and there by the rattle of the <i>d�bris</i> upon the
+roofs of the houses, and by the shouts and shrieks of a town in the
+confusion of a panic. That night those who slept had dreams of the day
+of judgment, while those who lay awake were restless, quaking with an
+insidious terror. In the morning the cause explained itself, since
+barely half a mile up the line was an enormous rent in the ground, the
+line itself being strewn and scattered with the rubbish of an
+earthquake. The Boers, with much ingenuous enterprise, had despatched
+upon a purely friendly mission a trolly load of dynamite;
+unfortunately, where they had started their infernal machine the
+declivity of the line had precipitated the truck backwards toward
+their own camp, and having very foolishly lighted their time-fuse
+before they had <span class="pagenum"><a id="page136" name="page136"></a>(p. 136)</span> surmounted the crest of the rise, they had
+not the courage to stop the progress of the somewhat novel engine of
+destruction. Apparently it had rolled slowly downwards, tracking the
+instigators of such a deed with very fatal persistence, until the
+time-fuse met the charge, and powder and dynamite went off together.
+Upon the morrow there was much sadness in the Boer camp, and much
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>Dynamite has played a not unimportant <i>r�le</i> in the history of our
+siege. Cronje has heard from native spies, and from his friends in our
+camp, that Mafeking is set within a circle of dynamite mines, and he
+has protested against its use in civilised warfare. Since then,
+however, he has not only discharged dynamite by trolly loads into the
+town, but he has threatened, in his vague and shadowy fashion, to send
+to his capital for some dynamite guns. It would seem, then, that a
+warm time is coming to Mafeking; the pity of it being that we are kept
+so long and in such unnecessary suspense. If Cronje were the gallant
+warrior whose dignity he assumes in addressing the garrison, he would
+have either taken or abandoned Mafeking some weeks ago. As it is,
+however, with occasional letters of regret for such untimely
+procedure, he still elects to bombard an inoffensive and unoffending
+township. The other morning, after the usual series of dull days, the
+activity in the Boer camp suggested to us that the town was about to
+be attacked. From the south-west the big Creusot opened fire at
+intervals of twenty minutes, the intervening periods being pleasantly
+filled in with Mauser and Martini fire and shells from two nine-pound
+high-velocity Krupps. In a very short space of time the list of
+fatalities included a native dog, a commissariat mule, and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page137" name="page137"></a>(p. 137)</span>
+many buildings. After such a bloodless bombardment the Boer legions
+gallantly rode round to the east with the apparent intention of
+attacking the town. Then we thought that, in that moment, our defence
+would be justified, but he is wisest who determines what is to be the
+nature of the Boer movement when that movement has taken place. Down
+the serried lines of armed Dutchmen old Piet Cronje, as his friends
+call him, or General Cronje, as a sycophantian Boer press describe
+him, rode. He was a gallant sight&mdash;albeit we could only just see him
+some two thousand yards distant. After a temporary and casual
+inspection of his force, General Cronje turned his head towards
+Mafeking, and waving violently one arm in the air, cantered with much
+solemn apprehension towards our trenches. He had covered in this
+desperate effort some thirty yards, when perhaps a natural
+superstition caused him to turn his head. Was there a man dismayed in
+the Boer lines? Not one; but nevertheless, they were not taking any
+such man&oelig;uvre just then. Cronje stopped and cantered back again,
+seeming to hold an indaba with his petty officers. They gathered round
+him, they talked to him, pointing towards their lines, and shouting at
+one another; but there it ended. In a little while we saw a silent
+figure, moody and taciturn, guarded by two orderlies, ride slowly
+around from the east front to the headquarters of the executive on the
+south-west. Thus Cronje failed, not through any fault of his, but
+because the idle braggarts who form his army have not the spirit of
+whipped curs. Since then Cronje has made no effort to storm Mafeking,
+and it is very much to be doubted whether until the siege be raised
+the attempt will be renewed.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page138" name="page138"></a>(p. 138)</span> One must sympathise a little with Cronje since he has not
+been able to sustain in his attack upon Mafeking the high reputation
+which he enjoys among his countrymen. Now that he has been recalled to
+Natal, we here hope that he may be able to find some opportunity to
+distinguish himself. His force without Mafeking is a raw, lawless body
+of Western Boers, the majority of whom have followed him on his march.
+We say Natal, but there is no very positive ground for believing that
+it is in that direction that the new field of his activity lies. It
+may be that he has gone South, and if such should happen to be the
+case, it will not be long before he will come in contact with men who
+will test his mettle to the utmost. There have been many rumours of
+reinforcements: some people, addicted with a greater faculty of
+imagination than power of veracity, have even seen the advanced
+outposts of the relief, which, of course, is ridiculous. They mistake
+some scattered party of Boers for advanced scouts. We do not think
+that there is much real chance of the siege of Mafeking being raised
+before the New Year, since such would be opposed to the stately and
+insular procedure of the Imperial and Colonial War Offices. Hitherto
+it has apparently ignored the claims of Mafeking. All conditions of
+people here united in their efforts to secure some more or less
+reliable armament from the Government, but the reason, above all
+others, which made this impossible was that the Imperial authorities
+at home, in their fatuity, could not bring themselves to believe that
+the war, which South Africa knew to be imminent, would come to pass.
+Nevertheless, in face of their neglect, we are snug in Mafeking,
+although our artillery be hopeless; and since the war began we have
+gradually added to our defences. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page139" name="page139"></a>(p. 139)</span> After many days'
+bombardment a breach was effected in one only of the town's
+earthworks. That was very quickly repaired, so quickly indeed that
+before nightfall it had already been restored.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page140" name="page140"></a>(p. 140)</span> CHAPTER XV<br>
+<span class="smaller">SHELLS AND SLAUGHTER</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><i>November 30th, 1899.</i></p>
+
+<p>The Boers continue to shell Mafeking daily, and to concentrate upon
+the streets of the town their customary rifle fire. At first we
+experienced a terror of the dangers of shell fire, but the daily and
+constant presence of exploding shells has brought about an unusual
+degree of familiarity with its attendant feeling of contempt; people
+now are too careless, seeming to rest under the delusion that, one and
+all, enjoy an absolute immunity. The folly of it is that occasionally
+the error of their way is illustrated by a longer list of fatalities
+through one shell claiming half a dozen victims. Europeans perhaps,
+are less careless of the consequences of shell fire than is the native
+population, and it is a pity that it has not been found possible to
+impress into the mind of the Kaffir a better appreciation of the
+possible result of their intrepidity. We have had many more natives
+killed than whites, and the element of tragedy in this becomes the
+greater and more acute since, as a rule, the native, employed in
+building bomb-proof shelters for the whites, lacks the energy to turn
+to his own profit his knowledge of the manner in which <span class="pagenum"><a id="page141" name="page141"></a>(p. 141)</span> shell
+cover should be constructed. They lie about under tarpaulins, behind
+zinc palings, wooden boxes, and flimsy sheds of that description, and
+perhaps for days their shelter may escape the line of fire; but there
+comes a moment made hideous by the scream of shell as it bursts in
+some little gathering of dozing, half listless natives. At such a
+moment their bravery is extraordinary&mdash;is indeed the most fearful
+thing in the world. The native with his arm blown off, with his thigh
+shot away, or with his body disembowelled, is endowed with extreme
+fortitude and most stoical resolution. Unless he is seen, he lies
+where he is struck, not caring to take the trouble to make his wounds
+known to some one who could sympathise and assist him. When the gaze
+of the curious is turned upon his mangled and wounded form he attempts
+to laugh, makes every effort to assist himself, and even if he knows
+that his injuries be fatal, he makes no sign. There is thus much to
+admire in these natives, but for the most part, people are quite
+indifferent to their sufferings.</p>
+
+<p>A few moments ago, indeed as I was writing the concluding words of the
+last sentence, a terrific explosion, a shower of gravel and leaden
+bullets upon my roof, foretold the fact that somewhere near at hand
+one of these untimely instruments of destruction had burst. As I went
+to the door a crowd of people could be seen running towards the Market
+Square, the air was filled with the strong perfume of the bursting
+charge. I ran with the throng to where the shell had first struck in
+Market Square before delivering its full effect upon the windows of
+the local chemist. Amid the splintered glass and the consequent
+disorder of the chemist's shop lay the writhing figure of an unhappy
+native. As an illustration <span class="pagenum"><a id="page142" name="page142"></a>(p. 142)</span> of the appalling wounds which
+these shells inflict, I am purposely dilating upon this very pitiful
+scene. As the shell rebounded from the ground leaving a hole many feet
+long, narrow, and arrow-headed, it had come in contact with a native
+before it wrecked the apothecary's store. Mingled with the fragments
+of glass and the contents of the shop were shreds of cloth and
+infinitesimal strips of flesh, while the entire environment of the
+scene was splashed with blood. The poor native had lost an arm, a foot
+lay a few yards from him, and his other leg was hanging by a few
+shreds of skin. In an angle of the wall formed by the junction of the
+shop-front of the chemist and the tin protrusion of his neighbour's
+building, something was sticking. For the moment it had escaped the
+gaze of the sordid few, who, drawn by idle curiosity, were standing
+about without the inclination to help, or even a smattering of the
+first aid to the injured. When the bleeding body was put upon a
+stretcher, and the mangled extremities gathered together, the Hospital
+Orderly caught sight of the bunch which was clinging to the recess in
+the wall. As he went forward to seize it, the trickling streams of
+fluid which escaped from it revealed only too plainly its true
+character. So great was the force of the shell, and so near had its
+unfortunate victim been to the galvanised iron wall, that as body and
+shell met, the terrible violence of the impact had wrenched away the
+lump to hurl it, in the same moment, through the exterior wall of the
+adjacent premises. Despite his fearful injuries, which were beyond the
+scope of human power to aid, he was not dead, feebly exclaiming as
+they put him in the stretcher, "Boss, Boss, me hurt." The ruin of the
+building had scarcely been realised, and the vapour of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page143" name="page143"></a>(p. 143)</span>
+chemicals from the shell, mingling with the scattered perfumes of the
+shop, with the scent of the ploughed-up earth, and with that curious,
+insidious scent of a wounded body dissipated&mdash;when a second shell
+screaming its passage through the air hurled itself with a terrible
+velocity against the other window of the same building. In effect it
+added a little more to the ruin of the premises, escaping by a miracle
+five men who had been standing in the interior of the premises, but
+killing an unfortunate corporal, who had gone from the scene of the
+death of the native to get a "pick-me-up" from the adjoining bar in
+Riesle's Hotel. In such a manner does the death roll pile itself
+up&mdash;with the impending slowness of a juggernaut and the haunting
+persistency of fate. If these were the actual numbers of the killed
+upon this date, there were also two who were wounded, one of whom has
+since died, thus giving to one day a terrible trio. With such a sad
+lesson before one it would seem that, beyond those who were compelled
+to be out and about, no one would venture in the streets under shell
+fire, much less employ their leisure in endeavouring to unload those
+of the enemy's shells that might have fallen into the town, yet, but
+two days ago a local wheelwright blew himself and two other men to an
+untimely end by the explosion of a shell from which, with a <i>steel</i>
+drill, he was endeavouring to extract the charge. One of these men was
+killed almost instantaneously, another had his leg blown off, while
+the third sustained terrible wounds upon his body. There is not a day
+now without fresh victims being claimed in different parts of the
+town. Almost the first question asked as the shell bursts is for the
+name of the unfortunate owner of the wrecked house, and the number of
+the killed and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page144" name="page144"></a>(p. 144)</span> wounded. In the early part of the siege when
+people were thoroughly scared by the introduction of this new element
+of destruction, bomb-proof shelters became quite popular, but lately
+with the good luck which the people in town have enjoyed, the shelters
+have been rather abandoned, but there is no doubt now, that the number
+who have been killed in this past week has somewhat unnerved the town.
+If it induces people to stay beneath their shelters, from out of the
+fearful misfortunes which have fallen upon the few, may be derived
+almost universal salvation.</p>
+
+<a id="img008" name="img008"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img008.jpg" width="500" height="349" alt="" title="">
+<p class="smcap">EFFECTS OF SHELL FIRE.<br> 1. BEFORE.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The hospital in these times, is the centre of melancholy interest to
+the town. It is perhaps a quarter of a mile beyond the outskirts of
+the town, but so situated that apart from the flag under whose
+protection it should lie, it would be impossible for the enemy not to
+be unaware that it was a natural shelter for the sick and wounded.
+Much as the town in general, the Convent which adjoins the hospital,
+and the hospital itself show the stress of the bombardment. The walls
+of the hospital have been riddled with Martini and Mauser bullets,
+while shells have perforated the galvanised iron roofing, torn holes
+in the walls of the ward, wrecked outstanding buildings, and in brief,
+played such direful havoc as would be considered impossible in a war
+with any nation that has subscribed to the articles of the Geneva
+Convention. Only the most strenuous opposition from Colonel
+Baden-Powell, who threatened the severest pains, penalties, and
+reprisals upon Commandant Cronje and Commandant Snyman, for their
+neglect of the Red Cross flag, has saved the building in its entirety.
+Nevertheless that degree of consideration, which we secured from the
+Boers for our hospital was denied by these infamous barbarians to the
+Convent <span class="pagenum"><a id="page145" name="page145"></a>(p. 145)</span> and its gentle inmates. Their home has tumbled
+about its foundations, the wall which faces the enemy's fire has been
+hit in numerous places. Shells have ruined the children's dormitory,
+burst with a magnificent effect in the interior of what would have
+been the operating room, shattered a corner stone to pieces, and
+rendered rotten and wholly impossible for any further habitation our
+subsidiary hospital. The sisters, however, still stick to their posts
+and minister the comforts of religion, though seeking their share in
+the task of nursing, and setting, by their subdued heroism, an example
+to the entire community. Never has any hospital been saddled with such
+a work as the local one in Mafeking. War had taken every one so
+suddenly that like everything else in Mafeking at the crucial moment,
+it was wanting in much which was cardinal to its existence. The corps
+of nurses was made up of those ladies from the town who were willing
+to volunteer, and if there was an absence of the professional nursing
+service, there were equally a dearth of dressers, of surgical
+appliances, of medical comforts. The Victoria Hospital in times like
+these possesses no Rontgen Rays, and many times indeed have the
+medical staff regretted that so important an instrument should not
+have been sent in good time. Indeed all that the Director-General of
+Hospitals has done for Mafeking was to send Surgeon-Major Anderson out
+from England, and had it not been that this gallant officer supplied,
+at his own expense, a large quantity of medical stores which he
+believed to be necessary, with the best intentions in the world, it
+would have been impossible to cope with the requirements of the
+wounded.</p>
+
+<p>It has been interesting, however, to observe from the point of view of
+the medical profession the nature <span class="pagenum"><a id="page146" name="page146"></a>(p. 146)</span> of the wounds caused by
+the Mauser and Martini rifles and shell-fire. The Mauser perforates,
+the Martini splinters, the shell pulverises. The point of entry of the
+Mauser bullet is somewhat smaller than the circumference of a
+threepenny piece, and if it passes through the bone it does not appear
+to set up any undue amount of splintering. The hole through which it
+emerges is usually, except where the path of the bullet has been
+deflected, as small as the point of penetration. The Mauser does not,
+as a rule, set up in the body, and in the greater number of cases
+passes clean through. It is a humane wound, and infinitely less
+injurious than the Martini and Dum-dum. A Martini destroys a large
+internal surface making beneath the point of contact a wound between
+two and three inches in diameter, with an even greater area of exit.
+It sweeps everything before it, shredding arteries, shattering the
+bones, while its process of recovery is, in consequence, the more
+protracted. I have already described the wounds from shell-fire,
+adding to that account, however, the fact that the merest fragment of
+a shell is as capable as the shell itself, of making most terrible
+injuries.</p>
+
+<a id="img009" name="img009"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img009.jpg" width="350" height="497" alt="" title="">
+<p class="smcap">EFFECTS OF SHELL FIRE.<br> 2. AFTER.</p>
+</div>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page147" name="page147"></a>(p. 147)</span> CHAPTER XVI<br>
+<span class="smaller">A SOFT-WATER BATH</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">Mafeking</span>, <i>December 6th, 1899</i>.</p>
+
+<p>As compensation to the inhabitants of beleaguered Mafeking for the
+many dull days we have had lately, yesterday was replete with
+incidents and crowded with a constant succession of events of more
+than ordinary interest. We have had our days of activity, when the
+boom of artillery and the rattle of musketry have impressed into a few
+brief hours the full measure of martial excitement, we have endured
+our days of lonesome and tiring idleness when the hot winds of the
+Kalahari Desert have swept eddies of whirring, biting sand across the
+trenches, when the pitiless sun has spent its energies upon the
+heat-stricken garrison. But yesterday we experienced the effect of a
+combination between that Providence which the Boers claim as their
+special and benign guardian and the elements themselves. It was a
+reconnaissance in force by nature. A union of extreme subtlety and one
+against which it was impossible to contend. It came, it swept
+everything before it, and it left us drenched with rain, surrounded by
+small lakes of mud, streams of water, and without dry garments to our
+names. When the mischief was <span class="pagenum"><a id="page148" name="page148"></a>(p. 148)</span> complete the deluge ceased. The
+general physiognomy of the scene can be described at once. When dawn
+broke in the morning across the sky there glowered the haze of heat,
+which in Africa, as elsewhere, denotes a more than usually tropical
+day. To those, however, who knew the signs of the sky, the fleeting
+masses of black cloud, low down upon the horizon, foretold a day of
+evil tempest. Slowly the rising wind drove them together until,
+shortly before noon, clouds were bunched high up across the sky and
+over the Boer laager. From where we were in the town it was quite
+apparent that the temporary centre of the storm was almost above the
+emplacements of the enemy's artillery. Before the breeze had increased
+the Boers had thrown a few shells into the town, but presently, as the
+force of the gale struck us, it was evident that the rain-filled
+clouds were discharging their contents upon the extreme limits of the
+veldt. For an hour or two the Boers received the full effect of the
+storm, and but few drops of rain fell into the town, as the wind swept
+before its path the <i>d�bris</i> of the veldt, portions of broken trees,
+of scrub, and bushes. The deluge quickly left the south-east,
+concentrating a little beyond and over the town, and so soon as it
+began to trouble us it seemed to have deserted the Boers. Possibly the
+wind carried with it a rainspout, since the effect of the streaming
+water was as though from somewhere in the sky buckets were being
+emptied on to the place beneath. The veldt was quickly flooded, the
+dried-up spruits were soon charged with foaming cataracts, Mafeking
+itself lay under water, the earthworks around the town were swept
+away, trenches and bomb-proof shelters were choked with eddying
+streams, everywhere was ruin&mdash;destruction and complete <span class="pagenum"><a id="page149" name="page149"></a>(p. 149)</span> chaos
+reigned until the storm had spent itself. Down the acclivity upon
+which Cannon Kopje is placed there rolled the surging tide, carrying
+in its might the stores of the fort, the blankets of the men, the
+bodies of struggling animals, who, if they succeeded in coping with
+the force of the stream, were dashed to pieces upon the rocky facing
+of the hill. The women's laager, which has hitherto rested in snug
+seclusion at the base of the hills forming the western outposts, was,
+in a few minutes, flooded with the off-pourings from the sluits of the
+veldt, while the trenches were quickly submerged or silted with the
+refuse of the torrent. A cart which went to the assistance of the
+inmates of the laager found itself water-bound through the tremendous
+force of the tortuous cataracts. In the town, bomb-proof cellars were
+vacated, and the people, discarding their shoes and stockings, made
+their way from point to point by paddling and fording the footpaths
+across the streets. To the north of the town, below the exterior
+outposts, the men stripped to the skin, allowing the full strength of
+the streaming downpour to beat upon them. The Market Square was a
+sheet of running water, rising with such rapidity that it seemed that
+the houses bordering the square would be inundated.</p>
+
+<p>From Market Square, upon two sides, the roads make something of a
+descent, and down these slight inclines volumes of water, yards in
+width and some feet in depth precipitated themselves to the river-bed.
+As the storm increased it was seen that it would be impossible to
+retain any longer our advanced positions in the river-bed. The first
+to go was the trench occupied by Corporal Currie and his native
+sharpshooters. As the water swept from bank to bank through this post,
+which we, but a few days before, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page150" name="page150"></a>(p. 150)</span> had won so gallantly from
+the enemy, the men clambered up the banks to the veldt and made their
+way as best they could to the base. With the flooding of this
+position, so rapidly did the river rise, that those occupied by
+Captain Fitzclarence and his squadron were equally untenable. As they
+were abandoned the stream rushed by them with the roar of a river in
+flood, while the crash of boulder upon boulder turned masses of rock
+into shattered fragments. Within an hour the river had risen eight
+feet, and so unexpected was the flood that for the time being it was
+not possible to rescue from the rising stream the 7-pounder gun, which
+was in position some way down the river. As the rain continued the
+wind died down, until in the height of this storm it scarcely
+possessed the strength to dissipate the white mists which were rising
+from the veldt. They hung low upon the ground, prevented from rising
+by the strength of the downpour, and making it difficult to see the
+progress of events in the enemy's lines. From time to time above the
+hissing of the rain and the roar of the rivers we heard the angry
+cough of the Nordenfeldt, the shrieks of their quick-firing guns, and
+the heavy and more stately boom of "Big Ben." Ofttimes there was the
+echo of the Mauser, the grating rustle of the Martini, and it soon
+became evident that the enemy did not propose to let us endure the
+misery of the storm altogether undisturbed. From these omens, as some
+slight diminution in the downpour allowed the mists to rise from the
+ground, we expected to hear the sound of exploding volleys coming
+through the fog, and to find that the fight had become suddenly
+desperate; but the Boers lacked the individual courage, and the charge
+which they might have made under cover <span class="pagenum"><a id="page151" name="page151"></a>(p. 151)</span> of the tangle of the
+brushwood and the bewilderment of the fog never took place. They were
+satisfied with cannonading our position; and across the ground, heavy
+with rain, upon which the mist laid dense, the red flashes of the gun
+and the sparkle of the rifles had a weird effect as they flared and
+vanished through the eddying masses of vapour and fantastic columns of
+smoke. The tumbling volumes of mist and the grey-black masses of smoke
+mingled and curled in distorted pillars, forming at a moment when the
+sun shone briefly, as the tears of heaven dried off into space, an
+evanescent and iridescent canopy of colour. The respite was momentary,
+and as the sun withdrew, the groups of men that had been seen about
+the Boer lines were quickly obscured in clouds of grosser vapour.
+Their fire, however, continued, while about them tossed the thick
+white fog, as above us occasionally rolled the thunder of their guns.
+The area of the storm included the most advanced trenches of the
+Boers, and as the wind shifted the gloomy masses of vapour we saw
+through the whirling mist and smoke-charged air, the Boers,
+rain-soaked as ourselves, standing disconsolately upon their muddy
+parapets. They did not seem to understand what they should do. They
+could hear their own guns firing on our positions, happily beyond the
+later centre of the storm, but these men themselves stood still,
+shaking the water from their limbs, attempting to dry their weapons.
+At night, with the darkness to cover our misfortunes, the town was
+busily constructing fresh earthworks, draining those shelters from
+which any further use could be obtained, and making such amends as
+were possible for an occurrence, almost unprecedented in the annals of
+war.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page152" name="page152"></a>(p. 152)</span> CHAPTER XVII<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE ECONOMY OF THE SITUATION</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><i>December 12th, 1899.</i></p>
+
+<p>The importance of the resistance which Mafeking has made to the
+attacks of the Boers should be viewed in the light of its relationship
+to the two Protectorates, Bechuanaland and Matabeleland, since had
+this place fallen, its position as a <i>dep�t</i> for the Northern trade
+would have made it a comparatively easy task for the victorious Boers
+to have secured the control of the intermediate areas. They would have
+at once seized the rolling stock of the railway whose headquarters are
+temporarily invested in Mafeking, and could, by that means, have
+mobilised their forces in a fashion and with a degree of acceleration
+which would have brought them in a completely equipped and efficient
+condition to the borders of Rhodesia. Indeed, from what one can learn
+now, it is not at all improbable that the plan of the northern
+operations of the Boer forces from their base at Mafeking provided for
+the seizure of Mafeking with its stores and rolling stock, with their
+subsequent enlistment of this material in the work of occupying
+Bechuanaland and assisting our enemy in the concentration <span class="pagenum"><a id="page153" name="page153"></a>(p. 153)</span> of
+their forces upon Rhodesia. With the railway in their hands small
+forces would have been stationed at the important points such as are
+afforded by the natural drifts, and while they maintained by this
+system of custodianship an open line of communication, they would, at
+the same time, have been free to utilise, in a combined and united
+mass, all of these scattered parties of Boers who were engaged upon
+marauding expeditions between here and Middle Drift. The history of
+Mafeking then would have been but the story of Vryburg, where, once
+its sympathy to the Boer cause was proclaimed and the place
+effectually occupied, the Boer commandant withdrew the greater portion
+of his men to fresh spheres of activity. With Mafeking in the hands of
+the enemy, our chief stand would have been around Buluwayo, where
+Colonel Baden-Powell and Colonel Plumer would have united their
+commands, thereby presenting to the enemy greater resistance than
+would have been possible had the forces been engaged upon their own
+initiative. In a way, therefore, Mafeking has forged an important link
+in the chain of outposts, by which the safety of the Protectorates has
+been guaranteed and the independence of the country still preserved to
+Imperial rule. It must not be forgotten, however, that the success
+which Plumer's column has enjoyed at Rhodes' Drift and at Middle Drift
+gave to Southern Rhodesia a certain immunity from hostile invasion,
+while in any estimate of the economy of the victories which Colonel
+Plumer's men and our own here have scored against the Boers, it should
+be borne in mind that had they vanquished our forces at Middle Drift
+or Rhodes' Drift, further Imperial territory would have been invaded,
+and the road upon which they might <span class="pagenum"><a id="page154" name="page154"></a>(p. 154)</span> have marched to besiege
+Buluwayo would have been open to them. Colonel Baden-Powell has, of
+course, been chiefly instrumental in preventing the investment of
+Buluwayo, since the determined stand which he made caused General
+Cronje to hold an aggregate number of Boers, amounting to 8,000 men,
+and by far the larger portion of the Western Division of the S.A.R.
+forces, under his control for Mafeking; but without in any way
+disparaging this work, so important in its achievements, so vital in
+its issues, nothing perhaps has proved so integral a factor in the
+work of maintaining our occupation and dominion over these important
+adjuncts of our Empire in Africa, as the defence which Colonel Plumer
+so successfully and gallantly accomplished. However we here may have
+assisted in the preservation of those Protectorates as Imperial
+dominions, there can be no doubt we should have lost, for the time
+being, all claim to their moral and practical possession had Colonel
+Plumer's force retired. With 8,000 men investing Mafeking, and various
+minor bodies scattered up and down the border between here and Fort
+Tuli, the enemy could have spared 6,000 men for co-operation with
+these subsidiary bodies, and still have maintained the siege and
+bombardment of this town. It did not need, then, its downfall to give
+the Boers important belligerent rights throughout the Protectorate and
+Southern Rhodesia, and although our surrender might have materially
+facilitated their progress, our successful opposition did not
+necessarily, nor altogether, impede it. The strategical value of the
+drifts made their safe custody a matter of momentous importance, since
+through them, as much as from Mafeking, might <span class="pagenum"><a id="page155" name="page155"></a>(p. 155)</span> entry have
+been made and territorial supremacy for the moment acquired. Indeed,
+it is very much to be doubted whether the chief value of the stand by
+which Mafeking has distinguished itself is not found in the lesson
+which it has read to the Colony itself. Had we gone the way of
+Vryburg, or had we surrendered after some slight stand, it is almost
+certain that our fall would have been the signal for the general
+uprising of the Dutch in the northern areas of the Colony as well as
+in British Bechuanaland. How near we are to a mare's nest in Mafeking
+is uncertain, but after much inquiry amongst the chief people
+(business) in the town, there is no doubt that had the inhabitants of
+Mafeking been able to conceive the difficulties and trials which were
+about to beset them, the losses in business at the moment, and the
+temporary stagnation which will follow the war, they would have
+preferred to have worshipped the Golden Calf, and to see Colonel
+Baden-Powell and Colonel Hore remove their headquarters to some spot
+in the Protectorate, while the sleek and prosperous merchants of
+Mafeking were thus enabled to follow their occupation and to turn over
+their money while they lived amid the baneful protection of a
+temporary and purely commercial allegiance to the Transvaal Republic.
+It is not, it would seem, that individually Mafeking is disloyal, but
+that it is essentially a commercial centre, governed, impressed, and
+inherited by commercial instinct, and reflecting, in its inhabitants,
+a gathering of the peoples of the world in more or less confused
+proportion. There is a small German community, there is an American
+colony, there are French, and Jews of every nation. They have made
+money in Mafeking; they own much property; they <span class="pagenum"><a id="page156" name="page156"></a>(p. 156)</span> are even
+friendly to the Transvaal since they have large trade interests among
+Dutch towns which are near the border. They came here in the days when
+this part of Africa was unknown to white man; they trekked from
+Kimberley, from the Transvaal, even across the African desert from the
+coast, and if they have lived beneath the protection of our standard,
+they have amassed their wealth by trading with the flags of all
+nations. They care very little indeed for the Uitlander in the
+Transvaal, for his wrongs or for his rights, but they would respect
+him much if he came with his cattle and his sheep, with his waggons
+and his chattels, and some superfluity of money, for then they could
+add still further to their hoard of shekels and trade with him for his
+cattle. It is a weird and motley crowd that constitutes Mafeking:
+disgusted with Imperial government, wishing to have vengeance upon the
+Colonial Government, and boasting to Heaven at one moment about their
+gallant resistance, crying out against the ill-wind that has brought
+them the siege. They move with the current of the Colony, and can be
+as easily disturbed to patriotism as they can rouse themselves to a
+passionate criticism of the follies of the Imperial protection under
+which they exist. When they are moved to sympathy with the Dutch, it
+is difficult to believe that they are the self-same loyal inhabitants
+of Mafeking who are now beleaguered, since by daily contact, by union
+of marriage, by personal friendship, they have consciously or
+unconsciously assimilated the cause of the Boer, and reveal the
+profundity of their sympathies in these times of distress.</p>
+
+<p>An interesting side issue to the siege of Mafeking has been the chain
+of events relating to the departure of Lady Sarah Wilson from Mafeking
+upon the night <span class="pagenum"><a id="page157" name="page157"></a>(p. 157)</span> of the day during which war was declared, her
+temporary sojourn at Setlagoli, from where she supplied the garrison
+with news, and acted as the chief medium by which Baden-Powell managed
+to get his dispatches through to the Government in Cape Town; her
+retirement from Setlagoli, when her work was discovered, to General
+Snyman's laager before Mafeking to request from that gentleman a safe
+permit into Mafeking; her eventual arrival in the town in exchange for
+the prisoner Viljoen. Lady Sarah Wilson experienced no very
+extraordinary adventures and was treated with that consideration which
+is due to her sex by the Boers, despite the fact that they might have
+made her position somewhat unpleasant, since she had quite voluntarily
+taken up active participation in the siege by endeavouring to keep the
+garrison supplied with news.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page158" name="page158"></a>(p. 158)</span> CHAPTER XVIII<br>
+<span class="smaller">A VISIT TO THE HOSPITAL</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><i>December 12th, 1899.</i></p>
+
+<p>The week has been a dull one, which in relation to the siege implies
+that the passing days have not borne what we have now come to regard
+as their full quota of shells and bullets. We here are somewhat
+sceptical of the lapses of the bombardment since tactics which the
+Boers have already adopted have led us to believe that intervals of
+some hours' duration be planned deliberately so that when shelling
+should be renewed, it may please Providence, ever on the side of the
+Boers, to have the streets thronged with people. Upon one or two
+occasions we have been lulled into a fancied security by the cessation
+of shell fire; but with the lamentable occurrences of last week, we
+are disinclined to be again caught napping. Accordingly, although
+there has been a week of extraordinary desistence upon the part of the
+enemy, those who were about were careful enough to take their airing
+within a short distance of their bomb-proof shelters. In a fashion,
+this gave to the environments of the town and the town itself, the
+appearance of a rabbit warren, where at sunset the little animals may
+be seen bunched <span class="pagenum"><a id="page159" name="page159"></a>(p. 159)</span> about the entrance to their retreats. A few
+ladies enjoyed the novelty of tea <i>al fresco</i>, with possibly, a keener
+appreciation for their propinquity to some bomb-proof, than for the
+light refreshment in which they were indulging.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it came that I was visiting the hospital, chatting with the
+physicians upon the stoep of the building. Beneath the shelter of the
+verandah lay the forms of many who had been wounded, and who now were
+sufficiently recovered to sit outside; here and there a man limped
+painfully with the aid of crutches, to talk to a comrade who, with his
+arm in a sling, was not altogether inappreciative of the fact that he
+had been wounded in a recent sniping affray against the enemy's
+position in the brickfields. As we sat upon the stoep with our legs
+dangling to the ground, behind us in the building there was the
+complement of battle: the wounded, the nurses, and the doctors; but in
+front of us there was the expansion of the veldt, green and peaceful.
+The heat haze lay upon it, simmering in an endless stretch of floating
+vapour. There was every appearance of the provincial and rural
+simplicity which goes to make up the daily life of those who live upon
+the veldt. There were homesteads which, but a few months ago, had been
+the centre of some small and flourishing agrestic community, but were
+now charred and blackened, epitomising the destruction which the Boers
+deal out to unoffending people; in the place of the herds which
+formerly had grazed upon the scene, there were the white covers of the
+Boer laagers; there were the lines of the Boer horses, there were the
+mobs of cattle, of sheep, of goats, which, raided from the
+countryside, had been collected in the rear of the enemy's
+encampments. Upon the skyline, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page160" name="page160"></a>(p. 160)</span> from the steps of the
+hospital, the emplacement of "Big Ben" could be seen outlined quite
+distinctly in the bright sunlight. The position of the gun was known
+by the glint of the sun as it played upon the burnished metal.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, as we talked, there came the boom of cannon, and the enemy
+had turned upon the stadt their quick-firing Krupps. Instinctively,
+since the habits which rule the enemy are well known to us, a wounded
+man called out to us that was the five o'clock gun, and for the moment
+we were uncertain as to whether the peace of the afternoon would be
+further disturbed. But in a little a column of smoke, white and heavy,
+hung over the position of "Big Ben," and we at once settled down for
+further shelling during the remainder of the time that daylight
+lasted. In the distance, out on the furthest limits of the Stadt,
+there came echoes, echoing back the noise of the explosion when the
+hundred-pound shell burst amid a collection of native huts. It is so
+seldom that these greater projectiles miss their victims, that
+preparations were at once made for any casualties that might have been
+sent to the hospital. With these measures taken, we waited while the
+firing grew heavier. It was just one of those moments which we had
+been anticipating from the fashion which our friend the Boer had
+already set, and in a little it was proved that whatever had been our
+expectations they would be fully realised. When the firing began, the
+scene upon the stoep of the hospital gradually changed; the wounded
+were carried back to their wards, Surgeon-Major Anderson, the Imperial
+officer who has been sent out here; Dr. Hayes, who in the virtue of
+the rank of P.M.O. conferred by Colonel Baden-Powell, has charge of
+the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page161" name="page161"></a>(p. 161)</span> hospital, and his brother, both local practitioners,
+waited the course of events upon the steps of the building. For the
+time firing seemed confined to the artillery and rifles from the Boer
+trenches in the brickfields, the south-eastern front of the town and
+the eastern facing of the native location receiving the brunt. By
+degrees the entire position of the enemy upon that side dropped into
+line, giving cause and effect to the wisps of smoke which broke into
+the air about the advanced trenches of the foe. In about half an hour
+from the time the first shell exploded over the stadt, a
+stretcher-party appeared coming from the town and began to descend
+into the trench which led to the hospital. As they crossed the
+recreation ground, a large white flag which was carried in advance of
+the party, heralding to the Boers the passing of wounded, attracted
+the attention of the enemy and was promptly fired upon. It is these
+wilful acts which make it difficult to consider the Boer in any way
+removed from a savage combatant, and although the flag-bearer waved
+repeatedly to the enemy's trenches, the fire from that direction did
+not diminish. With no little heroism the stretcher-party, which was
+under Sergeant-Major Dowling, a resident physician in Cape Town, who
+volunteered his services for the campaign, and who has charge of the
+subsidiary hospital in the native location, made their way across the
+zone of fire to the doors of the hospital. Then in a moment all that
+had been peaceful and serene before, became impressed with the
+horrible effects and the fearful injuries which are derived from war.</p>
+
+<p>The stretcher was taken to the operating-room, where nurses had
+already begun to arrange the table, to prepare the carbolic lotion, to
+lay out the lint and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page162" name="page162"></a>(p. 162)</span> bandages, the dressing dishes, sponges,
+and a fine array of instruments; then when the stretcher had been
+placed beside the table, willing and gentle hands lifted the inanimate
+form by the corners of the brown and blood-stained mackintosh sheet in
+which the body had been enshrouded. Dr. Hayes snicked the strings
+which had caught the ends of the sheet about the injured, and as he
+threw back the flaps Surgeon-Major Anderson gently separated the
+clothing where, matted with blood, it had congealed into a sticky mass
+about the injuries. The doctors and the surgeon, bending with callous
+diffidence about the inert and prostrate form, then proceeded rapidly
+with their examination. Through the western windows of the room there
+came the ruddy rays of the sun as it sank to its rest. The light
+caught the bottles on the shelves, flickered for a moment upon the
+silvery brightness of the instruments, and played about the hair of
+the nurses, who, passing to and fro across the window, were as much
+interested in their work as in the nature of the patient's injuries.
+In a corner of the room Sergeant-Major Dr. Dowling explained to
+Surgeon-Major Anderson that the patient, who was a native woman of
+some repute, had been washing clothes upon the banks of the Molopo,
+when a flight of one-pound steel-pointed Maxim shells burst about her.
+The pelvis and the femur had been shattered completely, besides
+internal wounds of a most fatal character in the abdominal regions.
+The left foot was also pulverised, the extraordinary part being that
+any one, after suffering such severe injuries and sustaining so great
+a shock to the system, should yet be living. The examination
+completed, Dr. Hayes, turning to the head nurse, said that it was
+impossible to do anything which would save the woman's life, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page163" name="page163"></a>(p. 163)</span>
+inquiring, as Surgeon-Major Anderson dissolved a grain of morphia in a
+wine-glass, if any one knew the name of the native. As the nurse was
+about to reply, the patient, moaning feebly, expressed in excellent
+English, that her name was Martha. Then it appeared that she was
+recognised as being the wife of a Fingo in the location, one who
+before marriage had been a member of the oldest profession which the
+world has ever known, but since lawful wedlock had consummated her
+union, she had passed, after the manner of her tribe, a life of great
+austerity. The air of the operating-room was becoming oppressive, the
+moaning of the patient merging with the heavy scent of the iodoform
+and the lighter evaporation of the carbolic liniment began gradually
+to dominate the nerves. To the casual observer such as myself, the
+scene was striking. The insensitiveness of those assembled in the
+operating-room, in reality the outcome of great experience in a
+particular profession, enforced a calmness of feature and of feeling
+with which I was far from being actually animated. The mechanical
+industry of the surgeons, the automatic regularity with which the
+hospital orderly waved his fly whisk above the head of the dying
+woman, imparted a coldness to the scene which one could not help
+observing. In a fashion, all that human skill could do had been
+accomplished, since had the foot been amputated at the ankle, or the
+thigh removed at the hip, the labour would have been unnecessary, the
+extra shock to the system serving only to accelerate the end. Very
+gently they sponged the mouth and nose of the woman and cooled her
+brow, very gently they administered morphia and sips of brandy, but
+one by one the doctors, rinsing their hands and lowering <span class="pagenum"><a id="page164" name="page164"></a>(p. 164)</span>
+their shirt-sleeves, put on their jackets. At the door of the
+operating-room Dr. Hayes and Surgeon-Major Anderson paused to impart a
+few brief instructions to the nurses. They were not to forget, said
+the P.M.O., to remove the tourniquet from the pelvis when the end had
+come; Surgeon-Major Anderson adding to this an order to continue
+waving the fly whisk so long as there existed the necessity.</p>
+
+<p>And the incident had closed.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page165" name="page165"></a>(p. 165)</span> CHAPTER XIX<br>
+<span class="smaller">A LITTLE GUN PRACTICE</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><i>December 23rd, 1899.</i></p>
+
+<p>We take a keen interest in our artillery, although we never cease to
+deplore the fact that the War Office did not think it necessary to
+send to Mafeking anything better than old muzzle-loading
+seven-pounders of the Crimean period. Their range is restricted, and
+their mobility is greatly inferior to more modern types; but if they
+have not enabled us to do very much, we have at least been able to
+return their fire. In this way quite a little flutter of enthusiasm
+has been aroused through having unearthed an antiquated
+sixteen-pounder gun. It would seem to have been made about 1770, and
+is identical with those which up till very recently adorned the quay
+at Portsmouth. Its weight is 8 cwt. 2 qr. 10 lb., and it was made by
+B. P. and Co. It is a naval gun, and is stamped "No. 6 port." How it
+came here is uncertain, and its origin unknown; but one gathers that
+it must have been intended more for privateering than for use in any
+Government ship of war, since it is wanting in all official
+superscription. This weapon, which we have now christened "B.-P." out
+of compliment to the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page166" name="page166"></a>(p. 166)</span> Colonel, has been lying upon the farm
+of an Englishman whose interests are very closely united with the
+native tribe whose headquarters are in Mafeking Stadt. Mr. Rowlands
+can recall the gun passing this way in charge of two Germans nearly
+forty years ago. He remembers to have seen it in the possession of
+Linchwe's tribe, and upon his return to the Baralongs, after one of
+his trading journeys, he urged the old chief to secure it for use in
+defence of the Stadt against the attacks of Dutch freebooters. The
+chief then visited Linchwe and bought the gun for twenty-two oxen,
+bringing it down to Mafeking upon his waggon. In those days it had
+three hundred rounds of ammunition, which were utilised in tribal
+fights. With the exception of visits which the gun made to local
+tribes, it has remained here and is now in the possession of Mr.
+Rowlands. It has recently been mounted, and is in active operation
+against our enemies. We have made balls for it, and are intending to
+manufacture shells, in the hope that we shall at least be able to
+reach the emplacement of "Big Ben." The first trial of "B.-P." in its
+new career gave very satisfactory results. With two pounds of powder
+it threw a ball of ten pounds more than two thousand yards. The power
+of the charge was increased by half pounds until a charge of three
+pounds threw a ball of the same weight as the first rather more than
+two miles. We, therefore, have pinned our hopes upon it, and commend
+to the responsible authorities the reflections which may be derived
+from the fact that our chief and most efficient means of defence, lie
+in such a weapon.</p>
+
+<p>After many weeks of inactivity upon our part, we have lately taken the
+initiative against the foe, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page167" name="page167"></a>(p. 167)</span> whose present mode of war, so
+far as this place is concerned, would seem to give preference to the
+chastened security of laagers already beyond the three-mile limit from
+the town. Upon two occasions during the last week we have celebrated
+dawn with many salvoes of artillery, securing sufficient noise and
+effect from our shell fire display, to excite the town to no little
+enthusiasm. Moreover, up to the present, reaction has not set in, and
+we are even more cheerful to-day than we were at the beginning of the
+siege. Dingdaan's Day, the earlier of the two events, was
+distinguished by the Boers, as by ourselves, with a bombardment, which
+opened with a hundred-pound shell from "Big Ben," landing in the
+Headquarters Office at half-past two in the morning. Fortunately no
+one sustained any injury from this untimely marauder of our rest, the
+corner of the building alone being shattered, and the town itself
+sprinkled with fragments of masonry and shell. A few hours later the
+enemy again started firing, while our guns upon the east front
+proceeded to give a good account of themselves. About seven o'clock
+firing for the day ceased from the Boer lines, since they devoted
+themselves to psalm singing and prayer gathering in their laagers in
+commemoration of their day of independence; but we, upon our part,
+threw four rounds at noon into their camp, and then we, too, enjoyed
+the comparative peace of the siege. For the next few days our guns
+remained quiet, and "Big Ben" kept its nose pointed upon the furthest
+limits of the Stadt or Cannon Kopje, until the impression gained
+ground that the Boers had shifted the gun round to a position upon
+which they were very busily engaged on the western side of the Stadt.
+There were those even who were willing to lay odds that, when the gun
+fired <span class="pagenum"><a id="page168" name="page168"></a>(p. 168)</span> again, it would be found to have taken up a new site.
+And so universal was this idea that it was not altogether discarded by
+members of the Staff. With a view to disproving this illusion Colonel
+Baden-Powell arranged that all our available artillery, under Major
+Panzera, should effect a reconnaissance of the Boer lines upon the
+east of the town, from which it could easily be learnt whether the
+fire of the big gun still dominated that front.</p>
+
+<p>There had been some little talk of a movement against the five-pound
+gun, which the enemy had located at Game Tree, and upon Sunday night I
+camped with Captain Vernon, from whose fort upon the western outposts,
+the sortie would have taken place. However, nothing happened, and
+although a few shells fell about us at daybreak, there was nought to
+interest one beyond the usual routine of daily life upon the western
+outposts. Upon returning to town I learnt that the following morning
+might reveal something more important than a mere artillery exchange.
+Towards nightfall, to those who knew about the contemplated move,
+Mafeking appeared to present much unusual animation. Artillery
+officers, whose duty detained them at points distant from the town,
+gathered at Headquarters to receive Major Panzera's final instructions
+before setting out for their emplacements, as at the same time small
+detachments of men moved to reinforce the entrenchments along the
+eastern front. For the most part the town went to its rest in
+ignorance of the surprise which was being laid for the enemy at
+daybreak upon the following morning, and by nine o'clock the nocturnal
+aspect of the town was eminently peaceful. The transformation from the
+harsh and biting sunlight of the day to the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page169" name="page169"></a>(p. 169)</span> soothing and
+eerie light of night impressed the hour with grandeur and solemnity,
+which was in striking contrast to the labour upon which we were
+engaged. From the town, those guns which were not already in position
+moved to their stations&mdash;one, the Hotchkiss, being despatched to an
+emplacement which had only been completed the preceding night. It was
+a pleasant scramble to this position across the veldt, and so near to
+the enemy's lines that we could hear the murmur of their voices as
+they called to one another in the trenches and discerned their gloomy
+figures silhouetted against the skyline. The Hotchkiss, which was our
+extreme piece upon the north-east of the town, was to direct its fire
+upon the enemy at the waterworks and the opposing corner of their
+advanced trenches. Its precise utility was uncertain, since it was not
+possible to see the object at which its fire would be directed, but,
+as the gun party moved to the emplacement, the officer in charge
+arranged with the nearest entrenchment in the rear to signal the
+accuracy of his range. Then we set out to visit the outposts and the
+different emplacements. Time and distance passed rapidly in the
+starlight expanse of the night, and few things could have been more
+impressive than the calm which had come upon the town. From the veldt,
+as we cut directly across from the Hotchkiss to the nearest post, it
+seemed as though we were passing some walled-in city of the ancient
+days. At short distances the outlines of the forts showed out against
+the buildings, and it became almost difficult to suppress the cry to
+the sentry, "Watchman, what of the night?" As we made our rounds it
+was interesting to note how some points had received heavier fire than
+at others. The ground round the Dutch Church <span class="pagenum"><a id="page170" name="page170"></a>(p. 170)</span> was ploughed
+and furrowed by shell, and at Ellis's Corner and across the front of
+the location to Cannon Kopje there were numerous traces of the enemy's
+bombardment. Presently the rounds were concluded, and Major Panzera
+went to snatch a few hours' rest before he opened fire in the morning.
+As upon Dingdaan's morning, so this time did I attach myself to the
+emplacement under the direct control of Major Panzera, at the Dutch
+Church, and around this, as he arrived there, the hour of midnight
+chiming from the church towers, there were the sleeping figures of the
+gunners. For the time we slept together, and when Major Panzera
+aroused us in the morning the rawness of the morning air foretold the
+earliness of the hour.</p>
+
+<p>The mists of night were still rising from the veldt about the Boer
+lines, and as we looked through our field-glasses, figures here and
+there, were busily engaged in gathering brushwood for the matutinal
+fire. Then, as it was yet early, and they were about to prepare their
+coffee, we boiled up ours, and, passing round the billy, filled our
+pannikins to the health of the enemy. It was but a grim jest, and one
+perhaps which shows the indifference of the men to the accidents of
+fate, but as we drank, he who was number one said, raising his tin to
+the air, "We will drink with you in hell." But the hour of jesting was
+soon over and the gun party prepared for their morning's work by
+running up the gun into the embrasure. Number one laid the gun, and
+number two stood with his lanyard in his hand ready to connect the
+friction tube. Number three hung upon the trail piece, and he, with
+the sponge and ramrod, was prepared for immediate service. Within a
+few feet of them were two who were actively adjusting the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page171" name="page171"></a>(p. 171)</span>
+time fuses. At their side there was a pile of common shell and
+shrapnel, and with this, the local colour of the picture is completed.
+Of a sudden Panzera gave the order to the man who fed the gun&mdash;"Common
+shell, percussion fuse, prepare to load," and as it passed from the
+hands of the man to the muzzle of the gun, one found oneself muttering
+a prayer for the souls of the Boers who were so speedily to be sent
+into perdition. "Load," said Panzera rapidly, and the gun was loaded.
+Then, as I focussed my glasses upon the scene, the Major took one last
+squint down the sights of the gun. It was well and truly laid, and as
+he straightened himself to the precision of the parade ground the end
+came rapidly. "Prepare to fire," said he, and number two stepped
+forward, dropping the friction tube into the vent. "Fire," said
+Panzera, and one raised the glasses to fix them upon a party of Boers
+whom we could see drinking their coffee, as they sat upon the parapet
+of the trench. There was a roar, a cloud of smoke, and a red fierce
+tongue of flame leapt from the muzzle of the gun. Dust and smoke and
+sand enveloped the place where those Boers had been sitting, and I
+found myself wondering and endeavouring to believe that the breach in
+the parapet foreboded no great harm to anybody. The battle, if battle
+it were to be, had been started by a well-directed shell. Quickly the
+gun was trained and loaded again, and I felt the excitement entering
+into my soul. The feelings of humanity left me, and I began to hope
+that we should kill them every time. Again our gun fired, falling
+short, but giving the signal to the others along the front to join in
+the comparative splendour of the cannonade. Away down in the river-bed
+our guns boomed; beyond it <span class="pagenum"><a id="page172" name="page172"></a>(p. 172)</span> and between that emplacement and
+Cannon Kopje there were the jets of smoke from the Nordenfeldt like
+the spurts of steam from a geyser. Above us there was the Hotchkiss
+and the merry rattle of the Maxim. So far as noise, and numbers of the
+pieces engaged, went the press of battle was about us. All down our
+front there broke the whistling rush of Lee-Metford rifles, as the
+eastern line of the defence dropped into action. For the moment the
+Boers were surprised at the manner and method of our onslaught, and
+beyond a few desultory rifle shots our guns fired some few rounds
+before any shells came back in answer. As Major Panzera had opened the
+fight so they threw their first shells upon his emplacement, and a
+well-directed flight of one-pound steel-topped base fuse Maxim broke
+in a cloud of dust about us, flinging their sharp-edged fragments in
+all directions. Then we fired again, raking the parapet of the Boers'
+trench, and wondering whether the big gun would reply to us, or
+whether those who had speculated upon its removal would win. The music
+of the fight grew louder and louder, the quick-firing guns of the
+enemy paying their tribute. From where we were we could see the gun in
+the river-bed emplacement doing remarkable execution. The smoke of our
+own hung heavy upon us, mingling with the dust from the Maxim shell,
+as the enemy continued to pepper our emplacement. We were beginning to
+find it difficult to see, while the roar of the guns made it almost
+impossible to catch the officer's orders. Suddenly, as our gun again
+broke forth, the bell clanged in the distance six times. It was the
+signal that the big gun had fired, the six strokes indicating that it
+was pointed upon us. We heard it and crouched in the dust, and as we
+crouched we <span class="pagenum"><a id="page173" name="page173"></a>(p. 173)</span> wondered. There was a screaming tumult in the
+air, a deafening explosion at our feet shook the ground; earth and
+dust, stones and bits of grass fell all about us, and the roofs of
+buildings upon either side of us rattled with the fragments of the
+shell as it burst within a circle of twenty-five yards from the gun.
+It was a moment rather fine than frightful, with just sufficient
+danger in it to make it interesting, but, if anything, somewhat
+quickly over. We wiped the dust from our faces, shook the grass from
+our shirts, and laid again: once more fired, and chuckled to see,
+through rifts in the battle smoke, that it had landed in the very
+centre of the trench. Again the bell clanged sonorously, and a
+building not fifteen yards from us was blown to pieces. They were
+getting nearer, and making magnificent shooting, when the Nordenfeldt
+turned its fire upon "Big Ben" itself. From where we were we could see
+the thin columns of smoke rising, as the bullets burst before and
+behind the emplacement. If anything were calculated to check its fire
+it was the irritating and penetrating possibility of the
+armour-piercing Nordenfeldt. With the introduction of "Big Ben" into
+the morning's festivities, the Boers opened from their trenches, with
+their Mauser and Martini rifles. In the intervals between the shells
+from "Big Ben," the Maxim, and quick-firing nine-pounders, the enemy
+swept our emplacements with their rifle fire. They came through the
+embrasure with quite fatal accuracy, dropping at our feet and raising
+dust all around us, but the tale of the one is the tale of the many,
+and the same scene was occurring throughout the entire eastern front.
+For a moment it became impossible to serve the gun, and we desisted
+with apologies to the enemy, but anon rifle fire was deflected, and we
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page174" name="page174"></a>(p. 174)</span> again trained the gun upon those very advanced trenches of
+the enemy; but, as we fired, the bell rang, and for the third time
+their shell, passing ours in its flight, tore up the ground in front
+of us. And then the Nordenfeldt spoke again, shooting into the very
+smoke of the gun as though they were anxious to drop projectiles into
+the breach itself. And to the north of us the Hotchkiss spitted, as
+though resenting the intrusion of this big bully. But there
+unfortunately it ended, and no more big shells came our way, and we
+contented ourselves with a parting sally.</p>
+
+<p>Then the gun was sponged and laid to rest in the trench, and the spare
+shell put back into the box as the engagement closed. Then Panzera
+called his men together and thanked them, expressing his admiration
+for their courage and their coolness. Then we cheered him, and
+returning thanks for thanks, we went to breakfast, but in the distance
+we could see the Red Cross upon the white background, floating in
+tragic isolation, above a waggon, which was stopping ever and anon at
+places where we knew our shells had broken. That was in the Boer
+lines, but in our own the bugle sounded us to breakfast.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page175" name="page175"></a>(p. 175)</span> CHAPTER XX<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE ATTACK UPON GAME TREE</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">Mafeking</span>, <i>December 27th, 1899</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Barely had the celebration of Christmas Day passed in Mafeking when
+the order to prepare for immediate action was sent out from
+Headquarters, and in the early hours of Boxing Day two dismounted
+squadrons began to move to the front. We had spent a pleasant holiday
+that day, which of all days brings glad tidings and goodwill
+throughout the civilised and Christian world; but when, hereafter, we
+come to speak of the Christmas season of 1899, our stories will be
+impressed with the sinister memories of the tragic events which have
+for us marked the time as one of lamentation. Nothing could have been
+in more complete contrast to the happiness of Christmas Day, imbued
+with much real meaning to beleaguered Mafeking, than those early
+morning preparations which were made as the day closed. For some
+little time we have been desirous to attack the enemy's position at
+Game Tree, and in my last letter I mentioned the fact that, in
+anticipation of such an event, I had camped one night recently with
+Captain Vernon at his western outpost. That attack, however, did not
+take place, and, although the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page176" name="page176"></a>(p. 176)</span> town and garrison were
+disappointed, there was a very strong feeling that it would not be
+long before they were compensated for their disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>Game Tree, against which our force moved, is a strongly fortified
+position of the enemy, about two miles from the town, and it has been
+from this spot that our front to the north-west has been subjected to
+a persistent rifle and artillery fire during many weeks. The attack
+was ordered for the purpose of breaking the cordon around Mafeking,
+with a view to ultimately reopening our communications to the north. D
+and C Squadrons of the Protectorate Regiment, under the Imperial
+Service officers, Captain Vernon, of the King's Royal Rifles, and
+Captain Fitzclarence, of the Royal Fusiliers, were detailed to carry
+out the attack from the east, under the protection of the armoured
+train, and Captain Williams and twenty men of the British South Africa
+Police, with a one-pounder Hotchkiss and Maxim. This right flank was
+further supported by Captain Cowan and seventy men of the Bechuanaland
+Rifles, the whole of the wing being under the command of Major Godley.
+The left wing comprised three seven-pounders, one cavalry Maxim, and a
+troop of the Protectorate Regiment under Major Panzera; Captain Lord
+Charles Bentinck with two troops of A Squadron holding the reserve.
+The entire operations from this side were conducted by Colonel Hore.
+Colonel Baden-Powell and his staff&mdash;Major Lord Edward Cecil, Chief
+Staff Officer, Captain Wilson, A.D.C., and Lieutenant the Hon. A. H.
+C. Hanbury-Tracy&mdash;watched the progress of the fight from Dummie Fort.</p>
+
+<p>Our guns moved into position during the night, throwing up
+emplacements for the attack, and as <span class="pagenum"><a id="page177" name="page177"></a>(p. 177)</span> soon as they could see,
+Major Panzera opened fire. It was yet dark, although there came a
+faint glimmer of light from the east, but not sufficient to prevent
+the flashes from the muzzles of the guns and the glow of the bursting
+shells from being plainly visible. Until that moment there had been no
+sign of any living thing about the veldt between us and the Boer
+lines, and there was no sound. We had seen C and D Squadrons creeping
+to their positions under the guidance of the scout Cooke. Captain Lord
+Charles Bentinck had deployed across the front of the Boer position,
+taking up his place upon the left of the line. Close to him and but
+little in advance, the gunners had ensconced themselves behind a few
+sods of earth and sacks of sand. These operations marked the
+preliminary of the fight, from which, as the armoured train steamed to
+its post, completing the units in our attack, nothing had been omitted
+which might increase our chances of success.</p>
+
+<p>At 4.15 a.m. our first shells were thrown upon the enemy's position,
+the shells bursting short and beyond Game Tree with no very striking
+effect. Upon the left of Game Tree and extending to the receding wall
+of the fort, some sixty yards distant, there was a heavy overgrowth of
+bushes, upon which, as the enemy seemed to be firing from concealed
+pits in their midst, the cavalry Maxim concentrated its fire. Away to
+the right there was the automatic rattle of the Maxim in the armoured
+train, and the sharp crack of the Hotchkiss. For the first
+three-quarters of an hour the attack was left to Major Panzera, who,
+it was hoped, would effect a breach in the parapet through the agency
+of his guns. But, unfortunately, the damage inflicted upon the fort
+did not materially aid the charge which our men were so soon and so
+very <span class="pagenum"><a id="page178" name="page178"></a>(p. 178)</span> gallantly to make, and which, when completed, revealed
+the fact that Colonel Baden-Powell had also organised a frontal attack
+upon an entrenched and impregnable position, with most lamentable
+results. A few of the enemy were put out of action by our shrapnel
+shells bursting in such a manner as to search out the interior of the
+fort with their sharp-edged segments, but the strength of the fort was
+so great and had been so increased during the night, that the
+artillery which was available was not sufficiently heavy for our
+purpose, while the wisdom of using the guns at all is eminently
+questionable. The character of our attack needed a movement which was
+quietly delivered, and which was in the nature of a surprise. So far
+as the fact is of value, in appreciating the appalling disaster which
+upon that morning befell our arms, our gunfire simply warned the
+garrison in the fort to stand to their arms. There is no doubt that
+the employment of the guns was a blunder in keeping with the
+conception of the attack. Colonel Baden-Powell, one has to say
+regretfully, upon this occasion was instrumental in bringing about
+quite needless loss of life. Presently, as we watched, we could see
+the signal being given to the armoured train "to cease fire," and a
+moment afterwards the base notes of the steam whistle boomed forth,
+when, as though waiting for this signal, "Big Ben," whose emplacement
+was some 6,000 yards to the south-east in the rear, began to shell the
+armoured train. As the echoes of the big gun died away, a roll of
+musketry from our own line and from the fort swept across the veldt,
+and for a few brief moments the hail of bullets was like the opening
+shower of a tropical deluge. Upon the east Captain Vernon with C and D
+Squadrons had begun the charge. Their position at this moment was in
+echelon&mdash;Captain Sandford <span class="pagenum"><a id="page179" name="page179"></a>(p. 179)</span> with a troop of C Squadron was upon
+the right extremity, with Captain Vernon in the centre, and Captain
+Fitzclarence upon his left. As Captain Vernon gave the word to charge
+they opened out into skirmishing order, maintaining the while
+successive volleys with perfect accuracy. The advance was well carried
+out; indeed, its order and style were worthy of the best traditions of
+our army, and received tributes of admiration from all the commanding
+officers present. As they advanced the fire of the enemy was
+principally delivered from the front of the fort and the rifle
+intrenchments in the scrub. For a moment it seemed as though the face
+opposed to the rush of Captain Vernon and Captain Sandford was a mere
+wall requiring only to be scaled for the fort to be captured. But,
+when the men approached within three hundred yards of the fort, rifles
+rang out from every possible point, and the ground was swept by Mauser
+and Martini bullets. The men who charged through this zone of fire
+suffered terribly, and the conclusion must have forced itself upon
+their minds that they were going to their death. As each face of the
+fort became engaged the fire of the enemy began to have a telling
+effect upon our charging line. Captain Sandford was the first to fall,
+mortally wounded with a bullet in the spine. He fell down, calling to
+his men to continue the charge; but where he had fallen, he died. Our
+men now began to drop rather rapidly, and Captain Fitzclarence was
+disabled with a bullet in the thigh. His place was taken by Lieutenant
+Swinburne, who at once continued the charge, that officer and
+Lieutenant Bridges, of the same squadron, being among the nine who,
+upon the termination of the fight, were unwounded. The ground around
+the fort was becoming dotted with the figures <span class="pagenum"><a id="page180" name="page180"></a>(p. 180)</span> of our wounded
+men, who, although they were but an irregular soldiery, followed their
+officers with the pluck and dogged determination of veterans. The
+brunt of the fight now fell upon the companies under the immediate
+command of Captain Vernon, who, undaunted by the impossibility of his
+task, steadily fought his way forward. As they approached still
+nearer, his men, undisturbed by the shower of bullets which fell about
+them, cheered repeatedly, the echo of those cheers, giving rise to the
+impression that the capture of the position was imminent. The steady
+rush of our men, undeflected by the worst that the enemy could do, was
+rapidly demoralising those who were firing from behind the loopholes
+in the fort, and it may have been that, had we not had our responsible
+officers shot or killed before we reached the walls of the fort, a
+different story might have to be told. As it happened, when Captain
+Vernon, with whom was Lieutenant Paton, steadied his men for the wild
+impetuosity of the last charge, a bullet struck him in the body. For a
+brief interval he stopped, but, refusing the entreaty of Lieutenant
+Paton that he should fall out, he joined that officer once more in
+taking the lead. From the point which they had gained the character of
+the fort was seen, and the heavy fire under which it was defended
+showed it to be impregnable. It rose some seven feet from the ground,
+from the edges of a ditch with sides that it was almost impossible to
+climb. It was certain death which stared them in the face within
+twenty-five yards, but not a man was dismayed. They continued. The
+ditch was before them, the fort above them, and through double tiers
+of loopholes came the enemy's fire. Our men from one side of the ditch
+fired point-blank at an enemy who, from behind his loophole, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page181" name="page181"></a>(p. 181)</span>
+fired point-blank at him. Here those who had survived until now were
+either killed or wounded, and it was here that Captain Vernon was hit
+again, as he, with Lieutenant Paton and the scout Cooke, whose tunic
+at the end of the engagement was found to be riddled with bullets,
+endeavoured to clamber into the fort. Captain Vernon and Lieutenant
+Paton managed by superhuman efforts to reach the loopholes, into which
+they emptied their revolvers. Their example was eagerly followed by
+the few who remained, and who were shot down as they plied their
+bayonets through the apertures. Here Captain Vernon, Lieutenant Paton,
+Corporal Pickard, Sergeant Ross, and many others were killed. Captain
+Vernon was shot in the head, the third wound which he had received
+within two hundred yards. Lieutenant Paton was shot in the region of
+the heart. Bugler Morgan, who was the first to ply his bayonet, was
+shot in three places, but it is believed that he will live. Then a
+mighty roar rose up, and we who had not taken part in the charge,
+again thought that the position had been carried. But it was the
+triumphant shout of the Boers, who, from the quick manner in which
+they followed us in hoisting up the Red Cross flag, would seem to have
+been partially demoralised by the keenness of our attack. With the
+dead and dying about them, and the area of the wounded encircling the
+fort, those of our men who were left fell back savagely and sullenly,
+with a contempt of the enemy's fire and the desire to renew the
+attack. Further assault was impossible, and, though we continued to
+fire upon the position until stretcher-parties were sent out, the
+fight was practically over upon our retirement. When they fell in
+again, out of the sixty men that had been engaged in the charge only
+nine were unwounded. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page182" name="page182"></a>(p. 182)</span> Our killed were twenty-one; our wounded
+thirty, of whom four have since died. There were also three who were
+prisoners in the hands of the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after the commencement of operations the chief staff officer gave
+me permission to move forward from Dummie Fort, and I therefore rode
+over to the position occupied by Captain Lord Charles Bentinck, and
+afterwards to Game Tree, joining Surgeon-Major Anderson, when the Red
+Cross flag was hoisted on the scene of the engagement. The heavy
+vapour from the shells still impregnated the air, and hanging loosely
+over the veldt were masses of grey-black and brown-yellow smoke
+clouds. Boers on horseback and on foot were moving quickly in all
+directions, and mounted detachments were seen advancing at a gallop
+from the big laager upon the eastern front, with their rifles swung
+loosely across their knees. They had been proceeding to reinforce Game
+Tree Fort, upon an order from Field Cornet Steinekamp, when the
+cessation of hostilities had taken place under the provisions of the
+Red Cross. Game Tree Fort presented an animated picture. The enemy
+thronged its walls, held noisy conversation in scattered groups, that,
+breaking up in one spot, congregated the next moment in some other.
+The bushes about the fort were alive with men who, with their rifles
+in their hands and a few loose cartridges at their side, were prepared
+at any moment to resume hostilities. The fort itself showed no traces
+of the shelling, although it were impossible, from the seventy-five
+yards limit, up to which we were permitted to approach, to examine it
+very thoroughly. It has been claimed that the fort was strengthened
+during the night, but signs were absent by which one could detect
+traces of the new work, and, in view of this <span class="pagenum"><a id="page183" name="page183"></a>(p. 183)</span> fact, one is
+disinclined to impugn the statement of Commandant Botha, who told me
+that he had been expecting the attack for the past two weeks. From
+where we were the strength of the fort was very apparent, seeming
+altogether unnecessary for the requirements of such a post, unless
+definite information had been carried to the enemy about our plans. It
+may be that the night attack which Captain Fitzclarence had led
+against the Boer trenches upon the east of the town earlier in the
+siege had prompted the enemy to strengthen all their positions. The
+fort itself had been given a head covering of wooden beams, earth, and
+corrugated iron; the entrance in the rear was blocked, and in every
+other way it appeared impregnable. When the order came for our men to
+retire, Dr. Hamilton proceeded from the armoured train with the Red
+Cross flag, making his way to the wounded in the face of a heavy fire.
+But as soon as it was recognised by the enemy that he was desirous of
+helping the sufferers the firing was at once stopped, and Commandant
+Botha himself apologised. The field around the Boer position at once
+became dotted with similar emblems, for the character of the charge
+and the severity of the fire had confined our losses within a very
+small radius of the position. The scene here was intensely pathetic,
+and everywhere there were dead or dying men. The Boers moved out from
+their trenches and swarmed around with idle curiosity to inspect the
+injuries which they had inflicted upon their foe, while a constant
+procession came from the immediate precincts of the fort, bearing
+those of our men who had fallen within its actual circumference. In
+their way they assisted us, although for some time they would not
+permit the waggons of the ambulance to approach nearer than <span class="pagenum"><a id="page184" name="page184"></a>(p. 184)</span>
+half a mile, nor at first would they entertain our proposal that the
+services of the armoured train should be employed to facilitate the
+conveyance of casualties to the base.</p>
+
+<a id="img010" name="img010"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img010.jpg" width="500" height="345" alt="" title="">
+<p class="smcap">BOERS INSPECTING THE BRITISH KILLED AT GAME TREE HILL.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>As Surgeon-Major Anderson proceeded with his work, assisted by Dr. T.
+Hayes, Dr. Hamilton and a staff of dressers, the character of the
+wounds which our men had suffered gave rise to the impression that the
+enemy had used explosive bullets, although it is perhaps possible that
+Martini rifles fired at close range would account for the wide area of
+injury on those who had been wounded. In one case a bullet in the head
+had blown off rather more than half the skull; in another a small
+puncture in the thigh had completely pulverised the limb; while in a
+third, in which the bullet had struck just above the knee-cap, it had
+raised a mass of shattered flesh and bone into a pulpy mound. With
+these fearful injuries before one it was scarcely possible to believe
+that the wounds inflicted had originated through the impact of Mauser
+or Martini bullets. The Field Cornet, with whom I conversed at some
+length, upon being shown the dreadful condition of the wounds,
+admitted that at one time explosive bullets had been served out, but
+that it was not possible that they could have been used that morning,
+since he was convinced that that particular ammunition had already
+been expended. He then produced a bandolier filled with Dum-dum
+bullets, and suggested that since so much of the Mark IV. ammunition
+had been taken by them from us, our men had been hit by bullets which
+we ourselves had manufactured. I pointed out that this particular
+ammunition had been recalled, so far as Mafeking was concerned, since
+it had been found to strip in the barrel of the rifle. The <span class="pagenum"><a id="page185" name="page185"></a>(p. 185)</span>
+Field Cornet then said that he and his men were already aware of the
+uselessness of this particular pattern of bullet, since upon many
+occasions they had been hit by some curious missile from which it was
+evident that the casing had stripped, and from which no injury had
+been sustained. It was a strange conversation to have with a man
+against whom the moment before we had been fighting, but from time to
+time, as we were waiting for the wounded to be brought up, the
+conversation was reopened between us.</p>
+
+<p>The attitude of the Boers around us was one of stolid composure, not
+altogether unmixed with sympathy. At one time almost one hundred had
+assembled around those who were dressing the wounded. With their
+rifles upon their backs and two bandoliers crossing each other upon
+their chests, they appeared a stalwart body of men; for the most part
+they were big and burly, broad in their shoulders, ponderous in their
+gait, and uncouth in their appearance, combining a somewhat soiled and
+tattered appearance with an air of triumph. Their clothing was an
+ill-assorted array of patterns and materials, altogether incongruous
+and out of keeping with the campaign upon which they were then
+engaged. Some of them, with quite unnecessary brutality, had doffed
+their own rifles and bandoliers, in order that they might show and
+swing somewhat aggressively before our notice, the spoils of the
+battlefield. In this manner they sported Lee-Metford rifles and
+bandoliers containing Mark II. and Mark IV. ammunition. But for the
+most part they behaved with a certain decorum, and it may be that the
+weapon which they bore was the silent confirmation of the Field
+Cornet's words. Here and there they made some attempt to rob the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page186" name="page186"></a>(p. 186)</span> wounded and despoil the dead, but when I remonstrated with
+the Field Cornet he expressed, with every appearance of sincerity, his
+very keen regret, ordering the transgressors from the field, and
+explaining that he was unable to accept the responsibility for such
+acts, since, although they had instructions to respect the dead, the
+younger men were so unruly as to be beyond his control. The Field
+Cornet proceeded to assert that the acts of his men were neither so
+barbarous nor so inhuman as those which our own soldiers had committed
+after the battle of Elandslaagte, where, he said, Imperial troops had
+stripped the body of General de Koch, leaving him to lie upon the
+field wounded and naked, and adding that we were morally responsible,
+and held as such by every right-minded person in the Transvaal and
+Orange Free State, for the subsequent death of the Boer general. This
+opinion was loudly endorsed by a number of the enemy, who had
+collected around us, one of whom stated that he had received orders
+from Commandant Botha to take possession of any effects which were
+found upon the bodies of the wounded or dead. I referred this man's
+statement to the Field Cornet, when quite a lively altercation in
+Dutch ensued. The Field Cornet denied that any such order had been
+given by Commandant Botha, and that, had any orders at all been given,
+they referred merely to papers and to the removal of side arms and
+ammunition. I pointed out to him the bodies of five of our men whose
+pockets had been turned inside out, and who were at that moment being
+brought up under an escort of the enemy. He was also confronted with
+three wounded who declared that they had had their personal effects
+stolen as they lay about the Boer trenches, their <span class="pagenum"><a id="page187" name="page187"></a>(p. 187)</span> rings
+taken from their fingers, and their money taken from their pockets.
+The Field Cornet then promised that if any man who had done such a
+thing could be identified he would be immediately punished, while the
+more reputable of those who gathered round us guaranteed, if not the
+restitution of the property, summary conviction for the offenders. And
+in this connection it must be said that during the course of the
+afternoon a Boer orderly came in, under a flag of truce, to our lines
+to restore to Bugler Morgan his silver watch and <i>�</i>3, which had been
+taken from him as he lay, shot through each thigh, in the trenches of
+the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Very striking was the tone of harmony which characterised this
+temporary intercourse upon the field of battle between Boer and
+Briton. People who had been pitted against each other in mortal combat
+the moment before were now fraternising with every outward sign of
+decency and amity. This is doubtless due in some measure to the
+strange composition of the two contending forces, since so many upon
+the one side have friends and even relatives fighting against them
+that it seems the most natural thing in the world for any mutual
+acquaintance of one particular individual to make inquiries about his
+welfare. These greetings impressed the scene with a note of
+pleasantness and good feeling which was in most happy contrast to the
+surroundings.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page188" name="page188"></a>(p. 188)</span> CHAPTER XXI<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE ADVENT OF THE NEW YEAR</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">Mafeking</span>, <i>January 3rd, 1900</i>.</p>
+
+<p>New Year's Eve drew to itself much of the sentiment which is usually
+associated with that event. We perhaps did not ring the old year out
+and the new year in, because the sonorous clang of bells presages in
+these times the advent of shells. When the enemy lay their gun upon
+the town the bell at the outlook rings once; when its precise
+direction has been located it peals according to the number which has
+been given to that direction. Then there comes the firing-bell, by
+which time all good people should have taken cover. It will be seen,
+therefore, that the ringing of bells has a particular significance,
+and one from which it is inappropriate and inadvisable to depart. But
+our celebration of New Year's Eve was a quiet gathering of men drawn
+from the various points of the town, who assembled within the shadows
+of the English Church to sing a hymn and give voice to our National
+Anthem. It had been raining during the evening; the air was fresh and
+fragrant, and the ground was very damp. They came in their cloaks;
+they carried their rifles and wore their <span class="pagenum"><a id="page189" name="page189"></a>(p. 189)</span> bandoliers, since
+it was not a time to chance the possibilities of an attack. There were
+perhaps one hundred of them, and had it been convenient to allow a
+general muster, the whole garrison would have very willingly attended.
+When everything was ready the great stillness of the night was broken
+gently by a prelude from the harmonium, which, dropping to a low tone,
+became a mere accompaniment to the human voices. Then the volume of
+music grew somewhat fuller until it carried in its depths the voices
+of the singers merged into one torrent of stirring melody; then there
+was a fresh pause, and as the echoes of the hymn died away, lingering
+in the rafters of the building until countless spirits seemed to be
+taking up the refrain, the voice of the preacher broke out in words
+which manfully endeavoured to cheer the congregation. We stood and
+listened, rapt with an attention which gave more to the scene than to
+the exhortations of the man, and waiting for the time to sing the
+National Anthem. In these moments, when one is so far from the Queen
+and the capital of her great Empire, the singing of the National
+Anthem has a weight and meaning much finer and much greater than that
+imparted to the hymn when the words are sung at home. Presently the
+voices took up the hymn, throwing into the darkness of the church some
+whiteness of the dawn which will usher in the days of peace upon the
+termination of the war. The National Anthem, sang amid these
+surroundings, was incomparably beautiful, seeming to strengthen the
+irresolute, even cheering those who were already strong, and imparting
+to every one a happier frame of mind and a greater spirit of
+contentment. Scenes on a smaller scale, but identical in purpose, were
+enacted at almost every one of our posts, and the hour of midnight
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page190" name="page190"></a>(p. 190)</span> must have borne to the watchful sentries of the enemy some
+slight knowledge of the pleasing duty upon which the garrison was
+engaged. It was only for a moment&mdash;just so long, indeed, as it took to
+sing the verses of the anthem. Then, when this was over, the harmony
+of night fell once more upon the garrison.</p>
+
+<p>The New Year has brought to Mafeking and the garrison that is
+beleaguered within its walls, no signs of the fulfilment of the
+prophecy that relief would come by the end of December. Indeed, the
+closing year of the nineteenth century was ushered in with the boom of
+cannon and the fire of small arms, and in a style generally which does
+not differ from any one of the many days during which the siege and
+bombardment have lasted. There was no cessation of hostilities similar
+to that which characterised Christmas Day; firing began at an early
+hour in the morning from the enemy's artillery, and did not terminate
+until the evening gun gave a few hours' peace to the town. For quite a
+fortnight there has been no such heavy fire, and it would seem that,
+for our especial edification, the authorities in Pretoria had sent to
+the commandant of the Boer forces that are investing us, a New Year's
+gift of three waggon-loads of ammunition. A new gun was also
+despatched to them, and, its position being constantly shifted, its
+fire has since played upon every quarter of the town. For the moment
+we had attached no great importance to this new weapon, but after the
+first few rounds it was discovered to be employing what are called
+combustible bombs. These new shells do not usually explode, seeming to
+discharge a chemical liquid which ignites upon contact with the air.
+They are also filled with lumps of sulphur, and so severe might be the
+damage from this new agency of destruction which <span class="pagenum"><a id="page191" name="page191"></a>(p. 191)</span> the Boers
+have turned against Mafeking that the most stringent orders have been
+issued for any one finding these shells to see that they are
+immediately buried. At present, beyond a few unimportant blazes in the
+gardens of the town, no damage has been caused, while, in the
+meantime, our situation here has in no way altered.</p>
+
+<p>It would appear that our resistance is beginning to exasperate the
+enemy, driving him to a pitch in which he is determined to respect
+neither the Convention of Geneva nor the promptings of humanity.
+Again, despite the innumerable warnings which he has received, for two
+days in succession has he made the hospital and the women's laager the
+sole object of his attentions. Yesterday the shells fell sufficiently
+wide of these two places to justify the broad-minded in giving to his
+artillery officers the benefit of the doubt; but to-day it is
+impossible to find any extenuating circumstances whatever in his
+favour, and I very much regret to have to state that through the
+shelling of the women's laager many children's lives have been
+imperilled, many women wounded. From time to time every effort has
+been made to give to the gentler sex the most perfect immunity, but it
+would seem as though we can no longer consider as safe these poor
+innocent and helpless non-combatants. The children of some of the most
+respected and most loyal townspeople have been killed in this manner,
+just as they were romping within the trenches which encircle their
+retreat. For two hours this morning the Creusot and quick-firing guns
+of the enemy fired into the laager, creating scenes of panic and
+consternation which it is not fitting to describe. Nine
+one-hundred-pound shells burst within the precincts of that place in
+the space of an hour, and in palliation of this there <span class="pagenum"><a id="page192" name="page192"></a>(p. 192)</span> is
+nothing whatever which can be said, since the enemy had posted a
+heliograph station upon a kopje a few thousand yards distant from the
+point of attack. As the big shells sped across the town to drop within
+the laager beyond, the enemy's signallers heliographed their direction
+to the emplacement of Big Ben. Our own signalling corps intercepted
+the messages from the enemy, reading out, from time to time, the
+purport of the flashes. The first shell was short, and the enemy's
+signallers worked vigorously. The second was too wide. The third fell
+within the laager itself, the pieces piercing, when it burst, a number
+of tents. To this shot the heliograph flashed a cordial expression of
+approval. These actions upon the part of the Boers, as repeatedly
+pointed out to them, make it almost impossible for us to regard our
+foe as other than one which is inspired with the emotions of a
+degraded people and the crude cruelty and vindictive animosity of
+savages. Just now, when the press of our feelings is beyond
+confinement, there is nothing but a universal wish that we may
+speedily be relieved and so enabled to enjoy the initiative against
+the Boers. When that moment comes it must not be forgotten that we
+have suffered bitterly, and in a way which must be taken as excusing
+any excesses which may occur.</p>
+
+<a id="img011" name="img011"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img011.jpg" width="500" height="353" alt="" title="">
+<p class="smcap">THE COLONEL ON THE LOOK-OUT AT HEADQUARTERS.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>As I returned from a visit to the women's laager Colonel Baden-Powell
+was lying in his easy-chair beneath the roof of the verandah of the
+Headquarters Office. Colonel Baden-Powell is young, as men go in the
+army, with a keen appreciation of the possibilities of his career,
+swayed by ambition, indifferent to sentimental emotion. In stature he
+is short, while his features are sharp and smooth. He is eminently a
+man of determination, of great physical endurance <span class="pagenum"><a id="page193" name="page193"></a>(p. 193)</span> and
+capacity, and of extraordinary reticence. His reserve is unbending,
+and one would say, quoting a phrase of Mr. Pinero's, that fever would
+be the only heat which would permeate his body. He does not go about
+freely, since he is tied to his office through the multitudinous cares
+of his command, and he is chiefly happy when he can snatch the time to
+escape upon one of those nocturnal, silent expeditions, which alone
+calm and assuage the perpetual excitement of his present existence.
+Outwardly, he maintains an impenetrable screen of self-control,
+observing with a cynical smile the foibles and caprices of those
+around him. He seems ever bracing himself to be on guard against a
+moment in which he should be swept by some unnatural and spontaneous
+enthusiasm, in which by a word, by an expression of face, by a
+movement, or in the turn of a phrase, he should betray the rigours of
+the self-control under which he lives. Every passing townsman regards
+him with curiosity not unmixed with awe. Every servant in the hotel
+watches him, and he, as a consequence, seldom speaks without a
+preternatural deliberation and an air of decisive finality. He seems
+to close every argument with a snap, as though the steel manacles of
+his ambition had checkmated the emotions of the man in the instincts
+of the officer. He weighs each remark before he utters it, and
+suggests by his manner, as by his words, that he has considered the
+different effects it might conceivably have on any mind as the
+expression of his own mind. As an officer, he has given to Mafeking a
+complete and assured security, to the construction of which he has
+brought a very practical knowledge of the conditions of Boer warfare,
+of the Boers themselves, and of the strategic worth of the adjacent
+areas. His espionagic <span class="pagenum"><a id="page194" name="page194"></a>(p. 194)</span> excursions to the Boer lines have
+gained him an intimate and accurate idea of the value of the opposing
+forces and a mass of <i>data</i> by which he can immediately counteract the
+enemy's attack. He loves the night, and after his return from the
+hollows in the veldt, where he has kept so many anxious vigils, he
+lies awake hour after hour upon his camp mattress in the verandah,
+tracing out, in his mind, the various means and agencies by which he
+can forestall their move, which, unknown to them, he had personally
+watched. He is a silent man, and it would seem that silence has become
+in his heart a curious religion. In the noisy day he yearns for the
+noiseless night, in which he can slip into the vistas of the veldt, an
+unobtrusive spectator of the mystic communion of tree with tree, of
+twilight with darkness, of land with water, of early morn with fading
+night, with the music of the journeying winds to speak to him and to
+lull his thoughts. As he makes his way across our lines the watchful
+sentry strains his eyes a little more to keep the figure of the
+colonel before him, until the undulations of the veldt conceal his
+progress. He goes in the privacy of the night, when it be no longer a
+season of moonlight, when, although the stars were full, the night be
+dim. The breezes of the veldt are warm and gentle, impregnated with
+the fresh fragrances of the Molopo, although, as he walks with rapid,
+almost running, footsteps, leaving the black blur of the town for the
+arid and stony areas to the west, a new wind meets him&mdash;a wind that is
+clear and keen and dry, the wind of the wastes that wanders for ever
+over the monotonous sands of the desert. It accompanies him as he
+walks as though to show and to whisper with gentle gusts that it knew
+of his intention. It sighs amid the sentinel trees that stand
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page195" name="page195"></a>(p. 195)</span> straight and isolated about the Boer lines. He goes on,
+never faltering, bending for a moment behind a clump of rocks,
+screening himself next behind some bushes, crawling upon his hands and
+knees, until his movements, stirring a few loose stones, create a
+thin, grating noise in the vast silence about him. His head is low,
+his eyes gaze straight upon the camp of the enemy; in a little he
+moves again, his inspection is over, and he either changes to a fresh
+point or startles some dozing sentry as he slips back into town.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page196" name="page196"></a>(p. 196)</span> CHAPTER XXII<br>
+<span class="smaller">NATIVE LIFE</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">Mafeking</span>, <i>January 10th, 1900</i>.</p>
+
+<p>During the time which has elapsed since Christmas an interesting event
+has been the deposition of Wessels, the chief of the Baralongs. At a
+<i>kotla</i> of the tribe, to which the councillors and petty chiefs were
+bidden by the Civil Commissioner, Mr. Bell notified the tribe of his
+decision. The deposed chief, a man of no parts whatever, but one who
+unfortunately reveals all the vices of civilisation, has been put upon
+sick-leave, the reins of government being placed in the hands of his
+two chief councillors. Wessels had been instigating his tribe to
+refuse to work for the military authorities here, and through his
+instrumentality it has become difficult to obtain native labour and
+native runners. He told them in his amiable fashion that the English
+wished to make slaves of them, and that they would not be paid for any
+services which they rendered; nor would they, added he, taking
+advantage of an unfortunate turn in the situation, be given any food,
+but left to starve when the critical moment came. With the change
+which had been adopted and which has been given the sanction of the
+<i>kotla</i>, it is hoped that matters may <span class="pagenum"><a id="page197" name="page197"></a>(p. 197)</span> progress more smoothly
+and the tribe itself increase in prosperity. It was an interesting
+meeting, and one which recalled the early days of Africa, when the
+authority of the great White Queen was not a power paramount in the
+council chambers of the tribes. Wessels, unwilling and assuming an air
+of injured dignity, filled his place in the <i>kotla</i> for the last time;
+around him there were the chiefs of the tribe, his blood relatives,
+and his councillors. Their attire was a weird mixture of effete
+savagery and of the civilisation of the sort which is picked up from
+living in touch with white Africa and missionary societies. Many black
+legs were clothed in trousers, many black shoulders wore coats. Here
+and there, as relics of the past, there was the ostrich feather in the
+hat, the fly whisk, composed of the hairs from the tail of an animal,
+the iron or bone skin-scraper with which to remove the perspiration of
+the body. A few wore shoes upon naked feet, a few others sported
+watch-chains and spoke English. At the back of the enclosure there was
+a native guard who shouldered Martini-Henri rifles, elephant guns,
+Sniders, or sporting rifles. A few of these were garmented with skins
+of animals upon the naked body. After a stately and not altogether
+friendly greeting to the man who had ordered the assembly to meet, the
+reasons which had brought about the contemplated change in the head of
+the tribe were stated in English and then translated by the
+interpreter. The old chief snorted with disgust and endeavoured to
+coerce his people to reject the demands made upon them. But they had
+been made before a body of men who were capable of realising the
+worthlessness of their chief, and who, under the protection of the
+Imperial delegate, did not mind endorsing the suggestions and
+expressing their <span class="pagenum"><a id="page198" name="page198"></a>(p. 198)</span> opinions. The younger and more turbulent,
+who recognised, in the failings of the chief, follies dear to their
+own hearts, were inclined to express sympathy for the man who was so
+soon to be compelled to relinquish the sweets of office. They spoke at
+once in an angry chatter and confused chortle of sounds, which, if
+eloquent, were wholly insufficient. The chief then threw himself back
+upon his chair, spat somewhat contemptuously, and finally acquiesced
+in the decision, obtaining some small consolation from the fact that
+his official allowance would not be discontinued. Then the <i>kotla</i>
+ended, and the indunas rose up and left, standing together in animated
+groups around the palisades, for the discussion of the scene in which
+they had just taken part. Then, as the decision spread throughout the
+tribe, children and women, young and old, banded together to watch
+these final indabas.</p>
+
+<p>The scene had been solemn enough beneath the <i>kotla</i> tree, but outside
+the natural instinct of these children of the veldt soon asserted
+itself, and they began to dance. They formed into small groups of
+about forty, to the sound of hand-clapping, a not unmusical intoning,
+and much jumping and stamping of feet. It would seem that they were
+dancing an old war-dance which had degenerated into one symbolical of
+love and happiness. Around the joyous groups the old crones
+circulated, clapping their withered hands, shrieking delight in
+cracked voices, and generally encouraging the festivity. The dance was
+curious, and appeared to catch echoes of many lands. There was the
+diffident maiden, anxious to be loved, but bashful, modest in her
+manner and in her gestures, until she saw the man that could thrill
+her; then she glowed, and her steps were animated, buoyant, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page199" name="page199"></a>(p. 199)</span> caressing. A smile irradiated her face, while a slight,
+almost imperceptible, movement pulsed through her body. Behind her
+were her companions, the same age as herself, who imitated her with
+feverish sympathy, instinctively reproducing her moods of body and of
+mind. The vibration that stole through the bodies of the dancers
+increased gradually until, from statues with wicked eyes, full of
+sensuous expression and amorous allurement, they wavered like thin
+flames of love in a gust of passion. As the potency of their feelings
+grew steadily stronger, they swayed in languorous movements, throwing
+out sinuous arms, their feeble faces smiling, their graceful bodies
+bending in eager attitudes of expectation. The air became heavy with
+noise, thick with a veritable tumult, as the dancers jumped more
+wildly; now they threw themselves into postures in the circle,
+shifting rapidly with tiny screams of delight and a gliding, clinging
+motion of their arms and legs as though, coy and eager, they would
+escape the cherished caresses of their lovers. As they glided, their
+actions seemed always to be marked with the same regularity, with the
+same regard to rhythm, and with an innate conception of grace. When
+they shook their bodies it was with an abandonment that was, at least,
+graceful; if they stood, rocking in a sea of easy emotion, as though
+victorious, they would hug their capture with an air of conquest which
+was delightful to behold. As they rose to the pinnacle of their
+happiness, when their countenances were suffused with love and
+tenderness, they infused into their emotions an appearance of sadness.
+It was as though a cloud had suddenly fallen upon them, revealing to
+them that their endearments had been abortive, that their ambitions
+were not to be realised and that they themselves had been <span class="pagenum"><a id="page200" name="page200"></a>(p. 200)</span>
+flouted. Then there stole upon them the incarnation of sorrow, in
+which, finding themselves alone, uncared for, unconsidered, they
+resolved, in a burst of artificial tears, to have done with giddiness,
+and to take up with the delights of placid domesticity. Then the dance
+terminated, she, who had by her graceful contortions and sympathetic
+bearing moved her audience to laughter and tears first, being
+considered the victorious. Thus did these simple natives celebrate the
+new era.</p>
+
+<p>If dancing be one form of amusement here, the siege has also brought
+the means and opportunity of indulging in a pastime of quite a
+different character. If sniping be the rule by day, cattle raiding by
+night gives to the natives some profitable employment. During last
+night the Baralongs secured, by a successful raid, some twenty-four
+head of cattle, and in the course of last week another raiding
+detachment looted some eighteen oxen. The native enjoys himself when
+he is able to participate in some cattle-raiding excursion to the
+enemy's lines, and, although the local tribe may not have proved of
+much value as a unit of defence, their success at lifting the Boer
+cattle confers upon them a unique value in the garrison. We were
+deploring the poorness of the cattle which remained at our disposal
+only a few days ago, but the rich capture which these natives have
+made has given us a welcome change from bone and skin to juicy beef.
+These night excursions are eagerly anticipated by the tribe, and
+almost daily is the consent of the Colonel sought in relation to such
+an object. During the day the natives who have been authorised by
+Colonel Baden-Powell to take part in the raid approach as near to the
+grazing cattle as discretion permits, marking <span class="pagenum"><a id="page201" name="page201"></a>(p. 201)</span> down when
+twilight appears the position of those beasts that can be most readily
+detached from the mob. Then, when darkness is complete, they creep up,
+divested of their clothes, crawling upon hands and knees, until they
+have completely surrounded their prey. Then quietly, and as rapidly as
+circumstances will allow them, each man "gets a move on" his
+particular beast, so that in a very short space of time some ten or
+twenty cattle are unconsciously leaving the main herd. When the
+raiders have drawn out of earshot of the Boer lines they urge on their
+captures, running behind them and on either side of them, but without
+making any noise whatsoever. As they reach their stadt, their approach
+having been watched by detached bodies of natives, who, lying
+concealed in the veldt, had taken up positions by which to secure the
+safe return of their friends, the tribes go forth to welcome them, and
+when the prizes have been inspected and report duly made to
+Headquarters they celebrate the event with no little feasting and
+dancing. Upon the following day merriment reigns supreme, and for the
+time the siege is forgotten.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page202" name="page202"></a>(p. 202)</span> CHAPTER XXIII<br>
+<span class="smaller">BOMBAST AND BOMB-PROOFS</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">Mafeking</span>, <i>January 20th, 1900</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday we completed the first hundred days of our siege, and when
+we look back beyond the weeks of our investment into those earlier
+days it is difficult to realise the trials and difficulties which we
+have undergone, and to believe that the period which has elapsed has
+witnessed the inauguration of a new era for South Africa. In those
+early days when we first came here Mafeking was a flourishing
+commercial centre, contented with its position, proud of its supremacy
+over other towns, and now, perhaps, if outwardly it be much the same,
+its future is impressed with only the faint echo of its former
+greatness. The town itself has not suffered very much; here and there
+its area has been more confined for purposes of defence, while the
+streets and buildings bear witness to the effects of the bombardment.
+Houses are shattered, gaping holes in the walls of buildings, furrows
+in the roads, broken trees, wrecked telegraph poles, and that general
+appearance of destruction which marks the path of a cyclone are the
+outward and visible signs of the enemy's fire. We shall leave in
+Mafeking a population somewhat subdued and harassed with anxiety
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page203" name="page203"></a>(p. 203)</span> for their future, since the public and private losses will
+require the work of many anxious years before any restoration of the
+fallen fortunes can be effected. The pity of it is that all this
+distress might have been so easily avoided, and would have been, had
+the authorities in Cape Town and at home taken any heed of the very
+pressing messages which were despatched daily to them; but it was
+decreed that Mafeking should shift for itself for so long as it was
+able, and then&mdash;surrender. This, however, did not meet with the
+approval of Colonel Baden-Powell, with the result that we are still
+fighting and still holding our own. We have even achieved some little
+place in the sieges of the world, and our present record has already
+surpassed many of the more prominent sieges. But there is not much
+consolation to be gained from contemplating the position which we may
+eventually take up in the records of famous sieges, and, truth to
+tell, there is such glorious uncertainty about the date of our relief
+that it is perhaps possible that we may surpass the longest of
+historic sieges. At one time we confidently anticipated that the siege
+would be over in ten days. This, however, was in the days of our
+youth; since then we have learned wisdom, and eagerly seize
+opportunities of snapping up any unconsidered trifles in the way of
+bets which lay odds upon our being "out of the wood" in another month.
+Events are moving so slowly below that it does not seem as though we
+shall be relieved by the end of February. The relief column, which a
+month ago appeared almost daily in "Orders," is now no longer
+mentioned in polite society, although there be little reason to doubt
+that, at some very remote date, the troops may make their appearance
+here.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page204" name="page204"></a>(p. 204)</span> The early part of November witnessed the first attempt of the
+Commissariat to control the stocks of provisions in the town. All
+persons holding stocks of Kaffir corn, meal, crushed meal, yellow
+mealies, and flour, were ordered to declare the quantities and price
+at which they would be willing to dispose of them to the authorities.
+Captain Ryan, the Commissariat officer, was an energetic and
+painstaking individual, whose aim was to prove his department a
+financial success, and so rigidly did he adhere to this resolve that
+the questions involved by the Commissariat became amongst the most
+important of the siege. Traders claimed that the economy of the
+situation gave them a siege profit, since, as the Government had not
+been shrewd enough to lay down stores, those who had done this at
+their own risk, and upon their own initiative, should be permitted, at
+least, to make a margin of profit in proportion to the prices which
+they could obtain for their goods. This contention, however, was not
+upheld by the Commissariat officer, who at once became the best hated
+man in Mafeking. Oddly enough, although the Government would not allow
+the merchants to reap the profit, they themselves, in virtue of the
+expense in connection with the issue of rations, were not above
+charging these expenses to prime cost, and so exorbitantly increasing
+themselves the retail price of the articles which they had taken over.
+What was perhaps the most objectionable feature in the findings of the
+Commissariat Department was that the merchant himself who disposed of
+his goods to the Government at a ruling which allowed but the profit
+incidental to the transaction of business in times of peace, was
+compelled to buy back, when he required goods of that particular
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page205" name="page205"></a>(p. 205)</span> variety, at the price which the Government had placed upon
+them. This, of course, seemed to the people unfair, and they were
+quite unable to obtain any satisfactory explanation of such procedure;
+satisfactory because the reasons vouchsafed assumed the right of the
+Government to a certain profit, denying, however, that rate in the
+same ratio of proportion to the individual. Among the chief obstacles
+against which Captain Ryan had to contend was the maintenance of the
+daily bread ration, since the supply of flour, of mealie meal, of
+oats, was not particularly great. There were many experiments made
+with the bread, but those which were most unsatisfactory failed
+because it had been found difficult to sift the husks from the oats
+once the oats had been crushed. While the issue of this particular
+bread lasted symptoms of acute dysentery prevailed, and in order to
+prevent an epidemic of dysentery from breaking out the Commissariat
+were compelled to adopt other methods of treatment. The bread
+eventually developed into a weighty circular brown biscuit, weighing
+anything under six ounces, about nine inches in circumference. These
+particular biscuits were less spiky, and less liable to create acute
+inflammation. They were issued to the entire garrison, excepting those
+who had been permitted to draw an invalid ration of white bread, and
+were preserved in many cases as mementoes of the siege. Although we
+have food enough to last several months this precaution is necessary,
+as when the siege is raised many weeks must elapse before supplies can
+come in. The garrison has been put upon a scale of reduced
+rations&mdash;&frac12; lb. of bread, &frac12; lb. of meat per day. The reductions in
+bread took place in the early part of the year, while the orders in
+relation to the meat supply were issued during this <span class="pagenum"><a id="page206" name="page206"></a>(p. 206)</span> week.
+Matches and milk are prohibited from public sale, and the latest order
+prevents the shops from opening. All supplies of biscuits, tea, and
+sugar&mdash;preserves also&mdash;have been commandeered. The shop-keepers and
+the hotel proprietors, and indeed anybody who can find any possible
+excuse for doing so, have trebled the price of their goods, pleading
+that the inflation is due to the siege. Accordingly, meal and flour
+have jumped from 27s. per bag to 50s.; potatoes, where they exist at
+all, are �2 per cwt.; fowls are 7s. 6d. each; and eggs 12s. per dozen.
+Milk and vegetables can no longer be obtained, and rice has taken the
+place of the latter among the menus. These figures mark the rise in
+the more important foodstuffs as sold across the counter, but the
+hotels have, in sympathy, followed the example, they, upon their part,
+attributing it to the increase which the wholesale merchants have
+decreed. A peg of whisky is 1s. 6d., dop brandy 1s., gin 1s., large
+stout is 4s., small beer 2s. In ordinary times whisky retails at 5s.
+per bottle. This rate has now advanced to 18s. per bottle and 80s. per
+case. Dop, which is usually 1s. 4d., is now 12s. per bottle; the
+difference upon beer is almost 200 per cent., and inferior cigarettes
+are now 18s. per hundred. Upon an inquiry among the publicans here, I
+was informed that the chief reason for the increase in their prices
+was to hinder the local soldiery from becoming intoxicated; this
+sudden regard for the moral welfare of the garrison on the part of the
+saloon keepers is however, oddly at variance with their earlier
+practices, and is in reality the flimsy pretext by which they seek to
+condone an almost unwarrantable act. Hitherto the constantly recurring
+evils arising from the sale of drink to soldiers and others performing
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page207" name="page207"></a>(p. 207)</span> military duties, have been openly encouraged by the hotel
+proprietors, who, although they now profess a fine appreciation for
+the moral obligations attached to their trade when prices are high and
+profits great, took no very serious steps at the outset to allay what
+was becoming a very serious menace to the community. Moreover, the
+hotels have demanded from such people as war correspondents and others
+brought here through business connected with the siege, rates which
+are far in advance of the ordinary tariffs, with equally preposterous
+demands for native servants and horse-feed. Indeed, whatever Mafeking
+may lose through the absence of business with the Transvaal, many will
+receive ample compensation from the high prices by which those who are
+able, are endeavouring to recoup themselves, and in a way which it is
+not possible to consider other than extortionate. Stores of all kinds
+are, however, rapidly giving out, and it would not have been possible
+for Mafeking to have sustained the siege so long had not the
+Government contractor, upon his own initiative, laid in far greater
+stocks of provisions than were provided for by his contract, and in
+this respect every credit should be given to the commercial foresight
+and sagacity by which these arrangements were inspired. For everything
+which is in daily want, in fact for the bare necessities of life upon
+the existing scale of reduced rations, Mafeking now depends upon the
+stores and bonded warehouse which represent the local branch of the
+contracting firm, Messrs. Julius Weil &amp; Co. In their hands lies the
+issuing of the daily allowances of bread and meat to the garrison, of
+the forage for the horses, of the feeding of the natives. Indeed,
+there seemed no end to the resources of this house. When the siege
+began, had <span class="pagenum"><a id="page208" name="page208"></a>(p. 208)</span> there been no Weil, the Government stocks would
+not have lasted two months, and, moreover, they did not know that the
+Weils had laid in these stores&mdash;a fact which again establishes how
+very meagre were the preparations made for the siege. Therefore, when
+the time comes to give honour to whom honour is due, notice should be
+taken of the important <i>r�le</i> which this firm has fulfilled during the
+siege of Mafeking.</p>
+
+<p>The siege drags on, however, the days seeming to be an endless
+monotony in which there is absolutely nothing to sustain one's
+interest. Week by week we make a united and laborious attempt to whip
+our flagging energies into some activity. It is a hideous spectacle,
+but this Sunday celebration reveals how very trying has become the
+situation. The military authorities have been at their wits' end to
+find amusement for the garrison, and this effort has developed into a
+Sabbatarian charade in which we all assume an active co-operation, and
+try to think that we are having a very giddy and even gushing time.
+Colonel Baden-Powell, in this respect, makes an admirable
+stage-manager. Authors, scenic artists, stage hands, scene shifters,
+there are, of course, none; but in the middle of the week the Chief
+Staff Officer becomes the town crier, crying lustily, by means of
+proclamation, that, by the grace of God, upon the coming Sunday there
+will be a golf match or baby show, a concert or polo match, even some
+attempt at amateur theatricals. The Sunday respite is, however,
+immensely appreciated, and, indeed, it is a very welcome panacea to
+our siege-strung nerves. Where in England you people are saying, "Oh,
+bother Sunday," "How like a Sunday," we say, "Thank God it is Sunday,"
+implying, for that day in seven, a period <span class="pagenum"><a id="page209" name="page209"></a>(p. 209)</span> of absolute rest
+and no little contentment. We are warriors on Sunday: bold, bad, and
+brave. We have our horses out on Sunday and take a toss as elegantly
+as we take our neighbour's money at cards in the evening, when fortune
+favours. We drink, we accept one another's invitations to meals of
+unsurpassing heaviness; we even invite ourselves to one another's
+houses. We drink, we eat, we flirt, we live in every second of the
+hours which constitute the Sunday, and upon the passing of the day it
+is as though we had entered into another world. As midnight arrives,
+we hasten back to our trenches filled with the good things of the day,
+even with the zest to penetrate the mysteries of another week of
+siege. In the morning we stand-to-arms at four o'clock, not because
+there is any special purpose for doing so, but rather that we may
+satisfy ourselves that we are soldiers; and then the labour of the day
+begins, and for six more days we stand-to-arms and wonder when the
+devil the enemy are coming on. We are very brave then, and at times we
+take ourselves so seriously that into each breast there comes the
+spirit of the Commander-in-Chief. Then we criticise the war, talk
+fatuously of what we would do, struggle somewhat ingloriously with the
+archaic jargon of the army, until, if our speech betrays our
+ignorance, we, nevertheless, make a mighty lot of noise. Then we are
+satisfied, though doubtless each thinks the other somewhat of a fool.</p>
+
+<p>To the man who looks on at all this, the gradual change which has come
+over the garrison is plainly discernible. In the beginning, when the
+Boers made war upon us, there was a contempt for bomb-proofs; there
+was a contempt for many other things besides, since each individual
+knew better than his Post Commander, and did not hesitate to tell him
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page210" name="page210"></a>(p. 210)</span> so, or rather to imply that he had told him so; but the
+scorn of bomb-proofs was mightier than the sword. In those days we
+feared nothing beyond mosquitoes and the creeping things of earth, but
+the change came silently, and although few people commented upon it,
+the transformation was completed within the first month of the siege.
+It grew, as it were, in a single night, from a village of mud-walled
+houses into one in which every other man owned something of a dug-out.
+For the first few days, while scorn of dug-outs was rife, he who built
+himself a haven kept it to his inner conscience, recalling it, when
+its existence was forced upon him, with something of an apologetic
+air. Thus we existed; then the staff built an underground room, and
+upon the Sunday that followed this momentous event many there were who
+visited it, and who, gathering wrinkles, went quietly to their gardens
+and did likewise. Thus insidiously came the transformation, and
+although there are still a few who talk disparagingly of these
+bomb-proof shelters, their faces wear an anxious look when the enemy
+are shelling, and strangely enough, as the fire waxes hotter, they
+easily find excuses to visit friends, lingering, the while, in the
+congenial gloom of their host's dug-out.</p>
+
+<p>So greatly have ideas expanded upon this subject that at one of the
+hotels an underground dining-room is in course of construction. This
+is at Riesle's, whose proprietor, at last, has been induced to build
+his boarders&mdash;mostly war correspondents&mdash;a dug-out, since he had given
+places of shelter to the servants, to his native boys, and to his
+family, seemingly thinking that since the boarders kept the hotel
+going they could very easily shift for themselves. But then that is
+always the creed of the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page211" name="page211"></a>(p. 211)</span> publican. These dug-outs are large
+excavations some ten by fourteen feet and seven feet deep, upon which
+there is placed a layer of iron rails which are procured from the
+railway yard; over these there is usually a layer of thick wooden
+sleepers, which again are covered over with sheets of corrugated iron.
+The earth from the hole is then piled up on this, and, after the
+dug-out has been inspected by the Town Commandant it is considered
+safe for habitation; a few cases and chairs equip it with certain
+accommodation, although there are a few into which trestle beds have
+been placed. It is not very healthy passing days and nights in these
+inverted earthworks, but it is eminently safe, and has been the sole
+means afforded us for escaping the enemy's fire. Fortunately the Boers
+have made no attempt to advance upon the town under cover of their
+guns, for if they did so we should have to stand-to-arms and face the
+music of the flying splinters. Every post has been supplied with one
+of these underground retreats, and quite the larger proportion of the
+townspeople have constructed private shelters for themselves.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page212" name="page212"></a>(p. 212)</span> CHAPTER XXIV<br>
+<span class="smaller">SOME SNIPING AND AN EXECUTION</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">Mafeking</span>, <i>January 31st, 1900</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In itself the situation has not developed over much, but in relation
+to the siege there are two tragedies to chronicle. The Boers are still
+investing us, in more or less the same numbers, and with but little
+difference in the strength of their artillery. Sometimes we miss an
+individual piece, judging from its absence that it has been sent north
+to reinforce the Dutch who are endeavouring to circumvent the
+movements of Colonel Plumer's column. However, these periodical
+journeys of the five-pounder Krupp, the one-pounder Maxim, or the
+nine-pounder quick-firing Creusot do not last for any great time, and,
+as a matter of fact, Commandant Snyman has not permitted himself to be
+deprived of any one piece of artillery for much longer than a week.
+The garrison here, jumping at conclusions in the absence of any
+definite news, finds in these disappearances some slight consolation,
+since we at once affirm that Colonel Plumer must have arrived at some
+point in which the presence of the enemy's artillery is urgent and
+necessary.</p>
+
+<a id="img012" name="img012"></a>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img012.jpg" width="500" height="347" alt="" title="">
+
+<table class="center" style="font-size: 80%;" border="0" cellpadding="0" summary="War correspondents.">
+<colgroup>
+    <col width="25%">
+    <col width="25%">
+    <col width="25%">
+    <col width="25%">
+</colgroup>
+<tr>
+<td>Mr. J. E. Neilly<br>
+<i>Pall Mall Gazette</i></td>
+<td>Mr. Vere Stent<br>
+<i>Reuter's</i></td>
+<td>Major Baillie<br>
+<i>Morning Post</i></td>
+<td>Mr. J. Angus Hamilton<br>
+<i>Times, &amp; Black and White</i></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p class="smcap">WAR CORRESPONDENTS AND THEIR BOMB-PROOF SHELTERS.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The gun which we would very gladly spare is the one <span class="pagenum"><a id="page213" name="page213"></a>(p. 213)</span>
+hundred-pounder Creusot, whose occasional removal from one emplacement
+to another is a source of much anxiety to every one in the garrison.
+In the beginning of the siege&mdash;a date which is now very remote&mdash;"Big
+Ben" hurled its shells into this unfortunate town from an emplacement
+at Jackal Tree. In those days it was almost four miles distant, and we
+took but little notice of a gun which flung its projectiles from such
+a distant range. Those were the days in which we dug holes by night,
+and speculated rather feebly during the day upon the resisting power
+of the protection which we had thus thrown up. But the gun moved then
+to the south-eastern heights, a matter of barely 4,000 yards from the
+town, and of sufficient eminence to dominate every little corner.
+Those were the days in which we dug a little deeper and went round
+trying to borrow&mdash;from people who would not lend&mdash;any spare sacks,
+iron sleepers, or deals, so that our bomb-proofs might be still
+further strengthened. However, as time passed, we even got accustomed
+to the gun in its new position, and, much as ever, there were many who
+felt inclined to promenade during lapses in the enemy's shell fire.
+Now, however, this wretched gun has again been moved, and, according
+to those who know the country, is within two miles of the town&mdash;a
+little matter under 3,000 yards.</p>
+
+<p>In accordance with the fresh position of the Creusot gun we have been
+compelled to extend our eastern defences in order that we may, at
+least, direct an artillery fire upon their advanced trenches. To the
+north-east and south-east we have put forward our guns and to the
+south-east have increased a detachment of sharpshooters, who, from a
+very early date in the siege, have occupied a position in the
+river-bed. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page214" name="page214"></a>(p. 214)</span> These men are only two hundred yards from the
+sniping posts of the Boers, and through the cessation of hostilities
+upon Sundays, they have grown to recognise one another. Sunday has
+thus also brought to the snipers an opportunity of discovering what
+result their mutual fire has achieved during the week, and, when from
+time to time a figure is missing, either side recognise that to their
+marksmanship, at least, that much credit is due. Among the Boers who
+occupied the posts in the brickfields were many old men, one of whom,
+from his venerable mien, his bent and tottering figure, his long white
+beard, and his grey hair, was called grandfather. He had become so
+identified with these posts in the brickfields that upon Sundays our
+men would shout out to him, some calling him Uncle Paul, others
+grandfather, and when the old fellow heard these remarks he would turn
+and gaze at our trench in the river-bed, wondering possibly, as he
+stroked his beard, brushed his clusters of hair from his forehead, or
+wiped his brow, what manner of men those snipers were. He has been
+known to wave his hat when in a mood more than usually benign; then we
+would wave our hats and cheer, while he, once again perplexed, would,
+taking his pipe from his pocket, slowly retrace his steps to his
+trench. The old man was a remarkably good shot, and from his post has
+sent many bullets through the loopholes in our sandbags. He would go
+in the early morning to his fort and he would return at dusk, but in
+the going and coming he, alone of the men who were opposing us, was
+given a safe passage. One day, however, as the Red Cross flag came out
+from the fort, we, looking through our glasses, saw them lift the body
+of grandfather into the ambulance. That night there was a funeral,
+and upon the following <span class="pagenum"><a id="page215" name="page215"></a>(p. 215)</span> day we learnt that he had been their
+best marksman. For ourselves, we were genuinely sorry.</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday there occurred another of those acts of war which illustrate
+in such a very striking fashion the silent tragedies which are
+enacted, and with which perforce many unwilling people are connected,
+during the progress of a campaign. There are, of course, many issues
+to the career of a soldier, and perhaps not the least important of
+these is the arduous and very dangerous task of collecting
+intelligence. In the ranks of society, men who are known to be spies
+are regarded with silent contempt, and ostracised from the circle of
+their acquaintances, so soon as their calling is ascertained; but the
+duties of a military spy differ in almost every respect from the
+individual who becomes a social reformer. In the field the military
+spy carries his life in his hand, since his capture implies an almost
+immediate execution without any possibility of reprieve. Last night
+such an occurrence took place at sundown, when, as the sun sank to its
+setting, a native, who had been caught within our lines, and who
+confessed to be an emissary of the Boers, was taken out and shot.</p>
+
+<p>The spy was a young man, and a native of the stadt, which is a portion
+of Mafeking, and one who had accepted the work of carrying information
+to the enemy because he did not sufficiently realise the punishment
+which would fall upon him, were he to be captured. His instructions
+from the Boers had been remarkably explicit, and the sphere of his
+activities embraced our entire position. He was to visit the forts,
+counting the number of men, and taking special notice of those to
+which guns had been attached. He was to report upon the strength of
+the garrison, the condition of our horses, the supplies of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page216" name="page216"></a>(p. 216)</span>
+foodstuffs, and he was to stay within Mafeking for about ten days. He
+was captured a fortnight ago, as he was creeping in, snatching cover
+from the bushes and rocks which spread over the south-eastern face of
+the town. When he was caught, as though momentarily realising the
+possibilities of his fate, he at first refused to say who he was,
+whence he came, or what had been his purpose. However, among the
+native patrol that had so successfully surprised him were some who
+knew him, whereupon he stated that he was simply returning to the
+stadt. In the earlier part of the siege almost every native who came
+across the lines gave this same excuse, until the suspicion was forced
+upon us that the Baralongs were acting in conjunction with the enemy.
+However, this was not proved to be the case, the chief repudiating the
+suggestion and disclaiming any authority over those natives who
+happened to be beyond the lines at the outbreak of the war.
+Nevertheless, it had been impossible to prevent the Boers receiving
+information through native sources, and for the future, there remained
+no alternative but that which implied the immediate execution of
+captured spies. An increase in the Cossack posts at night somewhat
+checked the mass of information which was carried to the Boers across
+our lines, and in an earlier instance, when a native came in from the
+Boer camp and said that the big gun had been taken away that morning
+upon a waggon, he was given the benefit of forty-eight hours' grace,
+with the understanding that, should the gun fire during that period,
+he would be at once sentenced to death. For a day this man watched the
+emplacement of the big gun, and twenty-four hours passed without
+Mafeking receiving any shells from it. The day following was half
+over, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page217" name="page217"></a>(p. 217)</span> and it was about noon, when the Boers disproved the
+story which they had instructed their spy to tell, and fired into the
+town. The man then confessed that his errand had been inimical, and
+that he himself was hostile to our interests. At dusk the sentence of
+the Summary Court of Jurisdiction was carried out, and that spy was
+shot. But this other at no time seemed to understand the gravity of
+his offence, and when we captured him he informed his captors and the
+Court that he himself had meant no harm. However, he confessed,
+endeavouring to minimise his offence by showing that at the moment of
+his capture he had gathered no information, yet his pleas were futile,
+and he at last seemed to understand that his doom was sealed. From
+then, as he returned to the prison to await the execution of his
+sentence, he said nothing more.</p>
+
+<p>Last night the shooting party came for him, marching him to a secluded
+point upon the south-eastern face, and there they halted him, a silent
+figure in a wilderness of rock and scrub. Around him there was the
+scene of the veldt at eventide. There was the gorgeous, flaming
+sunset, its ruddy gold turning the azure of the sky to clouds of
+purple, pale orange, and a deeper blue. Here and there the heavens
+were flecked with fleecy clouds, which gambolled gently before the
+breeze. In the distance lay the green-clad veldt, simmering a russet
+brown beneath the glories of the sunset. At our feet it sloped,
+breaking into rocky sluits, banked up with bushes; over all there was
+the zephyr, tempering the heat. It was a moment meant for rejoicing in
+the beauty of earth's loveliness rather than for dimming it with the
+sadness of some crimson act. Presently we arrived, and as we bent
+across the slope the blood-red <span class="pagenum"><a id="page218" name="page218"></a>(p. 218)</span> stream of passing sunlight
+played around the shallow heap of earth, thrown out from this man's
+final resting-place. It was visible, much as were the deeper shadows
+of the excavation some seventy yards away, when, as though wishing to
+spare the prisoner, his eyes were bandaged by the officers of the
+party. With that a sudden silence fell upon us, and each seemed to
+feel that he were walking within the shadows of the valley of death.
+The prisoner, supported on either arm, stumbled in the partial
+blindness of the bandage, seeming, now that his last hour was at hand,
+to be more careless, more light-hearted than any of the party. Then we
+halted, and he was asked whether there were anything further which he
+wished to say, and he was warned for the last time. He shook his head
+somewhat defiantly, but his lips moved, and in his heart one could
+almost hear the muttered curses. Then for a space he stood still, and
+a few yards distant, in fact some ten paces, the firing party formed
+across his front. There were six of them, with a corporal and the
+officer in command of the post, and there was that other, who in a
+little was to pay the penalty of his crime. There was a moment of
+intense silence as we waited for the sun to set, in which the nerves
+seemed to be but little strings of wire, played upon by the emotions.
+Unconsciously, each seemed to stiffen, as we waited for the word of
+the officer, feeling that at every pulsation one would like to shriek
+"Enough, enough!" As we stood the prisoner spoke, unconscious of the
+preparations, and the officer approached him. He wanted, he said, to
+take a final glance at the place that he had known since his
+childhood. His prayer was granted, and as he faced about, the bandage
+across his eyes was, for a few <span class="pagenum"><a id="page219" name="page219"></a>(p. 219)</span> brief minutes, dropped upon
+his neck. In that final look he seemed to realise what he was
+suffering. The stadt lay before him, the place of his childhood, the
+central pivot round which his life had turned, bathed in a sunset
+which he had often seen before, and which he would never see again.
+There were the cattle of his people, there were the noises of the
+stadt, the children's voices, the laughter of the women, and there was
+the smoke of his camp fires. It was all his once&mdash;he lived there and
+he was to die there, but to die in a manner which was strange and
+horrible. Then he looked beyond the stadt and scanned the enemy's
+lines. Tears welled in his eyes, and the force of his emotion shook
+his shoulders. But again he was himself: the feeling had passed, and
+he drew himself erect. Then once more the bandage was secured, and he
+faced about. The sun was setting, and as the officer stepped back and
+gave his orders, a fleeting shudder crossed the native's face.
+Bayonets were fixed, the men were ready and the rifles were presented.
+One gripped one's palms. "Fire!" said the officer. Six bullets struck
+him&mdash;four were in the brain.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page220" name="page220"></a>(p. 220)</span> CHAPTER XXV<br>
+<span class="smaller">LIFE IN THE BRICKFIELDS</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">Mafeking</span>, <i>February 3rd, 1900</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The main occupation of the garrison just now is to speculate upon the
+progress of the work of trench-building, which is being rapidly pushed
+forward in the brickfields upon the south-eastern face of the town. It
+is eminently a safe occupation, since our activity in that quarter is
+absorbing the almost undivided attentions of the enemy in the adjacent
+trenches, and therefore giving to the town an enjoyable and protracted
+respite from rifle fire. This, however, exists throughout the day
+only, since night is made hideous and uncomfortable by the heavy fire
+which the enemy turn upon it, and which is returned, with very
+pleasing promptitude, by the town forts and the occupants of the
+trenches in the brickfields. The area of war, localised thus as it is
+in the brickfields, is an interesting testimony to the progress of our
+arms here in Mafeking. We began the siege by abandoning this position
+and with it the very excellent sniping opportunities it gave to the
+Boers. The 8,000 men that Commandant Cronje had with him in those
+early days, made it impossible for our small garrison to hold, with
+any prospect <span class="pagenum"><a id="page221" name="page221"></a>(p. 221)</span> of success, positions so far outlying from the
+front of the town. It is, however, quite a different thing to occupy
+those trenches to-day, since the veldt intervening in the rear, has
+now been carefully protected, and we advance not at all until the post
+which is in occupation at the moment, has been securely fortified and
+connected with adjacent outposts by well-covered trenches. We are now,
+after almost six months' siege, some 1,700 yards in advance of the
+town, and the south-eastern outposts, as these brickfield forts are
+called, constitute our most outlying positions around beleaguered
+Mafeking.</p>
+
+<p>Very gradually, and with infinite pains and labour, we have sapped
+from town until the company of Cape Boys that is posted in the
+"Clayhole," under Sergeant Currie, is within two hundred yards of the
+Boers' main trench&mdash;a point from which one may hear at times our enemy
+holding animated discussions upon his failure to capture Mafeking.
+When war was first declared Commandant Cronje threw strong detachments
+of sharpshooters into the brick kilns which we ourselves now hold, and
+at this present moment, there is no position in those which we have
+seized, that was not originally in possession of the Boers.
+Innumerable traces exist of their temporary occupation, and where it
+has been possible we have preserved these; so that the town itself may
+at some future date be able to see the remains of the Boer investment.
+These little facts give to our work here a greater significance,
+insomuch that it may be assumed that an enemy who has been fortunate
+enough to secure for himself a strong position, is not so foolish as
+to abandon it voluntarily. This, of course, is quite the case, and
+many have been the occasions when the town has been able to watch
+affairs between <span class="pagenum"><a id="page222" name="page222"></a>(p. 222)</span> outposts being briskly contested in these
+very trenches.</p>
+
+<a id="img013" name="img013"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a href="images/img013.jpg">
+<img src="images/img013tb.jpg" width="500" height="348" alt="" title=""></a>
+<p class="smcap">PLAN OF THE BRICKFIELDS.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Nothing is quite so pleasant, so invigorating, nor quite so dangerous
+as life in these brickfield posts. Inspector Marsh, Cape Police, in
+whom the command of the south-eastern outposts has been invested, most
+kindly permitted me to join his quarters. We are aroused in the
+morning as the day breaks by a volley from the Boer trenches, and in
+all probability the derisive shout, "Good morning, Mr. damned
+Englishman!" to which the Cape Boys usually return the salutation of
+"Stinkpots!" which is the euphonious rendering of a Dutch word
+calculated to give, more especially when coming from a nigger, the
+utmost possible offence. The day may then be said to have begun,
+although, between this and any further ceremonies, there is usually a
+mutual cessation of hostilities, in order that each side may enjoy a
+cup of matutinal coffee. The coffee is made in town and brought out,
+since orders are exceedingly strict against the lighting of fires on
+outposts. Sometimes the day proves long, but usually it is one of an
+exciting character, and one in which it behoves the men to move with
+the utmost care. The enemy would seem to have filled their advanced
+trench with a number of picked sharpshooters; for it is quite an
+ordinary occurrence for them to fire, at five hundred yards range,
+through our loopholes; nor are these chance shots, for there is one
+man who seems to put the bullets precisely where he wishes, since, at
+least once during the day, he will test the accuracy of his aim by
+emptying his entire chamber through one porthole. Such sharpshooting
+compels one to move with a large amount of precaution, since if so
+much as a finger be shown above the top of the sandbags there
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page223" name="page223"></a>(p. 223)</span> is every likelihood of it being perforated by a Mauser
+bullet. But if this be the manner of our existence, the Boers do not
+take any risks either, and move between their portholes with the
+greatest precaution, until this system of watching one another may be
+said to have developed a class of work which consists principally of
+lying upon one's stomach in readiness to fire&mdash;if there should occur
+the slightest opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, if the day be quiet, we creep from trench to trench, even
+venturing to the river; but upon the whole, however, there is not much
+of this visiting accomplished, since the Boers have the habit of
+attempting to lull us into security and then spoiling the delusion
+with a well-directed volley. Recently the advanced trenches of the
+Boers were so heavily reinforced that we expected an attack upon the
+brickfields; in fact, one night we were almost positive that the enemy
+were about to make an attempt to wrest this position from us. They did
+not do so, nor have they made any night attack, since the Dutchman
+does not like to meet his enemy by night, unless he himself is
+ensconced safely behind some sacks and his foe in the open. Upon such
+an occasion he will fire until his ammunition is expended. However, we
+expected them, and although they made no advance, they poured in at
+daybreak, at somewhat under four hundred yards range, a most terrific
+fire. They turned upon us a 9-lb. Krupp, a 5-lb. Creusot, a 3-lb.
+Maxim, and about five hundred rifles. It was an amazing morning and a
+most interesting experience, while for some hours afterwards the air
+seemed to ring with the droning notes of the Martinis and the sharp
+crackle of the Mauser. Of course we fired back, since we never allowed
+the Dutchmen to turn their guns <span class="pagenum"><a id="page224" name="page224"></a>(p. 224)</span> upon us without treating the
+gun emplacements and embrasures to several volleys. It is good
+sometimes to impress upon the Boers the uselessness of their efforts.
+Out here in these brickfields we appear to be upon the edge of a new
+world, with the limits of the old one just below. Mafeking itself is
+only 1,700 yards distant, but the undulating ground, the rocky ridges,
+the simmering heat, and the mirage give rise to the impression that
+the town, of which the brickfields is the outpost, is many miles away.
+We live a peaceful, almost serene existence, disturbed only by the hum
+of passing bullets. There is no pettiness of spirit, no mutual
+bickerings, no absurd jealousies; one does not hear anything of the
+clash between the civil and military elements. That is all below us in
+the little town which sits upon the rising slopes with that appearance
+of chaos and despair which now mark its daily existence. Black care is
+not here, and thank heaven for it; for indeed a luxury beyond
+comparison is the quiet and peaceful day.</p>
+
+<p>Mafeking at last is siege-weary&mdash;and, oh, so hungry! It seems months
+since any one had a meal which satisfied the pangs that gnaw all day.
+We have been on starvation rations for so many weeks that time has
+been forgotten, and now there seems the prospect of no immediate help
+forthcoming! We are so sick of it, so tired of the malaria,
+diphtheria, and typhoid that claim a list as great almost as that
+caused by the enemy's shell and rifle fire! We ask, When will the end
+be? and then we shrug our shoulders and begin to swear; for we have
+such sorrows in our midst, such suffering women and such ailing
+children as would turn a saint to blasphemies!</p>
+
+<a id="img014" name="img014"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img014.jpg" width="500" height="373" alt="" title="">
+<p class="smcap">CAPE BOYS HURLING STONES AT THE BOERS AS THEY
+ENDEAVOURED TO RUSH THE SAP.</p>
+</div>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page225" name="page225"></a>(p. 225)</span> CHAPTER XXVI<br>
+<span class="smaller">FROM BAD TO WORSE</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">Mafeking</span>, <i>February 7th, 1900</i>.</p>
+
+<p>At a moment when the entire garrison, perhaps, excluding the military
+chiefs, was eagerly anticipating some announcement which would
+determine the date of an immediate relief, intelligence has come to
+hand, in a communication from Field-Marshal Lord Roberts himself,
+informing the inhabitants of Mafeking that he expects them to hold out
+until the middle of May. Since the beginning of the year the town has
+lulled itself into a sense of security by endeavouring to believe that
+at some early date the garrison would be relieved. But now, if it were
+possible to find "a last straw" to break the spirits of the townsmen,
+it is contained in the unfortunate telegram which Colonel Baden-Powell
+received from Lord Roberts. To hold out until the middle of May, it
+can well be longer, is to ask us to endure further privations, and to
+maintain an existence in a condition which is already little removed
+from starvation, and at a moment when the great majority of the
+civilian combatants, if not of all classes, are "full up" of the
+siege. For the past month we have been living upon horseflesh,
+although at first these unfortunate animals <span class="pagenum"><a id="page226" name="page226"></a>(p. 226)</span> were slaughtered
+only in the interests of the foodless natives, and whatever
+gastronomic satisfaction may be culled by us now in eating what in
+more ordinary circumstances has done duty as a horse, it is none the
+less a hardship and a damned and disagreeable dish.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of the announcement has been to increase the gloom and
+depression which for some weeks has been noticeable among those
+civilians whose businesses have been ruined; who are separated from
+and unable to communicate with their families, and who themselves have
+been impressed into the defence of the town. During this state of war
+they are unable to earn anything, and it is quite beyond their power
+to pay even the most perfunctory attention to their businesses; but
+now with this statement buzzing in the brain like an angry bee, can
+they not be excused if they cry out, "Enough, enough," and feel
+depressed and sick of the whole siege? Within a few weeks we shall be
+entering the sixth month of the siege, and already the severity of our
+daily life is beginning to tell, and indeed has already told upon
+many. But now that we have come so far through the wood, when we have
+fought by day and by night, when we have been sick with fever and
+pressed by hunger, when we have been harassed by bad news, and the
+conviction, through the absence of any cheering information, that all
+was not well with us down below, it would be a monstrous misfortune if
+we cannot survive the pangs of hunger and the torments of starvation
+until the long-promised relief arrives in the middle of May. If we do
+succeed, those who come through alive will have a tale to tell, in
+which there will be much which will remain buried, since there are
+experiences which, when they have been lived through, it is impossible
+to talk about.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page227" name="page227"></a>(p. 227)</span> If we were only just ourselves, merely the defenders of a
+town against an enemy, we could endure our privations, our short
+rations, and our condemned water with even greater fortitude. The men
+live hard lives in Africa, and their constitutions are strong, their
+nerves firm. But they hate, as all men hate, in all parts of the
+world, that their womenfolk should suffer, and here is the misery of
+our situation, more especially that these gentle creatures should
+suffer before their own eyes, when they themselves can do nothing for
+them. Aye, indeed, there's the rub. A hard life is always hardest upon
+women, and, unlike the Australasian colonies, and Canada, or the
+Western States of America, and all places where women who lead
+colonial life have no black labour to rely upon, the women in Africa
+are curiously incapable, delegating a multitudinous variety of
+domestic duties to the natives they employ. Their sphere of daily
+activity, so far as it is in relation to their household, is reduced
+to a minimum, while consciously or through the absence of some active
+pursuit by which they could occupy their mind and exercise their
+bodies, their view of life is petty and impressed with prejudices and
+absurd jealousies. Moreover, they are abnormally lazy; indeed, to one
+who has lived in Australasia, America, Africa, India, and elsewhere,
+and has experience of life in those colonies, the lassitude and
+indolence of the South African woman is one of the most striking
+aspects of the daily life in Africa. In Natal this weariness is called
+the "Natal sickness," and in Mafeking at the present juncture it is
+responsible for a great deal of the discontent, the unwillingness to
+make the best of an exceedingly trying situation.</p>
+
+<p>Without the feminine element in Mafeking, the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page228" name="page228"></a>(p. 228)</span> civil and
+military authorities would be in better accord, but with a pack of
+women and children in an insanitary laager, caring nothing for the
+exigencies of the situation, firmly believing that they are oppressed
+by design and deliberately maltreated, and, rising up in their wrath,
+smiting the Colonel, the Chief Staff Officer, indeed, the entire
+Headquarters' Staff, or any military and official unit that comes
+unfortunately into contact with them, the worry and annoyance caused
+to the garrison at large by their presence here at this juncture is
+eminently worse than the most fearsome thing it is possible to
+conceive. Of course, one sympathises in all sincerity with these
+unfortunate non-combatants, for they live amid conditions which
+produce and promote typhoid, malaria, and diphtheria&mdash;diseases that
+have been peculiarly virulent, and from which many women and children
+have died.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from the fatalities from shell and rifle fire, there is the list
+of those who have died from the hardships which they have had to
+experience. Strong men have dropped off from typhoid, women and
+children contracting the same disease, or one which by its nature is
+similarly fatal, have been unable to bear up. The smiling and happy
+children that one knew in the early days are no longer such; they are
+thin, emaciated, bloodless, and live amid conditions which have
+already wrought sad havoc among their companions. The mortality among
+the women and children must form part of the general conditions of the
+siege, but it is peculiarly disheartening to the townsmen as they
+stand to their posts and their trenches to be compelled to ponder and
+to reflect sadly that the fell diseases which have killed the wives
+and children of so many might, at any <span class="pagenum"><a id="page229" name="page229"></a>(p. 229)</span> moment, attack those
+members of their own family who are confined in the pestilential
+trenches of the laager. The unfortunate condition of these poor people
+here, as well as in Kimberley, has brought the suggestion to my mind
+that it should not be too late for either the Commander-in-Chief, or
+some one identified with his authority, to make overtures to the
+Boers, so that we, and even the garrison in Kimberley, might be
+permitted to send, in the one case our women and children to Bulawayo,
+and in the other case, to Capetown. It could surely be arranged, and
+if it were possible it would ensure a little greater happiness, a
+little greater comfort, falling to the lot of these poor people, who
+are unable to take, through lack of adequate remedies, the simplest
+precautions against the dangers which assail their own health and the
+lives of their children. But if our friends the Boers think that
+because of these straits we are disheartened they make a very grievous
+mistake. We propose to endure and we intend to carry the siege on
+until the end. Nothing so exemplifies the true tone of the garrison
+and the spirit of the men as this determination in which we one and
+all share and for which we mutually agree to co-operate.</p>
+
+<p>Despite the heavy burden of domestic trouble which presses down upon
+the townspeople, there has been a remarkable absence of any open
+friction between the civilian element and military at present gathered
+in Mafeking. The military authorities should be the first to recognise
+this and to appreciate the ready acquiescence and assistance which
+they have received from the inhabitants of the town. That at least
+they do acknowledge the importance of duties fulfilled, and the spirit
+with which they have <span class="pagenum"><a id="page230" name="page230"></a>(p. 230)</span> been carried out, should be a
+conclusion against which it would be absurd to tilt. Nothing can
+underestimate the consideration which the townspeople, under
+conditions adverse to their interests, and for which the military
+authorities are entirely responsible, have shown for the vigours of
+martial law and the present military domination. Compensation would be
+so materially insufficient that it cannot be said that any one
+individual has stayed here for the purpose of receiving such
+emoluments as would be to him some kind of a profit. The economy of
+Governmental compensation is never known to be
+satisfactory&mdash;Government in its impersonal attributes being
+universally recognised as a most niggardly paymaster. They therefore,
+those who have stayed, apart from the delusions under which they
+suffered, can be said to have remained because they wished, as
+colonists, to prove their loyalty; and yet, when one looks back upon
+the siege and considers carefully the manner in which they have been
+imposed upon by their own Government, it is very questionable if ever
+so great a test was applied to the spirit of mind and body which
+constitutes allegiance to a sovereign. Fortunately the town cannot say
+that it has performed more than its share of the defence work. Indeed,
+for the most part the services of the townsmen have been restricted,
+so far as was possible, to a connection with forts which have been
+constructed upon the boundaries of the town, and have not been thrust
+forward in preference to the men of the Protectorate Regiment, who,
+following the profession of arms, can properly be expected to bear the
+brunt of the fighting. It was thought at one time that the strange
+assortment of human nature which had collected in or was drawn to
+Mafeking might be difficult of management; but <span class="pagenum"><a id="page231" name="page231"></a>(p. 231)</span> mixed as is
+the population here at present, the doubtful element, which is one
+that sympathising with the enemy might create dissatisfaction among
+others, has been singularly subdued. There are many instances here in
+Mafeking of men who have taken up arms in defence of the town in which
+their business and their domestic ties are centred, and who, to do
+this, have had to fight against their own blood relatives. We have had
+therefore, in a sense, many men who, while apparently loyal and
+engaged in manning the trenches, were yet under constant supervision,
+lest they should give way to their feelings and too openly proclaim
+their sympathies with the Boer cause; but there have been few
+desertions, and affairs in general between Englishman and Dutchman,
+between the civilian and military, have passed off with greater
+harmony than was altogether anticipated. Mistrust between Englishmen
+of pronounced Imperial sympathies and colonials suspected of Dutch
+leanings has been the cause of a certain amount of jealousy, which
+tended to make the defence of Mafeking a work of, by no means, a
+pleasant nature. However much this feeling of difference, creating and
+causing in itself an acute tension between the pro-Imperial and the
+colonial, has given rise to, or has been the sole cause of, any
+ill-feeling which may have marked the relations between the civil and
+military, it has at no time assumed proportions grave enough to foster
+the opinion that its prevalence might endanger in time the commonweal
+of the inhabitants and threaten with strife the daily intercourse of
+the various units in the garrison.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page232" name="page232"></a>(p. 232)</span> CHAPTER XXVII<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE FIRST ATTACK UPON THE BRICKFIELDS</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">Mafeking</span>, <i>February 14th, 1900</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In the history of the siege of Mafeking there should stand forth an
+event as remarkable to posterity, if, perhaps, not quite so
+historical, as the famous ball which was given by the Duchess of
+Richmond on the eve of Waterloo. It may be, indeed, a trite
+comparison, since its only relationship is contained in the fact that
+the officers were called away to the field of battle; but, with so
+much uncertainty in European circles upon the conditions of the
+garrison, this fact and its issues tend to show the spirit with which
+the town is sustaining its precarious existence. Although we have some
+3,000 Boers around us, with twelve different varieties of artillery,
+and despite the steady increase in fatalities from shot and shell
+which marks each day, we can yet stimulate our flagging spirits to a
+pitch in which a ball is accepted and welcomed as an essential to the
+conditions of the siege. A mere detail, yet one of sufficiently
+striking importance and showing how very sombre and how serious is the
+daily situation, will perhaps be found in the postponement of this
+ball from Saturday night until the succeeding evening&mdash;a proceeding
+which was rendered necessary <span class="pagenum"><a id="page233" name="page233"></a>(p. 233)</span> by the death of a popular
+townsman from a 100-pound shell in the course of the previous morning.
+Recent Sundays have revealed a tendency, upon the part of the enemy,
+to ignore that generous and courteous concession to a beleaguered
+garrison which General Cronje granted, by professing his willingness
+to observe the Sabbath, insomuch that the Boers have maintained rifle
+fire until 5 in the morning, commencing again at any moment after 9
+o'clock at night. This Sunday was no exception, and we had the usual
+matutinal volleys.</p>
+
+<p>Towards 8 o'clock in the evening the streets near the Masonic Hall
+presented an animated, even a gay, picture. Officers in uniform and
+ladies in charming toilettes were making their way to the scene of the
+festivity, each with a careless happiness which made it impossible to
+believe that within a thousand yards of the town were the enemy's
+lines. Immense cheering greeted the strains of "Rule Britannia,"
+played by the band of the Bechuanaland Rifles, and then the dance
+commenced. The town danced upon the edge of a volcano, as it were; and
+while it danced the outposts watched with strained eye for any sign of
+movement in the enemy's lines. As dusk closed in the outposts had
+reported to the colonel commanding that the advanced trenches of the
+enemy had been reinforced with some three hundred Boers, and that
+their galloping Maxim had been drawn by four men to a point adjacent
+to our outlying posts in the brickfields, while what appeared to be
+the nine-pounder Krupp had been put into an emplacement upon the
+south-eastern front. This news Colonel Baden-Powell did not permit to
+become known, since he very properly wished to allow the garrison to
+enjoy its dance if occasion offered; and accordingly the dance began.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page234" name="page234"></a>(p. 234)</span> It was early when the enemy sent their preliminary volley
+whistling over the town; in an instant the animation of the streets
+which had preceded the dance was apparent once more, as around the
+doors of the Masonic Hall a number of people collected from out of the
+ball-room. Officers raced to their posts as orderlies galloped through
+the streets sounding a general alarm. We were to be attacked, and a
+man can serve his guns, can ply his rifle, can stand to his post in
+evening pumps and dress trousers as efficiently and as thoroughly as
+he can were he clothed in the coarser habiliments of the trenches. For
+a few minutes no one quite knew what would happen, and greater
+mystification prevailed as the noise of firing came from every quarter
+of our front. Urgent orders were issued, to be obeyed as rapidly;
+Maxims were brought up at a gallop, the reserve squadron was held in
+readiness, coming up to Headquarters at the double. The guns were
+loaded and trained, and within a few minutes of the general alarm, the
+ball-room was deserted and every man was at his post.</p>
+
+<p>It was a fine night, and the moon was full. Here and there,
+silhouetted against the skyline, those who were watching could see the
+reinforcements marching to the advanced trenches. There had been
+little time to think of anything, to collect anything, the men who
+were sent forward simply snatching their rifles and ammunition
+reserves. For a brief moment there was exceeding confusion in the
+forts that had been ordered to furnish reinforcements for any
+particular trench; but this duty was performed so quickly, and the
+town was in such readiness to repel attack, that our mobilisation
+would have reflected credit upon the smartest Imperial force.
+Presently there came a lull in the firing, and the ambulance waggon
+made its way to a <span class="pagenum"><a id="page235" name="page235"></a>(p. 235)</span> sheltered point, prepared to move forward
+should it become necessary. I watched for a few minutes the scene in
+the Market Square, paying particular attention to Colonel Baden-Powell
+and his staff officers, who had congregated beyond the stoep of the
+Headquarters office. Now and again Lord Edward Cecil, the Chief Staff
+Officer, would detach himself from the group to send an instruction by
+one of the many orderlies who, with their horses, were in waiting. It
+was a cheering spectacle, the prompt and methodical manner in which
+our final arrangements were perfected. Then the staff group broke up,
+and the C.S.O. explained the possibilities of the situation. The enemy
+contemplated an attack upon our south-eastern front, concentrating
+their advance upon our positions in the brickfields. If such, indeed,
+were the case, we could promise ourselves a smart little fight, and
+one, moreover, at point-blank range. We had so fortified our trenches
+in this particular quarter that, happily, there was no prospect of any
+disaster similar to that which befell our arms at Game Tree. Towards
+midnight heavy firing broke out upon the western outposts, caused, as
+was afterwards proved, by the success of our native cattle raiders,
+who, managing to elude the vigilance of the Boer scouts, had driven
+some few head of cattle through their lines into our own camp. The
+sound of this firing drew the Chief Staff Officer to the telephone in
+the Headquarters bomb-proof, whereupon I made my way to the point
+against which we had assumed that the attack would be directed.</p>
+
+<p>It was to an old post in a somewhat new shape, then, that I made my
+way, a journey which amply compensated for any lack of excitement in
+the events of the last few days. Fitful volleys from the Boers
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page236" name="page236"></a>(p. 236)</span> made it impossible to walk across the section of the veldt
+intervening between the rear of these advanced posts and the town,
+while at present, these posts form a little colony, connected as they
+are now among themselves, but cut off altogether from communication
+with the town until the pall of night comes to shield the movements of
+those compelled to make their way between the town and the
+brickfields. Soon, those who are posted there hope to see a trench
+constructed, affording passage at any moment with the base; but until
+this happens it is a pleasant scramble, a little dangerous, and
+somewhat trying. The ground is rough and stony, sloping slightly, in
+open spaces, to within a few yards of the Boer lines. It is commanded
+in many points, and upon this particular night it seemed to suit the
+purpose of the enemy to play upon it with their rifles at irregular
+intervals. To reach the river-bed was easy, to scramble up the
+river-bed with one's figure thrown out against the skyline is better
+appreciated in imagination; to put it into practice is to walk without
+looking where one is going, since one is continually sweeping the
+enemy's positions to catch the flash of the enemy's rifles. When the
+flash is caught, if the bullet has not hit one first, it is wiser to
+throw dignity to the wind and oneself upon the ground. In this
+position, prone and very muddy, even a little bruised, I found myself,
+until the fierce but whispered challenge of a sentry told me that my
+temporary destination had been reached. At this fort there was little
+to betray the excitement which consumed its gallant defenders, beyond
+the fact that the entire post was standing to arms. With a laugh and a
+jest we parted; and cut across what would have been the line of fire
+had a fight been raging at that moment. There was a low, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page237" name="page237"></a>(p. 237)</span>
+elongated wedge a few yards distant upon the left, against which the
+moon threw black shadows. It was the Boer position, and as they had
+been firing frequently, warning to proceed cautiously was not
+altogether disobeyed. Inspector Marsh's post was then very shortly
+gained, and with this officer I passed the night.</p>
+
+<p>It was 2 a.m. when Inspector Marsh turned out to make his last round
+before the men in his command stood to arms at daybreak. Whatever else
+was not evident, it was now certain that there would be no attack
+until the break of day, and so, upon returning to our post, we lay
+upon the stony ground and slept. It seemed that Time had scarcely
+scored an hour when we woke up, and, taking our rifles with us,
+buckling on our revolvers, stood to the loopholes. Day broke solemnly
+and with much beauty, night fading into grey-purple and soft, eerie
+shadows. Trees looked as sentinels, and there was no sound about us.
+Indeed, the spectacle of a large number of men expecting each minute
+the opening volley of an attack, was thrilling, and in that cold air
+their martial effect was a sufficient and satisfying tonic against the
+river mists. We had been standing some few minutes when from up the
+stream came the croaking of the bullfrog, so loud and emphatic that
+the older veldtsmen knew it at once to be a signal. This had scarcely
+been passed round when from that black line upon the sky there broke a
+withering sheet of flame; it was a magnificent volley, and swept
+across our intrenchments. We held our fire, crouching still lower and
+peering still more anxiously through the sandbags. Dawn was rapidly
+advancing, and as the light became clearer the enemy heralded its
+advance with a merry flight of three-pounder Maxims. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page238" name="page238"></a>(p. 238)</span> They
+burst among us, hitting nobody, and falling principally upon the
+trench occupied by Sergeant Currie and his Cape Boys. Then we fired,
+or rather our most advanced trench opened, and in that moment the
+engagement began. However, beginning brilliantly as it did, under the
+snapping of the Mausers, the droning hiss of Martinis, and a roaring
+deluge of shells, it was short-lived. Sergeant Currie and his men bore
+the brunt of the rifle fire, replying shot to shot, undaunted and
+unchecked. The reverberating echoes of the firearms, of the exploding
+shells, to the accompaniment of the insulting taunts of the Cape Boys
+were somewhat deafening. When the advanced trenches of the enemy
+started, volleys came also from the ridge of the acclivity leading
+from the river-bed to the emplacement of the nine-pounder Krupp.
+Between them again, there were smaller trenches joining in the rifle
+practice, which, while it lasted, was so hot that it was not possible
+to creep through the connecting trenches, or, indeed, to move in any
+manner whatever. Within three hours the enemy threw some thirty
+nine-pounder Krupp, some twenty-five five-pound incendiary shells, an
+overwhelming mass of three-pound Maxims, and a few rounds from the
+cavalry Maxim. Bullets innumerable had whizzed across us, to be
+answered by rifle fire as brisk again, and so rapidly returned that
+few of the defenders had even time to think.</p>
+
+<p>But we wondered, as the day grew brighter and two hours' firing had
+passed, what would be the end, considering ourselves fortunate that
+the enemy made no attempt to rush any one of the brickfields in his
+command. Occasionally, as we fired, Inspector Brown, in charge of the
+river-bed work, exchanged signals with Inspector Marsh, the post
+commander, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page239" name="page239"></a>(p. 239)</span> through a megaphone, much to the discomfiture of
+the Boers, who, as the stentorian commands rang out in any lull of
+firing, were sadly perplexed. These signals had, of course, been
+arranged beforehand, the men knowing that they were the merest pretext
+and one by which it was hoped to confuse the Boers. Upon the part of
+the enemy it must have been rather alarming to hear between some
+temporary stoppage in the firing a voice in thunderous tones crying
+out, "Men of the advanced trench, fix bayonets," an order which would
+be invariably followed by hearty cheering from the Cape Police and
+insults of an exceedingly personal character from the Cape Boys.
+However, everything draws to an end, and the Boers, abandoning their
+intention of turning us out of the brickfields, ceased fire, giving to
+ourselves an opportunity to prepare breakfast. We ate it where we had
+previously been firing, the men passing the tins of bully and the
+bread rations from one to another. Then just where we had been
+fighting, with the scent of the burst shells and the smoke of the
+rifles hanging in the air, thin spiral columns of smoke arose in the
+rear of the few brick-kilns, and coffee was presently brought to us.
+Until mid-morning we maintained our posts, but with the luncheon hour
+we took it easy, although preserving a watchful attitude towards the
+Boers. Thus passed the day with little further firing, and some
+sleeping, terminating in a merry dinner&mdash;under siege conditions&mdash;with
+Inspector Marsh and Inspector Brown, in the dug-out of their town
+post.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page240" name="page240"></a>(p. 240)</span> CHAPTER XXVIII<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE SECOND ATTACK UPON THE BRICKFIELDS</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">Mafeking</span>, <i>February 28th, 1900</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In many ways this month has been the most eventful of any during the
+siege. Other months of the siege have secured for themselves a certain
+notoriety, because they have been identified with some particular
+engagement; but this month of February has seen our labour in the
+brickfields brought to a successful consummation, and, at a moment
+when the garrison was congratulating itself upon the triumphant issue
+of such an adventurous and adventitious undertaking, we have been
+brought face to face with the contingency that even yet it may not be
+possible to continue to occupy so advanced a post. If I return to the
+subject of the brickfields after such a short interval, it is because
+there, more than anywhere else in Mafeking, the clash of arms is
+predominant. These many days we have followed out our scheme,
+endeavouring to circumvent the enemy by pushing forward a line of
+entrenched posts until they should embrace an area which would enable
+us to outflank their main lines and enfilade their advanced trenches.
+There was a moment when this was actually completed, a moment
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page241" name="page241"></a>(p. 241)</span> in which we who were in the advanced forts, knew that if we
+could but hold the position we held the invaders in such a fashion
+that they would be compelled to abandon their posts. But there was the
+shadow of uncertainty, since we were rather reckoning upon the
+hitherto recognised fact, that the Boers belonged to that class of
+fighting peoples who never purposely attack if they could secure their
+ends by entrenchments and delay. For one day we rather gloried in the
+work, until towards dusk we realised with a swift and fearful
+astonishment that the Boers were intending to sap us. We have supposed
+it to be by accident rather than by design that a man, in the uniform
+of some German regiment, appeared of a sudden to arise out of the
+ground at a point some thirty yards distant from what we had
+considered to be the end of the Boer trench. His presence explained
+much, since the night before we had been perplexed at hearing the
+sound of picking and shovelling a little in advance of our position.
+At that time we had concluded that the noises emanated from the
+natives, who were deepening and strengthening the advanced trench of
+the Boers; but with this figure suddenly appearing, we realised that
+there was quite a different story to be told, one which implied that
+our previous opinion of the enemy was in error, and that they intended
+to make us fight for our position or to turn us out. The situation was
+rapidly becoming as interesting as any which has developed from the
+siege. Sap and counter-sap were separated perhaps by eighty yards, and
+so gallantly and vigorously did the enemy work that we could see them
+approaching yard by yard. It was impossible for us in the time at our
+disposal to do very much to stop them; we could simply keep a look-out
+and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page242" name="page242"></a>(p. 242)</span> drench their trenches with volleys upon the slightest
+provocation. It was useless to fire upon the natives working in the
+sap, since it was only possible to see the points of their picks as
+they were swung aloft, catching for a moment the radiance of the sun.
+Still they came on, and one night we knew that before dawn they would
+be into us. That night no one slept in the advanced trenches, and
+Inspector Marsh, who has very generously permitted me to stop with him
+for the past month in his quarters in the brickfields, visited the
+posts hourly. Between two and three we slept, and for a short space
+there was a perfect calm in our lines. At half-past four we stood to
+arms, to hear that the enemy had made contact with our trench. As we
+found this out, news was brought that the big Creusot gun had taken up
+its position upon the south-eastern heights, and so commanded our
+entire area. The inevitable had arrived and perhaps for a brief moment
+we were all a little subdued. As the sun rose Inspector Marsh,
+commanding the south-eastern outposts, under directions from
+Headquarters, warned every man to take such cover as was obtainable.</p>
+
+<p>The situation would have given satisfaction had there been any
+prospect of an equal contest, since man to man we were not unmatched,
+but it would be impossible for the occupants of these advanced posts
+to attempt conclusions with an enemy who could bring to their
+assistance a high-velocity Krupp and a 100 lb. Creusot. There was
+immediate excitement, and Inspector Marsh telephoned the news to
+Headquarters. For the moment that was all which could be done&mdash;inform
+Headquarters. Then, with our rifles in our hands, with an extra supply
+of ammunition by our sides, we waited the inevitable, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page243" name="page243"></a>(p. 243)</span> and we
+waited until night; but upon that night nothing happened. As dusk drew
+down, and as the calm of night was broken only by the rumbling echoes
+and tremors of the work in the enemy's sap, we threw out a working
+party of some two hundred natives, starving and ill-conditioned, but
+the best that we could procure, intending to make the effort to check
+once and for all the advance of the Boers. We worked all night, and
+dawn was breaking as we drew off, but we had passed them. In a single
+night we had carried our sap some thirty yards beyond theirs, and at
+such an angle that we enfiladed their sap, while only eighty yards
+divided the pair. The Boer line of advance was deeper than ours by
+some five feet, but all that day white man and Cape Boy strove to
+deepen our new trench, and by night it was perhaps a foot deeper than
+it had been. It was dangerous work; it was exciting. The crackle of
+bullets was never absent; they struck all round one, and there were a
+few fatalities. That night we worked again, and so did they. Indeed,
+each side volleyed heavily all night to protect their working parties.
+We were not extending our trench; it was already a hundred yards sheer
+into the open, but in the morning when we looked, the Boer trench was
+barely thirty yards away from ours. That day we did nothing but await
+the inevitable again. We slept, since it was certain that on the
+morrow a fight would come. Once more there was nothing for it but to
+wait in such readiness as we could be in, for anything that the enemy
+might attempt. They began at dusk by throwing dynamite bombs into our
+sap&mdash;some burst, some fell blind; but this work was futile, since they
+had not yet reached sufficiently near to effect any damage. When they
+did obtain <span class="pagenum"><a id="page244" name="page244"></a>(p. 244)</span> such access, we also had a little pile of bombs.
+Tooth for tooth&mdash;we were not going to give up without fighting. Then
+the end came suddenly, for Headquarters telephoned that the big gun
+had taken up its original position, which was barely two thousand
+yards distant on our left flank. With this message we began to
+comprehend what the next day would bring forth.</p>
+
+<p>The affair between the outposts began about a quarter to five in the
+morning. The first 100 lb. shell fell between our trenches and those
+of the enemy: it seemed that they had wished to secure the range. They
+had secured it. The three holes which form our advanced position
+contain no cover whatsoever, since there is none to put up, and
+whatever earth had been thrown up was commanded by the enemy's fort
+upon the south-eastern heights. Each hole contained a shelter from the
+sun, a corrugated iron arrangement, supported by props, with a
+sprinkling of earth on top. The shooting was magnificent, and it will
+be difficult to find, when the various comparisons be drawn,
+marksmanship more precise or more accurate. Each was wrecked in turn:
+a shell to a shelter. When this work had been accomplished, the big
+gun directed its attention to the brick-kilns, in which we had posted
+our sharpshooters. In a little time the three were heaps of ruins.
+Between the intervals of shelling the Boers fired volleys from the
+three points: from the fort on the south-eastern heights, from the
+fort in the river-bed, and from their main trench. The company of Cape
+Boys in the advanced hole could not be expected to relish the triple
+fire, which was in turn endorsed by shells from the big gun. The holes
+are not very large, nor very wide, nor high: they are <span class="pagenum"><a id="page245" name="page245"></a>(p. 245)</span>
+natural depressions in the soil, in which water had collected and
+caused a further subsidence. When the enemy volleyed from the advanced
+trench, they had to crouch under the lee of a bank that was facing the
+direction of the fort on the south-eastern heights; when they wished
+to avoid shell and rifle fire from this fort, they had to run the risk
+of finding shelter in the direct line of fire from the main trench. If
+they endeavoured to move to the second hole, they had to do so under
+fire from all three points. It was rather an unpleasant state of
+things for the Cape Boys, who, moreover, could find no point from
+which to return the fire of the enemy. In an hour some twelve shells
+had been thrown into the first hole, and there were five fatalities.
+Whenever we endeavoured to occupy the sap the big gun shelled it,
+until it was no longer possible to maintain a post in a position so
+exposed. We fell back to the second hole, and the enemy began to shell
+other points in the brickfields. They sent two to Currie's post in the
+river-bed; they scattered them plentifully about the first, second,
+and third forts&mdash;entrenched posts by which it is hoped to keep back
+the Boers, should they successfully carry the Cape Boy holes. The
+situation was becoming serious, and we had been compelled to abandon
+the sap and evacuate the first hole. At the moment it was a question
+of whether the Boers were coming on, and as we waited in the
+expectation of seeing them advance down our own sap into our original
+position, the shelling ceased, for the Boers had gone to breakfast.
+That was our supreme opportunity, and although they must have seen us
+from the south-eastern heights, we employed ourselves in saving from
+the wreck what was possible. All the shelters had been pounded into
+<i>d�bris</i>: rifles and bayonets <span class="pagenum"><a id="page246" name="page246"></a>(p. 246)</span> lay about broken and twisted,
+here and there were remains of camp utensils, and blood-stained
+clothing. It was a scene of ruin, and as we crept into it upon our
+hands and knees the confusion of the place struck one sadly.
+Sergeant-Major Taylor had been hurt by the second shell, and has since
+died, while another of the wounded has also succumbed. While the
+firing lasted the position was untenable, and we fell back from the
+sap into the most advanced of the holes. Here the situation rapidly
+became impossible, for the character of the outwork prevented any one
+from taking cover. But despite the galling fire, the Cape Boys behaved
+with admirable courage and endurance, and it was only when three men
+in the advanced hole had been seriously wounded, that they fell back
+behind the bank of the second pit. In a little, when the gun had
+effectually driven us from the advanced hole, the enemy began to shell
+the forts in the rear. At that moment there were two things to be
+done: one was to bank up the mouth of the sap, since the enemy had
+already reached it and were firing down it, the other was to throw up
+a rampart across the mouth of the second hole. Under a heavy fire
+Corporal Rosenfeld, of the Bechuanaland Volunteers, and myself
+undertook and accomplished the one, while at night the work upon the
+rampart was begun. By morning it was finished, but in the night the
+enemy had occupied our sap. The length of the first hole then alone
+divided us. Within the next few hours, however, the position of
+affairs changed as rapidly again. At a moment when the enemy were
+least prepared a strong party rushed the hole and sap, expelling the
+Boers by vigorous use of bayonets and dynamite bombs. Since then the
+Boers have left our advanced works severely alone.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page247" name="page247"></a>(p. 247)</span> CHAPTER XXIX<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE NATIVE QUESTION</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">Mafeking</span>, <i>March 3rd, 1900</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It has become altogether impossible to gauge with any degree of
+accuracy, the situation in relation to the fortunes of the Imperial
+arms, or as it might be found in the camp of the enemy without
+Mafeking. We do not lack here men who, from a previous knowledge of
+the Boers, consider themselves capable of estimating the purpose and
+designs of Commandant Snyman; but what seems to be precise and even an
+admirable forecast one week, is proved, by events in the succeeding
+week, to be irrelevant and unreliable. It has been our habit, when for
+any length of time the enemy has rested, to attribute their
+comparative cessation from hostilities to news of ill-omen, and in our
+fatuous presciency we have approximately given the date upon which the
+siege will be raised. But in light of the never-varying contradiction
+in sense which befalls our optimistical assurance, we must perforce,
+recognise the falsity of our deductions and cease from worrying.
+Recently, indeed during the past week, we expected the Boers to
+celebrate Amajuba Day, and to this end, the garrison was held in a
+condition of complete readiness, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page248" name="page248"></a>(p. 248)</span> so as to be able to at once
+repel the anticipated attack. The anniversary of this disastrous fight
+passed off, however, without incident, and as it happened that runners
+arrived from the North upon the same day, conveying to us the
+unconfirmed intelligence that a force under the ever-victorious
+General French had relieved Kimberley, the wise-acres here, both civil
+and military, were of opinion that the investing force, that has now
+surrounded us for six months, could not stomach such unfortunate
+information, and were as a consequence timorous of any renewed
+aggression. But now again our theories are erroneous, and the siege
+progresses to-day merrily and as pugnaciously as ever. With the
+tidings of Kimberley's good-luck, we looked to see the big Creusot gun
+removed across the border in its return to Pretoria, but alas! it
+still confronts us and still flings its daily complement of shells
+into the town. Indeed, without this piece of ordnance, life would
+become so strikingly original that the townspeople would break down
+under the strain. The uncertainty as to what direction it will take,
+as to the number of tolls which have been rung out from the alarm
+bell, as to whose house has been wrecked, or what family put into
+mourning, has buoyed up the townspeople to a pitch from which, when
+the cause is removed, there will be a pretty general collapse. With
+the advent of the news about the South, the Northern runners confirmed
+the fact of the presence of Colonel Plumer's force being near at hand.
+But this has been the irony of our situation since the siege began.
+There has ever been, it would seem, some worthy general or colonel
+within a little trifle of two hundred miles from us, bringing Mafeking
+relief, or if not for us, for the starving natives. This has always
+been <span class="pagenum"><a id="page249" name="page249"></a>(p. 249)</span> so pleasant to reflect upon, just this little detail of
+two hundred miles. Colonel Plumer, we hear, is laying down "immense"
+stocks of food-supplies at Kanya, so that the natives here, who are
+already so reduced that they are dying from sheer inanition, having
+successfully accomplished the journey, which is one of ninety miles,
+may feed to their hearts' content&mdash;provided that they are able to pay
+for the rations which are so generously distributed to them. Whatever
+motives of philanthropy direct the policy of the executive in this
+question of distributing food allowances to natives, it cannot be said
+that the Government or its administrators, err in their administration
+upon the side of liberality. Even here in Mafeking we have set a price
+upon the bowl of soup&mdash;horseflesh and mealie-meal mixed&mdash;which is
+served out to the natives from the soup-kitchen, finding excuses for
+such parsimony in the contention that, by charging the starving
+natives threepence per bowl of soup, when it is exceedingly doubtful
+if they have that amount of money in their possession, we can
+successfully induce them to remove to Kanya, and there live in a state
+of happy flatulency off the stocks which Colonel Plumer has been
+ordered to prepare against their reception. Of course, at a moment
+like this, it is injudicious to cavil at the procedure of the Imperial
+Government, but there can be no doubt that the drastic principles of
+economy which Colonel Baden-Powell has been practising in these later
+days are opposed to and altogether at variance with the dignity of the
+liberalism which we profess and are at such little pains to execute,
+and which enter so much into the pacific settlement of native
+questions in South Africa. The presence of a large alien native
+population gathered in Mafeking at the present <span class="pagenum"><a id="page250" name="page250"></a>(p. 250)</span> juncture has
+been our own fault, since the authorities, in whom the management and
+control of the natives of this district is invested, advised the
+military authorities here to allow some two thousand native refugees
+from the Transvaal to take up their abode upon the eve of war in the
+Mafeking stadt, and it is through the tax which this surplus
+population put upon the commissariat that this particular question has
+required such delicate adjustment. With supplies which are rapidly
+diminishing, we are compelled to force nightly a moderate number to
+attempt the journey to Kanya, and if they have been signally
+unsuccessful in their essay to pass through the Boer lines, it is in
+part because the enemy, having promised them a free passage,
+maliciously fires upon them as they reach the advanced trenches. For
+the most part, therefore, we are no better off than we were, since
+those natives who escaped invariably return to Mafeking.</p>
+
+<p>With the good news which we have received, a slightly better tone of
+feeling would seem to be about the community. We are simple people for
+the present, living as we do under the rigours of Martial Law, but we
+have such genuine faith in the supremacy of our flag, that now that we
+have heard of the general movement of troops, we are infinitely
+happier and inclined to forget for the moment the trials and
+difficulties of our position. There was a time when the townspeople
+were so disgusted with the conduct of the war, with the disgraceful
+and nefarious practices of the Colonial Government, with the
+abominable lethargy of the Imperial authorities, that five men out of
+every six had resolved to abandon a country where such misrule was
+possible, and to remove to some one other of our colonies, where life,
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page251" name="page251"></a>(p. 251)</span> upon a broader and happier basis, was the order. But with
+the inauguration of brighter things, such as the relief of Kimberley
+portends, this tone has disappeared, while there seems to be an almost
+unanimous desire to wait the arrival of the next intelligence. It is
+perhaps not altogether incorrect to say that the feeling of disgust,
+by which so many people were at one time swayed, existed chiefly among
+those who were connected to and related with families of Dutch origin,
+and who at some period discarded their Dutch allegiance, casting in
+their lot with the British. These people yet retained a certain
+sympathy with the Transvaal, and were as concerned as any Boer about
+the issues of the campaign. Upon the outbreak of war, many of these
+people took up their residence in border towns, and by these means
+Mafeking received a sprinkling of people who were, by protestation,
+Britishers, and by instinct, Dutch. These men were accepted, since as
+a rule they were known to be genuine in their avowal; but when they
+brought their families into Mafeking, their womenfolk, being wholly
+Dutch, were as a rule regarded in quite a different light. It must be
+remembered that inter-marriage is practised in the Transvaal to an
+extraordinary degree, and that the relationship of any one family with
+others can by this means permeate the entire country to such an extent
+that, while the woman might be the wife of an African Imperialist, she
+might be able to claim kinship with men who held high positions in the
+Republican service. These ladies, therefore, were quite open to the
+suspicion of wishing to convey to their relations in the Transvaal
+authentic information regarding Mafeking. As our condition has been
+precarious, and as important information was surreptitiously carried
+to <span class="pagenum"><a id="page252" name="page252"></a>(p. 252)</span> the enemy, it was perhaps natural that we should take
+steps to confine these ladies within their laager, and to place a
+guard upon it&mdash;precautions which were neither valued nor appreciated
+by them, and from which they suffered no hardships other than those
+which might be expected to accrue from the enjoyment of the somewhat
+restricted liberty, with which they, together with the entire
+garrison, must perforce rest content.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page253" name="page253"></a>(p. 253)</span> CHAPTER XXX<br>
+<span class="smaller">POLITICAL ECONOMY</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">Mafeking</span>, <i>March 15th, 1900</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Baden-Powell has recently issued an order to all ranks in his
+command requesting the names of those who are willing to enlist in the
+special corps which are to be raised for purposes of patrolling the
+country when the war is terminated. If this be a sign of the times, a
+token by which we may read the lines of the policy by which Africa
+will be governed during the next few years, it is satisfactory at
+least to understand that we do not propose to take the risk of
+successful risings in the months to come in different Dutch centres.
+This war has shown us the folly of courting "compromise and Exeter
+Hall" in dealing with dissatisfied areas of the Empire. We have
+policed Burma, we patrol Ireland (but in a different sense), and in
+India we have incorporated and turned into admirable efficiency many
+of the hill tribes, but we cannot translate the native-born Republican
+nor convert the rebel Dutch without the almost certain contingency
+arising of their proving traitorous. There are many who know the Boer,
+and, knowing him and appreciating his strange strategy, his curiously
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page254" name="page254"></a>(p. 254)</span> warped mind, his natural aptitude for breaking his bond,
+would not trust him in any transaction where integrity of character
+and probity were the essential complement. There has been much opinion
+among colonials that the Imperial Government might, anxious to be as
+conciliatory as possible, enrol the Dutch for constabulary duties,
+giving, indeed, to the younger generation the preference, and thus
+enabling them to possess an employment definite, if not altogether
+lucrative. But in this we should be perpetrating against the loyal
+colonists of Cape Colony a grave injustice, for until the present
+generation of Dutch has passed away, taking with it the memories of
+the war, it will be unsafe, it will be unwise, to employ in any
+administrative capacity whatsoever, those men who, themselves nursing
+a rancour against Great Britain, will omit no opportunity to foster
+the traditional hatred of their forefathers. We have in France, and in
+the French animosity against Germany, a case which is identical,
+proving, as it does, how the prejudices of a people can be nurtured
+and kept evergreen through the sheer force of malignant sentiment; and
+there can be little doubt that time, and time only, is capable of
+removing from the minds of the Republican Dutch that feeling of
+detestation and contempt which has maintained them in their attitude
+of hostility towards us for so many decades. To them, for many years
+to come, the British will be a nation of iconoclasts; we may banish
+them, we may wipe out all traces of their misrule, and so obliterate
+the signs of their existence that historians may find it difficult to
+believe that they once lived. We may do all these things, but it will
+be impossible to govern their instincts by Act of Parliament, to curb
+their impulses by the rulings of the High <span class="pagenum"><a id="page255" name="page255"></a>(p. 255)</span> Commissioner. It
+would therefore be thrice foolish to employ them in their own country
+and among their own people, and such action would imply that we
+intended to ignore uses to which the younger colonists can be so
+conveniently put. In South Africa, as in Australasia and in Canada,
+there is a large army of young men who loaf their hours away in the
+idleness of an agricultural life rather than seek some trade in the
+offices of the big cities. They achieve little that is profitable upon
+their farms, clinging tenaciously to such a livelihood, since it
+possesses finer natural elements in its intimacy with the life of the
+veldt than any form of metropolitan activity could give to them. There
+are, of course, many men who have been driven to the towns through the
+failure of their holdings, but in this present state of war these
+especially, and all those others, have answered eagerly to the call
+for volunteers, and in proving themselves worthy, have rendered
+excellent services to the State. The great majority of these men would
+willingly take service in the forces to which the order of the colonel
+commanding makes reference, and by this we have at hand an army
+extraordinarily adapted to colonial purposes, and needing only to be
+called out. Moreover, at a time when the Empire has seen how its
+various units have hastened to the aid of the Mother-country, would it
+not be well to create in each colony a permanent militia from the men
+who have so unanimously come forward; a force which would be to the
+colonies what the Imperial army is to India, and which would supersede
+the local defence forces in Australasia, approaching in its conception
+a fixed soldiery rather than one to which is given a certain number of
+exercises in the year? There would be no lack of numbers in any of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page256" name="page256"></a>(p. 256)</span> colonies, and in Africa we could make use of the Zulu, the
+Matabele, and the Cape Boys. We have long rested in fancied security,
+and not until China falls a prey to Russia and India passes from us,
+need we fear that Australasia can be taken from us by the combined
+fleets of the Powers of Europe; nevertheless, since we must reorganise
+our army, it would be no mean policy to place, once and for all, upon
+their true foundation the defences of our colonies.</p>
+
+<p>To those who know the life of the mounted police in Burma, of the
+constabulary in the West Indies, and of the police in Canada, the
+duties of the corps that are raised for South Africa will be at once
+comprehended. They would both police and administer the areas of the
+Transvaal and the Orange Free State, and it may be that they will be
+affiliated with the British South Africa Police corps that are already
+enrolled. The life is enjoyable, there is much sport, and for a few
+years to come there is sure to be trouble, at odd intervals, among the
+Dutch. It is, perhaps, doubtful whether the man from home will be
+quite adapted to such work, since, in a very high degree, a knowledge
+of the Dutch language will be indispensable, and much valuable time
+will be lost in acquiring some smattering of this tongue and in
+teaching the recruits to ride, to shoot, and to drill. But life in the
+mounted constabulary has also possessed so great a fascination for the
+average Englishman that, should the Government decide to make eligible
+the men from home, any paucity among the colonial applicants can be at
+once remedied. Care, however, should be taken that the colonial men
+who came forward on behalf of the colony in its hour of peril, should
+be given the first refusal, and a greater financial consideration
+should be meted out than, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page257" name="page257"></a>(p. 257)</span> with the exception of the Canadian
+police, has hitherto been customary. The economy of Africa is high
+priced, and it will be eminently difficult for men to live upon their
+pay should they have to forfeit any large proportion of it for extras,
+the cost of which might well be borne by the Government itself. There
+has been a great outcry about the higher rates of pay which are drawn
+by the colonial corps now serving at the front as compared with the
+wretchedly inadequate wages of the regulars, and it is a great pity
+that we, who can be so foolishly magnanimous, cannot disavow the petty
+economies of the service at a moment like the present. Five shillings
+a day is small enough when men have to provide their entire equipment,
+but to argue that because the War Office is supplying the kit the rate
+should be reduced, since the main source of expenditure be removed, is
+to incline towards a policy of expenditure which is penny wise and
+pound foolish. We read recently, and with infinite zest, that the
+artillery by which Mafeking is defended includes a battery of field
+guns and four heavy pieces. This, of course, is a grotesque
+exaggeration. We have no heavy ordnance, and our field pieces are
+obsolete muzzle-loading monstrosities. Had the War Office paid
+attention to its work, and supplied this advanced outpost of the
+Empire with efficient artillery, instead of rushing up to Mafeking an
+improvised field battery, it would be possible to ignore the attempt
+to curtail the pay of the colonial forces, since, if Africa had been
+prepared for war, it is improbable that Great Britain would have been
+compelled, in order to crush the combined forces of the Republics, to
+summon to her aid men from her colonial dependencies. But we did not
+do this, and if we be now reaping the fruits of an <span class="pagenum"><a id="page258" name="page258"></a>(p. 258)</span> impotent
+administration, we should be sufficiently generous to accept the
+responsibility for the expenditure, and to desist from an endeavour to
+bolster up accounts by imposing upon the colonial contingents the
+effects of an economy which aims at sparing a few thousand pounds by
+saving some portion of their pay. Moreover, if it be true that the
+colonial contingents which have been enrolled since war began, are
+receiving ten shillings a day, why should not that rate be accepted as
+the standard of pay for all colonial forces under arms? In relation to
+Mafeking, where the question of compensation has become acute, such
+addition to the pay of the defenders of the town as would increase
+their rate to ten shillings would be a felicitous manner of
+recognising the gallant work which the garrison has performed, and
+provide at the same time, a practical exposition of official
+appreciation for the units of the defence.</p>
+
+<p>If this be the one question of moment, in reference to the other
+problem&mdash;the pastoral and agricultural future of the country&mdash;there is
+little doubt that Africa&mdash;more especially these western districts,
+where agricultural and pastoral pursuits are widely followed&mdash;will
+require the assistance of the capitalist before the mere emigrant from
+England can make much headway. In a sense Mafeking is the central
+market for farm produce for areas which stretch far into the
+Transvaal, and which, lacking the propinquity of a local market, are
+compelled to send their products across the border. Many of these
+districts have proved to possess valuable mining qualities, so that it
+is possible we shall see in a few years the development of towns
+which, owing their existence to the mines, will attract the trade
+which now finds its bent in the Mafeking market. But the hope here
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page259" name="page259"></a>(p. 259)</span> is of railway communication with Johannesburg and Pretoria,
+and the consequent opening out and settlement of the Bechuanaland
+Protectorate, and it is in this respect the capitalist will be the
+Alpha and Omega of the countryside; for the youngster who goes to
+Australasia with five hundred pounds and leases a property will be
+unable to obtain a hearing up here until the economy of daily life has
+been reduced to a less expensive order. There is a golden future here,
+but much gold will have to be poured into the lap of Mother Nature
+before any very satisfactory results are gained. The cost of transit
+is prohibitive, and there is a scarcity of water, which will make
+wells a necessity. There is much cheap labour, but the present mode of
+existence of the farming class is one which favours a bare
+sufficiency, and for the remainder a state of placid idleness.</p>
+
+<p>The insufficient development of South Africa in respect to its
+agricultural and pastoral resources is largely due to the
+unprogressiveness of the Boer or South African farmer. He personifies
+useless idleness, and contents himself with raising a herd of a few
+hundred head of cattle; he seldom plants a tree; seldom digs a well;
+seldom makes a road; and has an unmitigated contempt for agriculture
+and agriculturists. His ploughs, harrows, and utensils of husbandry
+are clumsy, ill-formed, and, where they exist at all, are hopelessly
+antiquated. He cannot be prevailed upon to make any alteration
+whatsoever in the system of his agriculture. His ancestors were
+farmers, and he himself does not conceive it to be his duty to alter
+methods which were already obsolete when he was a child. The English
+farmer, with good training, active disposition, and accurate <span class="pagenum"><a id="page260" name="page260"></a>(p. 260)</span>
+knowledge of how and where to institute radical reforms, possessing
+capital, might find both home and fortune in these areas. It is a good
+cattle country, and with a careful reorganisation in the management of
+the cattle-farms across the border&mdash;a reorganisation which should
+extend throughout all agrestic or nomadic communities in the
+Transvaal&mdash;it should receive material assistance from the farms of the
+western border of the Transvaal that are already stocked. The Dutch
+farmer, living the life of the patriarch of old, leaves everything to
+nature, and does not, as a rule, combine the varieties of farming
+which his property would sustain. He remains a stock-breeder, or a
+grower of cereals: the combination of the two is usually too complex.
+It will be therefore a good thing should a different basis of
+management be inculcated, and when this be accomplished, greater
+facilities for stocking their farms will be held out to the intending
+colonists who may favour the country, but for the time the new-comers
+should check their eagerness, since, above all things, capital will be
+necessary to their salvation.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page261" name="page261"></a>(p. 261)</span> CHAPTER XXXI<br>
+<span class="smaller">"A HISTORY OF THE BARALONGS"</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">Mafeking</span>, <i>March 22nd, 1900</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond a few successful cattle-raiding forays on the part of the
+Baralongs, we have done nothing these past days but maintain
+courageously the glories of our splendid isolation. In a way we have
+been compelled to depend to no small extent upon the prowess of the
+local tribe. The Baralongs have done well by us, and have served us
+faithfully, and with no complaint. They have fought for us; they have
+preyed upon the enemy's cattle, so that the white garrison might have
+something better than horseflesh for their diet; they have manned the
+western defences of the stadt, and they have suffered severe
+privations with extraordinary fortitude. There have been moments in
+the earlier stages of the war when they might well have considered the
+advisability of supporting a power that could not from the outset
+hinder their own arch-enemy, and one against whom they have been
+pre-eminently successful in other years, from invading the territories
+of the Empire. But whatever may have been the workings of the native
+mind, however they may have dallied with the treacherous overtures of
+the Boers, they have individually, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page262" name="page262"></a>(p. 262)</span> and as a tribe,
+unanimously risen to the occasion, and given to the Great White Queen
+their absolute support. In the history of these people there is not
+much in the consideration which we have shown them to justify their
+allegiance, and if we have secured their loyalty at so critical a
+moment, let us hope that it may, in some way, epitomise the actions
+for the future, of the tribes that are allied with them, and, when the
+moment comes for compensation, let us at least remember the debt of
+honour which we owe them.</p>
+
+<p>The Baralongs are, of course, identified with the Bantu peoples of
+Africa, but they come from a stock that is industrial as opposed to
+the military element of this race. The distribution of the military
+and industrial Bantu is significant, but in this latter we will
+consider one of the peaceable tribes. The military Bantu is found in
+possession of the most fertile regions, and it may be well to remember
+that they occupied the Southern extremity of Africa, contemporaneously
+with Europeans. They are now found between the Drakensberg Mountains
+and the Indian Ocean, fruitful areas about the Zoutpansberg and
+Kaffraria. It would seem that they held these grounds by right of
+might, and their district is in somewhat striking contrast to the
+regions in which the industrial Bantu are at home. These latter cling
+to the mountains, as in Basutoland, and are scattered over the high
+plateau which forms so great a part of the Free State and the
+Transvaal, or in the confines of the Kalahari Desert and those deserts
+and karoos which lie to the south of the Orange River. The desert has
+ever been their ultimate retreat, and as their more warlike kinsmen
+seized and held the finer qualities of the country, the arid <span class="pagenum"><a id="page263" name="page263"></a>(p. 263)</span>
+and, so to speak, waste areas of Africa fell to the heritage of the
+industrial Bantu. Descendants from the same family, there is naturally
+an analogy between their tribal organisations which is yet curiously
+dissimilar. They are both armed with the same weapon, but the assegai
+of the military Bantu is short-handled and broad bladed; while the
+assegai of the industrial Bantu is long and sharp, light in the blade,
+and intended mainly for purposes of the chase. Among the former the
+chief is a despot, against whose word there is no appeal; his town is
+designed with a view to defence; the chief's hut and the cattle-pens
+of the tribe are placed in the centre, and around these the remaining
+huts are built in concentric circles. The power of the chief among the
+industrial Bantu is limited; first by the council of lesser chiefs,
+secondly by the general assemblage of the freemen of the tribe. His
+town is intended to serve the requirements of a peaceful people, while
+outside the ground is cultivated in a rough and unscientific manner;
+they are even acquainted with the art of smelting ore and working in
+iron. The pursuit of the military Bantu is directed to the successful
+cultivation of a bare sufficiency of corn and cattle, and he pays
+little attention to anything which is beyond his immediate
+requirements. The Kaffirs, the Zulus, and the Matabele Zulus are among
+the warlike tribes of this dark-skinned race; but the chief seats of
+the industrial tribe are Bechuanaland and Basutoland, and it is with
+the peaceful Bechuanas, with whom are identified the Baralongs, that
+we propose to deal.</p>
+
+<p>Historically, Bechuanaland will remain ever interesting to Englishmen
+as being the scene of the labours of Robert Moffat, David Livingstone,
+and John Mackenzie: three famous missionaries, who in <span class="pagenum"><a id="page264" name="page264"></a>(p. 264)</span> their
+time did so much for the interests of our country in what was then the
+Dark Continent. The immense area lying to the north of Cape Colony
+possessed in itself one great political feature which made its
+possession of paramount importance. It was the natural trade route
+between that colony and Central Africa at a moment when Imperialism
+was a soulless conception, and when our ideas of the Empire in Africa
+shrank at the possibility of northern expansion. During all those
+years possession of Bechuanaland was the golden key to a future which,
+had we but realised it then, would have given us some right to claim
+the distinction of being a race of discoverers. We were, however, very
+diffident about accepting and recognising any greater responsibilities
+in relation to any enlargement of the areas of our African domains,
+and if a vindictive spirit had not encouraged the Boers to plunder and
+destroy the settlement in which missionary Livingstone abode, and thus
+driven him to pastures of a fresh kind, we might never have possessed
+the gate through which the stream of prosperity has flowed, until it
+reached to the limits of Central Africa. If the Boers had resolved to
+oust this intrepid Englishman, they failed lamentably, insomuch as
+they did but drive him to explore the interior, and to open up a
+magnificent reach of country to his fellow Englishmen. Bechuanaland
+lay at his feet when he first started forth, but to-day the point of
+exploration is many hundred miles in advance. Bechuanaland has
+flourished, and would have prospered more, had we but appreciated the
+doctrine of those Victorian statesmen who, recognising the wondrous
+wealth which lay in this new country, but fearing that the moment had
+not come <span class="pagenum"><a id="page265" name="page265"></a>(p. 265)</span> for such gigantic undertakings, were regretfully
+compelled to delegate to posterity the duty of some day acquiring
+these very areas. Great Britain does not go very far back into the
+history of the native tribes of Bechuanaland. We are the later agents
+of a new civilisation, but we have yet to undo many wrongs to the
+lawful possessors of this proud heritage, to adjust many intricate
+questions, and to grapple, without fear and hesitation, with the
+problems which confront us&mdash;problems upon which it is surely not too
+much to say the effectual solidarity and stability of this great
+African Empire depends.</p>
+
+<p>Tradition tells us that the Baralong branch of the Bantu came from the
+north under the leadership of Chief Morolong, and that the tribe
+settled, after a protracted exodus from the north, on the Molopo River
+under a chief who was fourth in descent from their first leader,
+Morolong. The combination of the military and industrial Bantu had
+been already broken by the character of the tribe itself. Before they
+had been settled very long, Matabele Zulus under Moselekatse attacked
+Mabua, and there was once again a complete division of tribe. They
+scattered in three directions. Thaba N'chu was selected by the leader
+of that party as their eventual resting-place. Two other sections, led
+by Taoane, the father of Montsioa, and Machabi, found their way into
+the country which lay between the Orange River and the Vaal. There
+they remained, leading a quiet and comparatively harmless existence
+until the Boers, under Hendrik Potgieter, entered into alliance with
+the Baralongs to attack Moselekatse. When the old lion of the north
+had been driven beyond the Limpopo, Taoane returned with his followers
+to the south bank of the Marico. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page266" name="page266"></a>(p. 266)</span> By virtue of this conquest
+Potgieter issued a proclamation, claiming for himself and the
+Transvaal Government the country which had previously been overrun by
+the Zulu chief. Under this proclamation the Boers claimed to exercise
+sovereign powers over the Bechuana tribes, but upon the protest of the
+British Government this was withdrawn, Taoane and Montsioa, who had by
+this time succeeded his father, refusing to recognise the implied
+sovereignty of the Boers. By the intervention of the Imperial
+Government on behalf of the native chiefs of a territory which was
+practically unknown, it became the eventual channel through which we
+pushed a benign salvation, and an indifferent protection upon the
+natives of Bechuanaland until that time when we were enabled to
+assimilate the country. The attempt of the Transvaal Government to
+seize the areas of Bechuanaland was the rift in the silver lining of
+the clouds of Transvaal prosperity. The question became, between the
+two Governments, one of great moment, and its existence, since the
+Republic declined to ratify the award of the Keate Arbitration, was a
+bone of contention which was never altogether buried. The attitude of
+this Republic, the indirect assistance which the Transvaal offered to
+Moshette and Massou for the perpetuation of civil strife among the
+Bechuana chiefs, undoubtedly hastened the annexation by Great Britain
+in 1877 of the Transvaal territory. When this happened, despite the
+fact that the border was immediately delimited, Bechuanaland passed
+through a period of the greatest anarchy. The chiefs were warring
+amongst themselves, and although the two parties claimed the
+protection of either the Transvaal or the Imperial Government, the
+country was not definitely pacified till the despatch of the Warren
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page267" name="page267"></a>(p. 267)</span> Expedition, an expedient which by its success made
+Bechuanaland an integral portion of our African Empire. Montsioa, the
+Baralong chief, was fighting with his brother Moshette; Mankorane, the
+Batlapin chief, was engaged in struggle with David Massou, who was
+head of the Korannas. Of these four chiefs Montsioa and Mankorane
+sought the protection of the Imperial Government, while Moshette and
+Massou acknowledged the sovereignty of the Transvaal. European
+volunteers or freebooters who would be rewarded for their services by
+grants of land, assisted each of the four chiefs. At this juncture the
+Imperial Government changed its policy of administration in relation
+to the natives of Bechuanaland, and the result was that the High
+Commissioner of the Cape became supreme chief of the natives outside
+the Republic and the territories of foreign powers. In pursuance of
+the new policy Mr. Mackenzie arrived in Bechuanaland as British
+Resident, for the purpose of giving effect to the newly proclaimed
+Protectorate which had been established over the country outside the
+south-western boundary of the Transvaal by the consent of the
+delegates from the Republic, who had visited London to obtain certain
+modifications of the Convention of Pretoria. An extraordinary state of
+things awaited the arrival of Mackenzie, for the volunteers in the
+service of the Bechuana chiefs, Moshette and Massou, had established
+two independent communities, the "republics" of Land Goshen and
+Stellaland. The freebooters of Stellaland offered no resistance to the
+authority of the British Resident, but the burghers of Land Goshen
+celebrated the arrival of the Resident by a series of outrages and the
+contemptuous rejection of the demands made to them <span class="pagenum"><a id="page268" name="page268"></a>(p. 268)</span> by these
+new officials. With the successful resistance of the filibusters from
+Rooigrond, the capital of Land Goshen, President Kruger issued a
+proclamation in the interests of humanity, by which he brought under
+the protecting wing of this South African State, the contending chiefs
+and their European advisers; thus the anomaly existed of a power
+endeavouring to assert its authority over rebels in a country in which
+we ourselves had assumed control. The mediation of the Transvaal
+Government was brought about, partly by the situation of Rooigrond,
+partly by the unjustifiable arrogance and assumption of the Transvaal
+President. The town had been so placed that it lay across the line of
+the new south-western boundary; the divisions lying partly in the
+Transvaal, partly in the Protectorate, and since it had become
+apparent that the Imperial or Colonial Government were unable to
+remedy the evils which arose from the depredations of marauders of
+Rooigrond, their leaders justified their actions by claiming that
+their town was the property of the Transvaal, and that they themselves
+were acting for that state, under the orders of General Joubert, and
+endeavouring to suppress conditions of anarchy in a country which,
+from the state of its existence, would appear to possess no
+controlling influences. If the outcome of this diplomatic feat were
+the proclamation of the Transvaal, it also aroused Great Britain to
+the true condition of affairs. The Transvaal had gone too far, and, in
+response to hints from the Imperial Government as to the feeling of
+the colony, resolutions were passed stating that public opinion in
+Cape Colony considered the intervention of her Majesty's Government
+for the maintenance of the trade route to the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page269" name="page269"></a>(p. 269)</span> interior, and
+the preservation of native tribes to whom promise of Imperial
+protection had already been given, was an act dictated by the claims
+of humanity and by the necessities of policy. It was thus brought home
+to the Government that the Cape Colonists considered that it would be
+fatal to British supremacy in South Africa if we failed to maintain
+our rights which we derived from the Convention of London, and to
+fulfil our obligations towards the native tribes of the new
+Protectorate. After this assurance of moral support the Imperial
+Government despatched Sir Charles Warren, in order that he might
+remove the filibusters from Bechuanaland, pacify the country, and
+restore the natives their land, taking measures, in the meantime, to
+prevent a recurrence of the depredations and atrocities which had been
+enacted recently there. When the forces were finally withdrawn
+Bechuanaland was created a Crown Colony, and at a subsequent date, it
+was incorporated into the Cape Colony. Since this time we have
+continued to perform the duties of a central authority in respect to
+the native tribes beyond the borders of the South African Republic,
+the expenses of administration being paid from the proceeds of the hut
+tax which is levied upon natives, together with the revenue derived
+from trading licenses, and paid for by European traders. In the
+settlement of Bechuanaland we reached a critical point in the history
+of England's administration in South Africa. We have been compelled to
+accept the responsibilities of such a central power as we have become,
+and we can no longer disregard the adjustment of those problems which
+so burdened that office. Now that our Imperial interests are so strong
+and our holdings in the country so great, let us no longer continue to
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page270" name="page270"></a>(p. 270)</span> oppose the means which will lead to that eventual federation
+of the Colonies and States of South Africa, the union which, once
+secured, will do so much to rectify the mistakes that we have made in
+our African policy.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page271" name="page271"></a>(p. 271)</span> CHAPTER XXXII<br>
+<span class="smaller">'TIS WEARY WAITING</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">Mafeking</span>, <i>March 31st, 1900</i>.</p>
+
+<p>We have lived for so many months now under the conditions which govern
+a town during siege that we almost accept existing circumstances as
+normal. We have ceased to wonder at the shortness of our rations,
+content to recognise that we might grumble from sunrise to sunset and
+gain nothing by it. We are no longer surprised at the enemy; they seem
+to take the siege as a joke, but it is a comedy which has a tragic
+lining. We have astounding spirit; there is no question of the gravity
+of our situation; there is no doubt that if we were to relax our
+vigilance for a moment, if we were to withdraw an outpost, diminish
+the establishment of some trench, the Boers would be in upon us before
+the garrison had realised that any such alteration in the defences had
+taken place. Nevertheless, there is really an admirable exhibition of
+almost uncomplaining acquiescence in the hardships which have fallen
+to our daily lot. Here and there there is grumbling, but the man who
+grumbles to-day rejoices to-morrow, since no siege can be endured with
+fortitude and determination if one dwells unduly long upon the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page272" name="page272"></a>(p. 272)</span> difficulties and trials which beset us. Lately we had an
+exhibition, and many people in the garrison have consumed the past
+three weeks in a feverish and untiring activity to complete their
+exhibits. Ladies accomplished something rather fine in lacework, the
+men turned their attention to constructing models of the town's
+defences, and one and all entered into this little break in the
+monotony of the siege with the cheering intention of getting as much
+out of the event as was possible. Prizes varying from �5 to a
+sovereign were offered, and indirectly, each endeavoured to foster the
+spirit of the town. It had a beneficial effect, this artificial method
+of killing time, and it realised some �50 for the hospital. There have
+been other things besides the exhibition to stimulate the spirits of
+the garrison. Native runners brought us the news of the fall of
+Bloemfontein, a feature in the campaign which adds fresh laurels to
+the reputation of Lord Roberts. His continued successes have been an
+<i>elixir vit�</i>, and, indeed, so freely have we imbibed of this new
+medicine, that there have been many who have found themselves
+possessed of a fresh strength. There is, however, one thing which does
+not give any satisfaction whatsoever to the little band of men who
+have held this outpost of the Empire during so many weary months, and
+this is embodied in the absence of any very definite signs of a speedy
+relief. Lord Roberts has told us to hold out until the middle of May,
+but it is a weary wait, and we could well see the van of the column
+crossing the rise. Within the past few days the town has been swept by
+rumours about the propinquity of the southern column; we have
+understood Colonel Plumer has been within fifty miles of Mafeking for
+some weeks. The rumours anent the southern relief <span class="pagenum"><a id="page273" name="page273"></a>(p. 273)</span> place this
+column at any point within two hundred miles of Mafeking; some days it
+has reached Taungs, upon others it has not left Kimberley, again it is
+a week's march north of Vryburg, and in the meantime we receive
+telegrams from London congratulating us upon our successful and happy
+release. Where do these rumours come from? How comes it that London
+should be in ignorance of our condition?</p>
+
+<p>We, who have followed with so much interest the fortunes of the
+campaign, sharing in the success of others with all sincerity and
+feeling reverses like personal insults, are disinclined to deny the
+existence of a relief column; but perhaps it is not altogether
+understood that, while we have food lasting till the middle of May, it
+is not impossible to feel famished upon our present rations at the end
+of March. Of food in the abstract there is an abundance, but the
+condition and quality of the ration is such that it cannot be reduced
+any further without immediately affecting the health of the garrison
+and proving a very serious obstacle to the successful execution of any
+work which may be detailed to the command. Experiments have been tried
+for the purpose of discovering whether it were possible to exist, and
+to work, upon an allowance of 8 oz. of meat and 4 oz. of bread, and,
+while it was proved that the garrison might exist upon such short
+commons, it would be very injudicious to issue this allowance, since
+it caused a serious deterioration in the stamina of the men; it has,
+therefore, been condemned. The bread is impossible, and, although
+every effort be made to improve it, it still resembles a penwiper more
+than a portion of bread. It is made from the common oats which one
+gives to horses. These oats are crushed, but, sift them as you please,
+treat them by every <span class="pagenum"><a id="page274" name="page274"></a>(p. 274)</span> process which the ingenuity of the
+entire garrison can devise, they positively bristle all over with
+sharp-pointed pieces of the husks. Recently we have been promised Boer
+meal, but it would appear, according to Captain Ryan, that the Boer
+meal is to be held in reserve as long as possible. For the moment we
+rather hanker after that reserve, and we do not take much of the
+composite forage which is served us as bread. However, if we are
+eating the rations of horses, the unfortunate people of Kimberley ate
+the horses, and so, it would seem, our lot might be much worse. Horses
+have not become our daily ration yet, although they form the basis of
+a curious soup which is made and served out to the natives. The smell
+of that soup turns many weary pedestrians from their usual paths,
+although the spectacle of the starving natives swarming round the
+soup-kitchen is one of the sights of the siege.</p>
+
+<p>But, doubtless, those people who send us ridiculous messages of
+congratulation may think that this is, after all, but the mere detail
+of the siege&mdash;the side issue which should be expected, and which
+should in any case be endured with a fine toleration. That is all
+right; we do not mind the bread, we do not mind the aroma of the
+soup-kitchen, but we do object to preposterous messages of
+congratulation telling us "the siege is over," at the very moment when
+the enemy is shelling us simultaneously from five different points.
+The other day they endeavoured to concentrate their fire upon the
+centre of the town, and, if they did not do this altogether, they most
+certainly fired into Mafeking a weight of metal that has exceeded
+every other day's. We had from sunrise until dusk 79 Creusot shells,
+100 lb. each; 35 steel-capped, armour-piercing, delay-action,
+high-velocity <span class="pagenum"><a id="page275" name="page275"></a>(p. 275)</span> Krupp, 15 lb. each; 29 9-pounder Krupp; 57
+3-pounder Maxims; and such a merry flight of 5-pounders that these
+shells have become a drug in the market, and to such an extent that we
+would very gladly exchange between here and London, a few such stormy
+petrels as a polite and cordial memento of the day of our deliverance.
+It is true that in part we are relieved, since we have chosen to take
+the initiative into our own hands and expelled the enemy from a
+position on the south-eastern facing of the town which they have
+occupied since the beginning of hostilities. This has given us immense
+relief, since it has practically placed the town beyond the effective
+range of the Mauser rifle and the Boer sharpshooters.</p>
+
+<p>The trench was exceedingly well made, divided by traverses, protected
+with a rear bank and a strong head cover. It was a mercy that we did
+not attempt to storm it, and its remarkable strength and composite
+construction goes some way to explain the difficulty which we have
+experienced in making much impression, either by shell fire or
+storming party, upon the Boer entrenchments. We did this in a single
+night, having led up to such a climax by devoting our attentions to
+this particular quarter. We bombarded them by day, we sniped them by
+night, and sapped them in the intervals. For a brief moment the enemy
+checked us, but it was only for a moment, and our fire was so warm and
+so persistent that they relinquished their attempt to prevent our
+advance, leaving, however, in their trench at the moment of evacuation
+a little trifle, possibly forgotten in their scramble to the rear, of
+250 lbs. of nitro-glycerine. The mine was at once located, the wires
+were cut, the trench was occupied, and in <span class="pagenum"><a id="page276" name="page276"></a>(p. 276)</span> the morning when
+day dawned, instead of there being the roar of a great explosion,
+there was simply the ruddy blaze of our artillery fire from the gun
+emplacements which they had constructed and which we had converted to
+our own use. But we have taken care of that little mine, and
+possession of the trench leaves us masters of the situation. This,
+however, is the only relief that has come to Mafeking.</p>
+
+<p>The Boer possesses a natural aptitude for digging ditches and throwing
+up earthworks, since his instinct tells him what not to do, much as
+this same intuition teaches him how to secure the natural
+fortifications of a kopje, and has made him, as the war has proved, a
+foeman worthy of our steel. We have despised the Boer; we have
+contumaciously called him a barbarian; but, nevertheless, these nomads
+of the South African veldt have given the mighty majesty of England a
+lesson which will take her many years to forget. Boer tactics are
+unique, but one has to witness them to believe in their feasibility.
+Their horses are so trained that when the reins are thrown over their
+necks they remain immovable. Their fighting is based on this fact,
+combined with the dictates of common-sense and their empirical, yet
+successful manner of encountering us in the Gladstonian War. Each
+commando of one hundred men is their unit; these are concentrated in
+scattered groups in rear of their outpost lines, and upon coming in
+contact with the enemy they endeavour to encircle their adversary,
+cantering in eccentric circles until they are able to dismount in a
+fold of ground near some coign of vantage. They are extraordinarily
+adept at making the best of their cover, and they are most patient,
+waiting hours for a shot, prone upon the ground, under a scorching
+sun. It would seem that <span class="pagenum"><a id="page277" name="page277"></a>(p. 277)</span> they have maintained their
+time-honoured system, applying to the present campaign tactics
+possessing great mobility, rapid powers of concentration on vulnerable
+points, and as rapid retreats therefrom if seriously threatened. This
+power of rapid movement incidental to all being mounted gives them
+great advantage, increasing their powers of offence and defence, and
+representing the crux of their theories of war. The Boer carries on
+his horse one hundred rounds of ammunition, and rations of sun-dried
+beef sufficient for four days. The horses feed upon the veldt. In four
+days the Boer can cover two hundred miles, and it is this ability to
+move from point to point with extraordinary despatch, that makes the
+Boer force a body of mounted infantrymen possessing great strategical
+value. It has been impossible not to admire the tactics which the
+Boers have pursued in investing Mafeking, and where they have detached
+a force for any special purpose the execution of their work has been
+accomplished with laudable celerity. They dismantle and re-set, at an
+emplacement some miles away, their big Creusot gun&mdash;a process which
+seldom occupies them longer than between dusk and dawn; sometimes we
+see them moving their guns northwards, and hear from natives that they
+arrived at a point some thirty miles from Mafeking by daybreak. It may
+be that in respect to the mobility of their forces we have much to
+learn, and let us at least profit by the lessons which are thus
+afforded us.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page278" name="page278"></a>(p. 278)</span> CHAPTER XXXIII<br>
+<span class="smaller">TWO HUNDRED DAYS OF SIEGE</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">Mafeking</span>, <i>April 15th, 1900</i>.</p>
+
+<p>There is now happily no longer any doubt of the truth of the native
+reports of important successes having befallen our arms in the
+vicinity of Kimberley. We hear with infinite rejoicing that Kimberley
+has pulled through, and is no longer invested by the enemy, and almost
+so soon as these tidings reached us, natives brought in the
+unconfirmed news of the capture of Cronje. This has since been
+officially published, and the garrison here is beginning to feel at
+last that their turn is about to come! We have waited long for this
+moment, passing many black hours in the interval, but even now it
+seems that the power of England may be successfully defied by these
+federated South African Republicans. Yet we hope and, in the changing
+of the fortunes which we anticipate, we express and share in the
+felicitous congratulations which the Empire is offering to Lord
+Roberts. The shrewdness and tactical genius of this gallant veteran
+has been a source from which the entire garrison has drawn an
+inspiring hope which encouraged one and all to resist to the uttermost
+the attacks of the Boers.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page279" name="page279"></a>(p. 279)</span> We have already been besieged six months, and although the
+internal situation does not appreciably differ from that which existed
+on the first day of the siege, the signs of the times betoken the
+gravity of our condition. During recent days there have been two
+separate indications of the straits to which the siege has reduced us.
+Colonel Plumer endeavoured to pass into Mafeking a mob of cattle; the
+Almighty sent a flight of locusts in such numbers that for many miles
+the veldt was brown beneath the thousands which alighted upon it. Now
+the locust is an article of diet, though it has not yet attained the
+dignity of the position enjoyed by the nimble prawn. At present the
+locust is compared only to a tasteless prawn, but it may be that when
+the siege of Mafeking be raised and the world knows that no small
+portion of the garrison were reduced to locusts without wild honey,
+this somewhat unconvincing appetiser may be relegated to the office of
+a <i>hors d'&oelig;uvre</i>. Dame Fashion is responsible for so much that she
+might well introduce to the social world such a toothsome delicacy. To
+catch your locust is almost as difficult as to eat it, but it may be
+done by turning out at night and throwing a blanket over any patch
+whose numbers suggest the possibility of a profitable return. This, of
+course, is not the native mode: the native, being as nimble as the
+locust, goes for them on the rush, and sweeps them into heaps before
+they have quite recovered from the shock of the surprise. By this
+method you certainly secure your locust, by the other you generally
+catch a cold, for the process of catching an individual locust is
+somewhat laborious. However, it may be done, more especially where
+there is the tedium of a siege to while away. Having caught your
+locust, you then immerse him in boiling <span class="pagenum"><a id="page280" name="page280"></a>(p. 280)</span> water, a treatment
+which at once subdues him. You then proceed to sun-dry him and pluck
+away his wings and head. The locust is then ready for the table, when,
+after eating him, you discover that he has all the aroma and subtlety
+of chewed string. For all the world one might as well munch string,
+but since the possibilities of imparting to him an especial flavour be
+so numerous and so eminently calculated to test the qualities of the
+<i>chef</i>, he should again be commended to the notice of society in so
+much that it is possible to create an altogether original locust.
+There is, of course, another way of eating locusts, and that is to eat
+them alive. This practice, however, is not held in any very great
+esteem, since the native who cannot afford to wait to cook his locust
+is <i>d�classe</i>, even if he be starving. Personally, I rather like
+locusts if they be fried, more especially if they be curried, for just
+now the great thing is to eat, and, having digested what has been laid
+before you, discreetly to ignore any question which might verify the
+truth of your suspicions: therefore in eating curried locusts, you
+thank Heaven for the curry, and pass on quickly to the next course. To
+eat just now upon this basis is to enjoy consolation, which, in
+relation to our food, is our sole form of enjoyment, since when you
+know that you are eating horse and you imagine that you are eating
+beef, your imagination is necessarily so strong and so triumphant that
+the toughness of the horse becomes the tenderness of beef. Moreover,
+everything is only a question of comparison, and as a consequence the
+toughness of horse-beef and the tenderness of ox-beef necessitates
+merely an exchange of terms which imply similar standards of
+perfection.</p>
+
+<p>The pleasures of the table, however, are as nothing <span class="pagenum"><a id="page281" name="page281"></a>(p. 281)</span> compared
+to the delights of the bombardment by which the Boers assail the town
+almost daily. We have had more time these days to recognise the
+precise value of the enemy's shell fire and its wide area of
+demolition&mdash;more time because the Boers have withdrawn "Big Ben," and
+we no longer fear to walk freely in the streets, nor are we kept
+constantly upon the alert listening to the clanging of the alarm. The
+guns remaining do not appear to be able to reach the town from their
+distant emplacements. They are an array of minor ordnance,
+uninteresting to us, since their attentions would seem to be directed
+upon the outposts and the outlying forts. "Big Ben," however, was no
+respecter of places, but gaily hurled defiance at us from a variety of
+points, maintaining with wonderful regularity an almost daily
+bombardment.</p>
+
+<p>We who are anxious for his welfare, now spend many dreary hours upon
+the housetops, for, if we show appreciation of his presence by taking
+refuge in the cellars, we ascend to the highest points of our houses
+in order to make sure that he is gone. The sense of gratitude which
+inspires us to do these things is unrestricted, and were it not that
+there were smaller guns around us, we might have waved a parting
+salutation from a more adjacent point; but under the circumstances we
+are content, and although we feel sorry that he has left us, we shall
+more infinitely deplore his presence when he returns. It is almost
+pleasant in Mafeking just now, and if it were not for the scarcity of
+food, the coldness of the weather, the never-ending rains, the fever
+which exists (and of which we are all frightened), the entire absence
+of wood with which to make fires, and the appalling monotony of the
+days, the dreariness of the situation and the dulness of the people,
+we <span class="pagenum"><a id="page282" name="page282"></a>(p. 282)</span> might be happy, possibly inclined to exchange our lot for
+that of anyone else who was not in Mafeking; but as it is, we are
+really rather anxious to get out and to see the siege raised. Our
+nerves are altogether raw, our tempers soured, our digestions failing.
+We were young men six months ago, impressed with the importance of our
+situation, invigorated with a determination to stick it out; but we
+have aged considerably since then, and we would willingly send the
+siege to the devil if we, by way of exchange, were permitted to
+indulge in the comparative comfort of another form of purgatory. It
+has become quite the accepted fashion to draw a simile between
+Mafeking and hell, and to give the early Christian fathers full credit
+for their powers; they were nevertheless quite incapable of imagining
+a punishment so deliberate as the mental and physical torture of a
+siege. To use a colonial colloquialism, "we went in blind," but one
+experience is sufficient to guarantee that every member of the
+garrison just now would put a thousand miles between him and the next
+beleaguered town. In the situation itself there is nothing to write
+about, it so constantly repeats itself until the absolute monotony of
+the days settles down upon the nerves, depressing one's spirit like a
+wet blanket. The Boers still fire at us, and we still sit tight,
+nursing our hopes by a sublime confidence in the relief column. If we
+be sceptical at times, we endeavour not to take our scepticism too
+seriously, and we talk airily about the date by which the van will
+have arrived here. But in reality there are but few people who believe
+in the practical existence of any relief column.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page283" name="page283"></a>(p. 283)</span> CHAPTER XXXIV<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE EPICUREAN'S DELIGHT</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">Mafeking</span>, <i>April 30th, 1900</i>.</p>
+
+<p>We have duly celebrated the two hundredth day of the siege, and if one
+examines closely into the condition of a town which has withstood the
+attacks of the enemy during two hundred days, it is to find a spirit
+that is strong and self-reliant among the garrison and to realise the
+sadness of the picture which presents the aspect of a town slowly
+passing into ruin. The ravages of the siege have in no way been so
+prominent as has been the case during the last few weeks. Mafeking of
+yore was somewhat stately, although it was merely a colonial
+up-country centre, possessing nothing which was grandiose or even
+elegant. But its calm and unruffled dignity sprang from clusters of
+stately trees around which it had sprung up, and from which in these
+days of tempest and adversity it snatches something of their
+independence, something of their indifference to the press of battle.
+But now it is almost a treeless town, and it is difficult to go
+anywhere without meeting the signs by which one may read the stress
+and privation which a siege imposes upon a beleaguered village.
+Mafeking was never a tiny town; it rambles too far <span class="pagenum"><a id="page284" name="page284"></a>(p. 284)</span> over the
+veldt to be considered even compact, but these natural features are
+now greatly aggravated by the ruin which has fallen upon the outlying
+areas of the town, causing even the most central streets to be
+disorderly in appearance. From a very early date in the siege we have
+been accustomed to the spectacle of ungainly structures stretching
+across those thoroughfares which were exposed to the enemy's fire.
+These traverses were among the earliest preparations of the war, but
+now, in addition to these, at frequent intervals in the streets one
+comes across shelter-pits which have been excavated in the various
+thoroughfares. These protections against the enemy's shell and rifle
+fire were not perhaps any lasting imposition upon the elegance of the
+place, but as the siege developed its effects became more formidable
+and were more calculated to leave traces of a permanent character.
+To-day, perhaps, we are achieving to the end of this enforced
+vandalism, since we have already utilised the garden fences and
+demolished for the value of the wood which they may contain any houses
+which may have been damaged by shell fire. Indeed, just now, we are
+buying up the deserted huts of Kaffirs who have either been killed or
+who have made their way with safety through the lines. These huts
+comprise no small quantity of wood, so we are pulling them to pieces
+on account of the props which support the reed roofing. But before we
+ventured into the stadt for our wood, the trees in town were trimmed
+of their branches, or, as in many cases, chopped down altogether, and
+as a consequence the outward and visible sign of the results of the
+siege is an infinite sense of desolation. There is now no longer the
+gentle rustle of the trees as the night winds sigh through them; no
+longer do <span class="pagenum"><a id="page285" name="page285"></a>(p. 285)</span> the birds scramble amid the branches, screaming
+merrily. There is no bird life now, for we have been unable to
+consider sentiment in the ordering of our daily life. The best timber
+in the town enjoys no greater immunity, since young and old trees each
+serve their purpose. Where there was once order, there is now
+confusion. Streets blockaded at one end are also furrowed by the many
+shells which have come into the town; the walls of the houses have
+been riddled with bullets, or wide, ragged holes gape where the
+projectiles of "Big Ben" pounded their way through. Telegraph poles
+and lamp posts are bent and twisted, some lying completely broken upon
+the roadside. The roads and paths are covered with weeds, and
+everywhere the neglect of the seven months' siege is in evidence. It
+is a depressing spectacle, and it is well just now to close one's eyes
+to everything&mdash;to the famine which is stalking in our midst, to the
+fever which is raging round the outposts, to the ill-conditioned
+horses and cattle, to the weary, patient women, to the children who,
+unfortunately fortunate, have survived so much distress, and yet if
+one looks a little forward it is difficult to see that the remedy will
+be forthcoming. It has required the labour of years to rear the trees,
+and in many cases the houses that were wrecked and upon whose sites
+lie piles of rubble, represented the successful conception of a life's
+handiwork which, destroyed in the passing of a moment, can never be
+altogether replaced. There are many men and some few women who have
+lost everything they possessed, and even if they receive an adequate
+compensation will still feel the absence, in their new abodes, of
+those subtle sentiments which made the fruition of their efforts so
+dear and treasured to them. It is impossible not to <span class="pagenum"><a id="page286" name="page286"></a>(p. 286)</span> feel
+this when one perambulates through the town; every spot recalls
+something to the mind of some one, an indelible association, emanating
+from the siege and which time cannot obliterate. Men remember where
+they stood when some particular house was shattered, others recall
+their proximity to a bursting shell, whose explosion tore up the
+roadway. It is these things which will never be effaced, since they
+are the impressions which have struck deep down upon the mind, leaving
+an afterglow. But as a rule we keep our cares, feeling that so many
+people have so much else to worry them, recognising also that upon one
+and each of us the siege hangs sorely. There can be no doubt that it
+has left its mark, not only upon the town, but upon the garrison. The
+men are just a little gaunt, just a little unkempt; the women are
+haggard and careworn, for it is difficult to keep up one's spirit when
+from day to day there comes no news, only that curious, ironical
+instinct, that perhaps it may be that we are not to be relieved at
+all. The garrison is famished, that is, in reality, the kernel of our
+situation. Our energies are exhausted because our vital processes are
+insufficiently nurtured. We are all listless; we all feel that the
+siege has been a strain of the most severe description, and we are
+holding ourselves in for the final rally, anxious to support the
+position, determined to hold the town and occupy till the end our
+posts. Yet there is a false note through it all, and in those moments
+when one finds oneself alone one realises how artificial is the gaiety
+which we profess, feeling, by intuition, that one's own emotions are
+alike those of one's neighbour. However, each one of us endeavours to
+make an effort to maintain in public some appearance of interest in
+the daily conditions of the siege. It is a <span class="pagenum"><a id="page287" name="page287"></a>(p. 287)</span> difficult part to
+play, because, as I have said, there is so much that is unsatisfactory
+in our position. The signs of the times are read by little things, and
+if one goes for a walk round the outposts it is as well not to mention
+in the town the presence of the fever flags which float over certain
+areas near which it is not permitted to go. There are three such
+places; one is remote from our lines, well out into the veldt, where,
+isolated and apart, living in a world of their own making for the time
+being, is a family fighting against the ravages of diphtheria; between
+them and the stadt there is the smallpox reserve, where the yellow
+jack droops from the trees beneath whose shade the tents of the
+patients have been pitched. Still nearer into town at the hospital the
+flag of mercy protects a building in which there is much malaria, some
+typhoid, and a few cases of enteric fever. This is the gamut of our
+sickness, and it is in these quarters that we, who are hale and
+hearty, look with anxious eyes. There are many there who will pay
+their lives as tributes to the siege, for, as in Ladysmith, so are we
+reduced to horseflesh, being fortunate enough to possess, however, a
+small store of medical comforts. The sick cannot be given very much,
+but we are very solicitous for their welfare, and only lately the
+garrison as a body, surrendered the ration of sugar to the needs of
+those who were ailing. Our rations are sadly diminished;
+three-quarters of a pound of minced horse-meat occasionally
+interchanged with mule and donkey flesh; four ounces of horse forage,
+a microscopical quantity of tea and coffee, pepper and salt, comprises
+the daily issue. Few of us have extras, but there are many who indulge
+in experiments with certain toilet adjuncts of an edible nature.
+Scented oatmeal, violet powder, poudre de ris, and starch, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page288" name="page288"></a>(p. 288)</span>
+have all been tested, and it would seem that starch is the more
+adaptable. Recently I was allowed to taste a starch blancmange, with
+glycerine syrup; it was excellent, and infinitely better than scented
+oatmeal porridge. We also fry our meat in cocoa-nut oil, in dubbin,
+and in salad oil&mdash;if we can "find" any. Indeed, there is quite a boom
+in grease-stuffs for culinary purposes. Aside from starch, violet face
+powder gives very fair results, but when used as an ingredient for
+brawn, it is a hopeless failure. It will be seen, therefore, that we
+are somewhat puzzled to know how to satisfy our appetites, and we
+attempt infinite devices in order to supplement our daily food supply;
+occasionally we shoot small birds and less frequently we catch fish,
+but the size of both birds and fish is such that a day's bag is seldom
+sufficient for a meal. If the Europeans be exerting themselves to
+discover new processes by which to cook inedible compounds, the
+natives also are at their wits' end, and have resource to a variety of
+dishes which under more favourable circumstances they would not touch.
+Pet dogs that are sleek, family cats that are fat, are stolen nightly
+from the hotels and empty houses, but they are invariably traced to
+native marauders, who, inspired by hunger, prowl around by night
+seeking what they may devour. These details give a somewhat gloomy
+aspect to our situation, and if the truth be told our plight is quite
+sufficiently serious, but it must not be imagined that by reason of
+these things we are faint-hearted; we are not so. If we can pull
+through, and we are proposing to make every effort, we shall be
+content, and we are content, even at the present crisis, to think that
+it is not altogether impossible that very earnest efforts are being
+made to expedite our relief, and so alleviate our distress. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page289" name="page289"></a>(p. 289)</span>
+Our constitutions, perhaps, are somewhat impaired by the scarcity of
+food, by dysentery and by fever, but we are well enough if the pinch
+should come and the Boers again make a serious attack upon the town.
+We will beat them off; possibly we may laugh at their efforts. It is
+only at odd moments that we become depressed, when the intelligence
+does not seem satisfactory, when our personal worries press too
+closely upon us. In those moments we may perhaps take an unduly gloomy
+view of the situation, but it is not so quick set that it cannot be
+dissipated by the receipt of some good news, by a cablegram from the
+Queen, or a message from Lord Roberts. It is these things after which
+we hanker, and it is these things by which we keep up our hearts. That
+there should be any possibility of a weak spirit manifesting itself at
+this late hour need not be considered seriously for a moment, since
+above all else, the garrison and townspeople of Mafeking have devoted
+themselves to the work of holding this important outpost to the Empire
+until such moment as the relief may come. In the beginning we
+withstood six thousand men, just now there are not two thousand men
+around us, and if they have more guns now than they had, we have also
+strengthened our weak places and thrown out a chain of outposts
+through which it should be impossible for an enemy to penetrate. Thus
+we have made ourselves secure against everything but the menace of
+starvation, and if there be anxiety upon our behalf in the centres of
+the civilised world, the message which we send touches not upon the
+question of relief, but asks that it should be remembered that, even
+if our spirits endure, our foodstuffs will not last for ever. That is
+the gist of our prayer, and we trust that it may receive some hearing.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page290" name="page290"></a>(p. 290)</span> CHAPTER XXXV<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE LAST FIGHT</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">Mafeking</span>, <i>May 13th, 1900</i>.</p>
+
+<p>From time to time intelligence has reached us from native sources that
+the Boers were still anxious to make a final attempt to capture the
+town. We have had this story repeated to us so frequently that there
+were many in our midst who had altogether ceased to pay any attention
+to it; but that there was some sincerity in the desire to attack us
+has now been proved to be true, and it would seem that the obstacle
+which existed, and which prevented an earlier realisation of the
+enemy's plans, was the absence of any leader sufficiently capable and
+enterprising to attempt the execution of so hazardous a venture.
+However, when General Cronje delegated full command to General Snyman,
+President Kruger sent from Pretoria his youthful but gallant nephew,
+Commandant Eloff, who had not only frequently expressed his desire to
+capture the town, but brought with him from Pretoria men whose special
+knowledge of our fortifications had been gained when serving as
+troopers in the Protectorate Regiment. It was these men who were
+destined to conceive and carry to a successful conclusion the work of
+projecting a body of the Boers <span class="pagenum"><a id="page291" name="page291"></a>(p. 291)</span> within our interior lines.
+Weeks have elapsed since Commandant Eloff arrived from Pretoria, but
+he has bided his time, studying carefully our system of defence, our
+outlying earthworks, and collecting all scraps of information which
+would convey to him a more intimate knowledge of our position. For a
+time his plans matured, but, as he conned them well over, he began to
+make his preparations, recognising that, if he allowed many more days
+to pass, the relief column from the south would be an additional and
+important factor in his scheme of operations. Upon May 10th the relief
+column had reached Vryburg, and Vryburg is only ninety-six miles from
+Mafeking. Upon May 12th this southern column had advanced to
+Setlagoli, a point only forty-five miles distant from the town, and
+the receipt of this intelligence, which was brought to Commandant
+Eloff by his scouts, revealed to him the urgency and absolute
+necessity of carrying out his attack upon the town. It was a
+well-considered scheme, whose eventual success was only nullified by
+the lack of cohesion and estranged relations which existed between
+General Snyman and Commandant Eloff. It was a glorious day for
+Mafeking; it was a day of honourable misfortune for the Boers.
+Mafeking fell heavily upon Eloff, recapturing the fort which the Boers
+had surprised and taken in the early morning, and thereby effecting
+the release of the thirty-two prisoners whom the Boers had caught, and
+causing known casualties among the Boers of killed, wounded, and taken
+prisoners, 139.</p>
+
+<a id="img015" name="img015"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img015.jpg" width="500" height="345" alt="" title="">
+<p class="smcap">KILLING HORSES FOR THE NATIVES AND ENTIRE GARRISON.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Commandant Eloff had designed to pierce our western lines under cover
+of a well-organised feint upon the eastern front of the town. Upon the
+morning of May 12th and a little before 4 a.m., the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page292" name="page292"></a>(p. 292)</span> bells
+sounded a general alarm and the bugles summoned a general assembly of
+available arms to all posts. As in the early days of the siege, I ran
+from my hotel to Musson's Fort, where, upon similar occasions, I have
+served as a volunteer. There was no sign of disturbance in the west,
+but very heavy firing was breaking over the town from the main
+position of the enemy in the east. Gradually this fire was extended
+until the flanking positions of the Boers north-east and south-east
+were also engaged. As we stood to our arms in the fort, it seemed that
+they were directing an attack upon the brickfields, when, just as it
+appeared to be the usual innocuous fusilade, streaks of fire were seen
+leaping to the sky towards the west; there was a lurid glow across the
+native stadt and dense clouds of smoke were drifting and piling
+heavily towards the north. There was instant commotion in the fort,
+everybody exclaiming at once that the stadt was ablaze. At that moment
+we did not realise that the conflagration which we saw was the
+deliberate work of the enemy, although there were many who, catching
+sight of the blaze, concluded that the attack upon our eastern front
+was the blind to a movement of much greater importance upon the west.
+Thoroughly aroused and anxious to learn the reasons of the fire, I
+returned to the hotel. By this time rifle fire had slackened upon the
+east of the town, but bullets were coming over from the west, the town
+being under this cross-fire. There were few people about the town,
+and, save for an occasional group of frightened women, one saw no one.
+My horse was already saddled, and, riding to the front of the town, I
+at once recognised that the Boers were in the stadt. Huts were burning
+in all directions, the separate fires blending into a sheet of flame;
+dense <span class="pagenum"><a id="page293" name="page293"></a>(p. 293)</span> smoke overhung everything. There was the crackle of
+the burning huts, and showers of golden sparks tossed themselves into
+the air. It was still dark and the hour was about five; a
+lemon-coloured dawn, sheathed in the golden glory of the fire and
+obscured by the grey-black waves of smoke, was slowly breaking,
+following closely upon the heels of a flame-coloured night. It was the
+hour when confusion reigns supreme, when it is impossible to tell tree
+from man, an outcrop of stone from a recumbent beast. It was the very
+hour in which to attack, but the Boers secured an additional advantage
+from the dense and heavy smoke which filled the atmosphere, making the
+gloom more impenetrable than ever and screening effectually the
+rapidity of their progress. Heavy firing was proceeding from the
+direction of the stadt, and there was a confused babel of voices.
+Natives were running in all directions, and against the flames groups
+of figures were noticeable in silhouette.</p>
+
+<p>There seemed little doubt that the situation at this moment was grave
+in the extreme. The Boers in the stadt, dividing rapidly, had advanced
+upon the British South Africa Police Fort, in which from the beginning
+of the siege the regimental headquarters of the Protectorate Regiment
+have been installed. At this moment Colonel Hore and the officers and
+men attached to the regimental headquarters staff, including four
+belonging to the British South Africa Police, numbered some
+twenty-three. Preparing to resist the invasion, Colonel Hore had
+already manned the earthwork, which from the days of the Warren
+expedition has been designated as a fort. The distance between the
+stadt and the fort is about four hundred yards, and around the
+regimental headquarters <span class="pagenum"><a id="page294" name="page294"></a>(p. 294)</span> lie scattered numerous outbuildings.
+It is an impossible place to hold with a small number of men, while
+the outbuildings are so situated as to afford very excellent cover to
+any troops which may be advancing with the intention of surrounding
+the main buildings; and it was this man&oelig;uvre which Commandant Eloff
+was endeavouring to carry to a successful issue. Scattering quickly,
+and under the cover of the different houses, he advanced within a very
+short distance of the fort. In the dim light, obscured by smoke, and
+in part concealed by the native refugees, it was impossible to tell
+whether these men were the van of a Boer force or our own outposts in
+process of retirement upon Colonel Hore. Under the guidance of Trooper
+Hayes, a deserter from the Protectorate Regiment, seven hundred Boers
+had rushed the interior lines of the outposts, making their way along
+the bed of the Molopo and through Hidden Hollow into the stadt. The
+movement had been noticed by the outposts, who, unable to do anything
+against such overwhelming odds, had given the alarm and fallen back
+upon either flank, delivering a flanking fire when the Boers were
+discovered. Arriving in the stadt, Commandant Eloff had ignited the
+huts in various directions, in this manner giving to the main body of
+the Boers their signal to advance. Before the rush of Commandant
+Eloff's men the Baralongs separated, reforming behind the enemy, in
+order to co-operate with our advanced outposts in repelling the
+progress of the main body. From the moment that this was accomplished
+the Boers outside our lines and those who were within the stadt were
+cut off from one another; but, leaving half his force in the stadt,
+Commandant Eloff, with whom were Captain Von Weiss and Captain de
+Fremont, prepared <span class="pagenum"><a id="page295" name="page295"></a>(p. 295)</span> to assault the fort, and, advancing rapidly
+upon it, had surrounded it with but little difficulty. When the little
+band of men saw the Boers emerging from stadt, fire was at once opened
+upon them, but, as they claimed to be friends, and as it was
+understood that they were our own outposts, the fire from the fort
+ceased until the enemy were within sixty yards of its front face,
+being at the same time, unknown to the inmates of the fort, in
+occupation of the buildings upon either flank and in the rear.</p>
+
+<p>This, then, was the situation which had come to pass within three
+hundred yards of the railway and about seven hundred yards from the
+town. In the town itself the Town Guard, the Bechuanaland Rifles, and
+the entire strength of the Railway Division had been ordered at once
+to man the railway line. The men from the Hospital Redan and the
+establishment from Early's Corner Fort were detailed to the line in
+addition to the Bechuanaland Volunteers, while the Railway Division,
+screening their movements behind the corrugated iron fencing which
+encloses the railway yards, and perforating rifle holes in the
+sheeting of the fence, were given charge of the railway yards.
+Lieutenant Feltham and his troop of C Squadron supported Major Panzera
+and the artillery at the railway bridge, while, under orders from
+Colonel Baden-Powell, Lieutenant Montcrieff advanced a section of the
+Town Guard to occupy a house a little removed from the new line of
+defences which had been already taken up. The town itself, agog with
+excitement, had been reinforced by the Cape Police from the
+brickfields and the British South Africa Police from the kopje, and
+with these forces opposing them, the Boers at the fort found their
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page296" name="page296"></a>(p. 296)</span> further advance cut off, while, unless General Snyman forced
+the passage of the outposts and brought up his artillery, the entire
+body would be hemmed in.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime Commandant Eloff demanded the unconditional surrender
+of the twenty-three men who were established at the fort, an order
+which, had Colonel Hore refused, implied that every man with him would
+be shot. Then, in that moment, it was known that the cheering which
+had been heard in Hidden Hollow a few moments before was the
+triumphant chortle of the Boers as they stepped within the inmost
+lines of our defences. Around the fort there was silence&mdash;there was a
+terrible silence; there was a man who was weighing in his hand and in
+his heart the lives of twenty-two others, who was considering in a
+fleeting moment of time the flight of an honourable career which had
+brought to him a string of six medals, and who saw in one of two steps
+instant death for his little band and irrevocable and almost
+irretrievable ruin in the other. The pause was indeed death-like;
+there was the hallowed uncertainty of a future existence, but there
+was the moral certainty that no living future would fall to the lot of
+any of the twenty-three men upon whose ears the cry had fallen of
+surrender. The position was hopeless. With the Boers behind them, with
+the Boers flanking them, with the Boers in front of them, with three
+hundred of the enemy within a circumference of seventy yards, what
+more could an honourable man and a gallant officer do than accept the
+responsibility of his situation and save the lives of his men by
+complying unconditionally with the demand of the enemy? Thus did
+Colonel Hore surrender. It was impossible to withdraw to the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page297" name="page297"></a>(p. 297)</span>
+town. Such a movement would have meant retirement over seven hundred
+yards of open, level ground without a particle of cover and with a
+force of three hundred of the enemy immediately in the rear; moreover
+the situation imperatively demanded this action in consequence of
+events over which he had no control. It was, perhaps, a moment as
+pathetic and great as any in his career. The surrender was effected at
+5.25 a.m., and was not without incident, for with the garrison holding
+up their hands, their arms laid down, with five Boers within a few
+yards of the Colonel with their rifles at his breast, there was one
+man who went to his death. "I'll see you damned, you God
+forgotten&mdash;&mdash;" said Trooper Maltuschek, and he went to his Maker the
+next moment. The news of such a catastrophe did not tend to relieve
+the gravity of the situation. With the Boers in the fort and in
+occupation of the stadt, it was necessary so to arrange our operations
+that any junction between the stadt and the fort would be impossible;
+at the same time we were compelled to prevent those Boers who were in
+the stadt from cutting their way through to the main body of the
+enemy. The situation was indeed complex, and throughout the remainder
+of the day the skirmishing in the stadt and the repulse of the feints
+of the enemy's main body, delivered in different directions against
+the outposts, were altogether apart from the siege, which we were
+conducting within our own investment. From the town very heavy rifle
+fire was directed upon the fort, which the Boers in that quarter
+returned with spirit and determination. But the position in the stadt
+had become acute, since, behind our outposts and our inner chain of
+forts, which are situated upon its exterior border, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page298" name="page298"></a>(p. 298)</span> were a
+rollicking, roving band of four hundred Boers, who, for the time
+being, were indulging in pillage and destruction wherever it was
+possible.</p>
+
+<a id="img016" name="img016"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img016.jpg" width="500" height="345" alt="" title="">
+<p class="smcap">THE BRITISH SOUTH AFRICA POLICE FORT, COLONEL HORE'S
+HEADQUARTERS.<br>
+<i>The bomb-proof shelter in the foreground was the Colonel's refuge
+during the enemy's shell fire.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Gradually, however, the situation changed. The rifle fire from the
+town had forced the Boers back from the limits of the stadt adjacent
+to the fort, enabling Inspector Murray and a troop of the Cape Police
+and Lieutenant Feltham with his troop of C Squadron to fight their way
+to this same border, affording to the town a definite and established
+barrier against any possible communication between the enemy in the
+fort and the Boers in the stadt. Skirmishing thenceforward progressed
+over the entire area of the stadt. Major Godley, with Captain Marsh
+and Captain Fitzclarence, and B and D Squadrons, effectively supported
+by the Baralongs, chevied and rounded up the Boers from point to
+point, until, shortly after noon, they took up a strong position in a
+mule kraal and upon the facings of some neighbouring kopjes. To
+dislodge these men was the work to which Major Godley now directed his
+attention, and, man&oelig;uvring carefully and with discretion, he
+surrounded the position upon three sides and emplaced a seven-pounder
+under Lieutenant Daniel, of the British South Africa Police, within
+two hundred yards of the kopje. The enemy were now compelled to fight
+or to surrender, and, refusing the request to surrender, they fought
+pluckily, and with such stubbornness that they kept Major Godley's men
+some time at bay. But, gradually drawing his circle closer, he poured
+in a few terrific volleys and charged the position at the point of the
+bayonet. There was a rapid volley from the Boers, but it was of no
+avail, and, as the glistening steel was poised for a moment over the
+walls of the kraal, a flutter of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page299" name="page299"></a>(p. 299)</span> white from the interior
+betokened that at least this body of the enemy had surrendered. Major
+Godley then proceeded to shell the kopjes, but the Boers at this point
+were not proposing to increase by their numbers those of the
+twenty-five who had laid down their arms in the mule kraal. They
+scattered and broke into the stadt, fighting from hut to hut, from
+rock to rock, from snug hollows to the broken points of the many
+rugged mounds which characterise the configuration of the stadt. These
+skirmishes continued, and Major Godley contrived to drive the
+scattered Boers in the direction of Captain Lord Charles Bentinck,
+who, so conducting his operations, managed to hem the enemy in between
+the fire of Major Godley and that of his own men. It would have been
+impossible for the Boers to escape; but dusk was falling, our men were
+weak and hungry, and we already had a number of prisoners, and, after
+a sharp rally between the three squadrons, Major Godley instructed
+Captain Lord Charles Bentinck to withdraw C Squadron and assist in
+driving out the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>These, then, were the events which were occurring in the stadt, and,
+if Major Godley had been successful in circumventing the Boer plan and
+checking any very definite occupation of the stadt, the outposts had
+also successfully repulsed the indifferent and weak-hearted attempts
+which General Synman had made to assist his colleague. There had been
+a definite plan of attack, and, although a portion of it was
+successful, its main features had failed because their execution had
+been left to a man who, faint-hearted and cowardly, was altogether
+unworthy of the command with which he had been entrusted. Upon General
+Synman must fall the responsibility <span class="pagenum"><a id="page300" name="page300"></a>(p. 300)</span> of Commandant Eloff's
+capture, inasmuch as he failed to support his share of the operations.
+The Boer movement upon the town was carried out with remarkable
+precision and extraordinary dash, but, despite their splendid
+gallantry and enterprise in penetrating so far within our lines, the
+fatality which would seem to attend their attacks upon Mafeking
+rendered their present efforts again unprofitable, causing their
+assault to recoil upon their own heads. It had been the intention of
+the Boers to make the fort the key of a position from which they were
+proposing to shell the town with the guns which would have been
+brought up by the main body. But General Snyman did not fulfil his
+obligations to Commandant Eloff, and, as a consequence, when the siege
+of the fort had been effected the little which they could accomplish
+had been concluded, and they found themselves compelled to defend
+their newly-won position from the galling fire and spirited attacks of
+the townsmen. Their position, only seven hundred yards from the town,
+would have proved untenable much earlier in the day, had not the Boers
+secured the officers and staff of the regimental headquarters as their
+prisoners. We should have shelled them and in all probability caused
+tremendous carnage; as it was, however, killed and wounded upon either
+side were not numerous, although there is some ground to believe that
+the Boers were successful in carrying off a large proportion of their
+wounded. Upon the following morning, when the returns for the previous
+day were made up, it was found that 110 had been taken prisoners, ten
+had been killed, and nineteen had been wounded. Our own casualties
+were four killed and seven wounded, while there were five natives who
+had received slight wounds. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page301" name="page301"></a>(p. 301)</span> These are the figures, correct,
+so far as we can ascertain, of this very remarkable day&mdash;a day which
+is almost without parallel in the history of war, inasmuch as the
+garrison, who in themselves had sustained a seven months' siege, were
+yet able once more to turn the tables upon their enemy, who, although
+penetrating into the heart of the invested town, failed to carry the
+position.</p>
+
+<p>During the morning of the fight, after accompanying Lieutenant
+Montcrieff to Major Hepworth's house, where he was engaged in
+installing a section of the Town Guard, I thought that I would attach
+myself to Colonel Hore, since his headquarters appeared to be a
+central position in the engagement. It was only a short ride&mdash;a few
+hundred yards. The bullets whistled over from the stadt, and I
+scampered rapidly across in order to gain what I thought was
+protection from this fire. The light was not clear, and the smoke was
+still drifting across the line of vision. Men were standing about the
+regimental headquarters, some were scurrying, many were sitting upon
+the stoep facing the town. It did not seem to me possible that these
+could be Boers; but, as I galloped on, my horse was struck, and,
+swerving violently, I found myself pulled up short by a peremptory
+demand to surrender. They were Boers, or rather they were the enemy,
+for there were Germans, Italians, and Frenchmen, and a few
+Republicans.</p>
+
+<p>They ordered me to hold my hands up, they ordered me to give up my
+revolver and to get off my horse; they asked me a dozen questions at
+the same time, speaking in Dutch, French, and English. As I sat upon
+my horse we conducted quite an animated conversation, but the bullets
+were coming <span class="pagenum"><a id="page302" name="page302"></a>(p. 302)</span> from our men in town rather rapidly, and it
+seemed to strike the Boers that they had best take cover, advice which
+I pressed home upon them with much irony. In the meantime I had not
+dismounted, nor had I given up my revolver, nor were my arms thrust
+upwards in the air. "Will you hold your damned hands up?" said one,
+playfully thrusting a rifle into my ribs. "With pleasure, under the
+circumstances," I replied with alacrity. "Will you hand over that
+revolver?" said another. "What, and hold my hands up at the same
+time?" asked I, quibbling to gain a little time in which to think.
+"Get off your horse," said another, when, as they unstrapped my belt,
+I rolled to the ground. It was only then that I knew my horse had been
+shot in the shoulder, and as they dragged me to the shelter of the
+building, I asked them to shoot him. They refused. "Your men will do
+that soon enough," said they, and it seemed to me that this was the
+unkindest cut of all. The poor animal stood there looking at me. When
+I saw him again his throat had been cut, and there were seven bullet
+wounds in his body.</p>
+
+<p>The fort had surrendered. Colonel Hore, Captain H. C. Singleton,
+Veterinary-Lieutenant Dunlop-Smith, with fifteen non-commissioned
+officers and men of the Protectorate Regiment, Captain Williams and
+three men of the British South Africa Police, and five native servants
+were prisoners in the hands of the enemy. Around them were numbers of
+the enemy talking rapidly in French, German, Italian, and Dutch, while
+there were also many who spoke English. They were all well armed,
+carrying some 250 rounds of ammunition with eight days' rations in
+their haversacks. Some were eating <span class="pagenum"><a id="page303" name="page303"></a>(p. 303)</span> breakfast, many were
+drinking from bottles which they had looted from the regimental mess;
+occasionally the group around us was swelled by the numbers of those
+who, hitherto engaged in looting the quarters of the officers, were
+now mostly anxious to preserve their skins from the fire from the town
+and to enjoy an inspection of their plunder. In the short time which
+the enemy had been in possession of the fort many of them had
+ransacked the premises, breaking open boxes, cutting open bags, and
+generally appropriating all the effects which they found. It seemed to
+me at this moment that the men engaged in this work were Boers, as
+distinct from the foreign element in their force, and I thought that I
+caught a current of conversation which was passing in French between
+two of our captors, and which denounced the unnecessary and almost
+wanton destruction which was in progress.</p>
+
+<p>From the remarks which were passing round us it seemed that the
+majority were discussing the precise treatment which should be dealt
+out to the prisoners. At this moment Trooper Hayes, deserter,
+swaggered towards the circle; he sported Colonel Hore's sword, and a
+gold chain and watch dangled from his belt. Hearing the subject of the
+conversation, he at once suggested that we should either be made to
+stand upon the verandah, a mark to the fire of our own men, or be
+given the opportunity of taking up arms and joining in the defence of
+the fort. "You cannot do that, I'm a war correspondent," said I in
+English to a Boer who was speaking fluent English to a friend. "You be
+damned!" said he, pleasantly enough, "we'll put you upon the roof."
+But at that moment Commandant Eloff approached and ordered our removal
+to a building in the centre of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page304" name="page304"></a>(p. 304)</span> the fort, which hitherto had
+been used as the storeroom for the regimental mess. Into this they
+crowded us, together with three others who, visiting the fort in
+ignorance of the turn of affairs, had likewise been taken prisoners.
+We were thus thirty-two, and were confined for the day in a space
+which was not only short and narrow, but ill-ventilated, dirty,
+littered with rubbish, and already smelling horribly. Firing from town
+had now begun in earnest, and the bullets whistled and cracked and
+spat all round the fort. They struck upon the stones and spattered the
+roof with splinters of rock and lead, while we could detect from these
+signs how ably directed and how fierce was the rifle fire which was
+delivered from the town. When they had safely secured us in the
+storehouse the space in front of the building was at once occupied by
+some sixty-seven men, who crouched up against the walls of the house
+or lay within the lee of the exterior wall of the fort. From time to
+time these men moved to points whence the fire was hottest, seeming to
+take their share of the work in pleasing earnestness and with much
+keenness. Occasionally those who were without and around the door
+handed in fragments of dried meat and broken biscuits, but the
+quantity was not great, and there were many of us who had nothing to
+eat all day, while few Boers or prisoners had anything to drink. Early
+in the morning bullets from the town had perforated the water tanks,
+and as a consequence there was no water to drink, nor was there
+anything with which to alleviate the sufferings of the wounded. As the
+day wore on many casualties occurred among the Boers in the fort, and
+the absence of efficient medical aid among his men prompted Commandant
+Eloff to appeal to us for assistance, whereupon Veterinary-Lieutenant
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page305" name="page305"></a>(p. 305)</span> Dunlop-Smith, Farrier-Corporal Nichols and Forbes, the
+regimental canteen-keeper, offered and rendered valuable services to
+the wounded Boers, running the gauntlet of our own fire in the cause
+of a common humanity. Early in the fight the Boers took over the
+Children's Hospital, which was located some two hundred yards away
+from the fort, and in which those devoted nurses, Mrs. Buchan and her
+sister, Miss Crawfurd, remained the entire day, attending
+indiscriminately to the sick children, to the wounded Boers who were
+brought there, and bringing upon two occasions tea to the prisoners.
+During the progress of the fight we constantly caught glimpses of the
+Red Cross flag escorting one or other of these gallant ladies to
+points where wounded Boers were lying. Throughout the fight the Boers
+respected the conventions, repeatedly expressing their appreciation
+and their gratitude for the services of these ladies. For this
+courtesy Commandant Eloff was largely responsible, and indeed if there
+was any abuse of the Red Cross flag the blame of such disrespect
+cannot be charged against the enemy, since our side, I understand,
+issued orders that the men of the firing line were not to take notice
+of any white flags which the Boers displayed. The enemy respected its
+conventions, treated the prisoners humanely, and behaved throughout a
+situation almost maddening from the strain which it must have imposed
+upon them with conspicuous gallantry, coolness, and consideration.</p>
+
+<p>In our prison the situation was more than uncomfortable, and when
+towards evening they locked the door the atmosphere became fetid, and
+was seriously aggravated by the condition of a man who was suffering
+acutely from the agonies of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page306" name="page306"></a>(p. 306)</span> dysentery. In a recess, piled
+up, were the stores of the regimental mess, comprising principally
+cases of liquors&mdash;whisky, Beaunne, pommade, and lime-juice. In a big
+open crate were tinned provisions of an indefinite character&mdash;fruits,
+peas, and parsnips, and other canned luxuries. These were at once
+looted by the troopers, who in this respect and the indifferent manner
+in which they received the orders of their officers, did not set a
+particularly praiseworthy example. Within the storehouse, however, the
+prisoners mingled irrespective of rank, and mutually sympathetic in
+the face of common misfortune. At first every man seemed to be
+smoking, but gradually the atmosphere became so bad that it was
+absolutely necessary to desist, and all pipes, cigars, and cigarettes
+were ordered to be put out. Commandant Eloff returned constantly to
+the prisoners, chatting brightly with them and sympathising upon the
+fortunes of war. He sat within the door upon a case of Burgundy, his
+legs dangling, his accoutrements jingling, and the rowels of his spurs
+echoing the tick-tacking of the Mauser rifles. Herein and within our
+presence the drama of the situation was slowly passing; orderlies came
+and went, but the Commandant, still tapping with his spurs, continued
+to issue his instructions and his orders. He seemed to possess the
+complete mastery of the situation; his buoyant face was impressed with
+the confidence of youth, reflecting the happiness he felt in so much
+that his ambition seemed to be about to be realised. But as the
+situation became more critical, beneath the brightness of his manner
+he seemed to be feeling the gravity of his position. At times he lost
+control of himself and complained querulously in Dutch about the
+non-appearance of his reinforcements; at <span class="pagenum"><a id="page307" name="page307"></a>(p. 307)</span> other moments he
+regaled the prisoners with scraps of information relating to the
+situation, and by this means we learnt that Limestone Fort had fallen,
+and that the trench beneath the railway bridge had surrendered. This
+news was, of course, not particularly pleasing, and it somewhat added
+to our dejection when we learnt that, when night arrived, we were to
+be marched to the south-western laager and thence to be conveyed to
+Pretoria. I never wished less to see a place than I did the Transvaal
+capital at this moment. Since Commandant Eloff made himself so
+agreeable I was moved to chat with him. We discussed the situation in
+China and the feeling which America was showing for the Boers. To this
+latter he did not attach much importance, shrugging his shoulders as
+he said, "Americans and the English&mdash;&mdash;" The pause was eloquent, and I
+changed the conversation, requesting his courteous permission, should
+the fortunes of the day go with him, to communicate with the <i>Times</i>.
+He expressed surprise at my being a correspondent, and said that he
+thought the correspondents had more sense than to get themselves
+captured. Then he laughed and asked my name. I told him, upon which he
+replied, "I have heard of you, but I have not read any of your stuff;
+you have been writing unpleasant things about the Boers." I retired
+crestfallen to the darkest corner I could find and reflected upon the
+character of the punishment which General Snyman would mete out to a
+man who had been so iniquitous as to write "unpleasantly about the
+Boers." Night was coming on rapidly now, and we were rather glad,
+since it removed from us the horror of being with the enemy and
+watching while they fired upon our own men. It seems to me that the
+strain which emanates <span class="pagenum"><a id="page308" name="page308"></a>(p. 308)</span> from such a sight is more awful than
+anything in the world.</p>
+
+<p>As dusk settled down we prisoners, crowding in a small room, could
+hear echoes of desperate fighting outside. Bullets penetrated the
+wall, perforated the roofing, crashed through the windows, splintered
+the door. Ever and anon the fire would die away, breaking out again
+spasmodically within a few minutes. Through the grating of the windows
+we could see the enemy keeping an alert look-out; we could see them
+scurrying and scrambling to defend the points against which the firing
+was heaviest; we saw the limping figures of the wounded; we heard
+voices cursing us, threatening the prisoners, and urging Commandant
+Eloff to handcuff and march us out across the line of fire while the
+Boers used us as a screen to escape; while upon one occasion the door
+opened suddenly and three wounded Boers precipitated themselves
+violently into the room. The inside of the building was pitch dark by
+now, and lighted only by the fitful flashing of the rifles, which made
+almost a glow within. Straining eagerly at the windows, we caught
+glimpses of a number of Boers scrambling over the exterior walls of
+the fort, in order, we afterwards learnt, to make good their retreat.
+This movement to the rear surprised us and was followed by a terrible
+outburst of firing, caused by the order of Commandant Eloff to shoot
+down the fugitives. Then time dragged heavily, and we were hungry and
+tired and faint when there seemed signs of a rally among the Boers.
+After an interval of extraordinarily heavy firing, in which the noise
+from the snap of bullets and the reports of the rifles were deafening,
+there was a sudden silence. Commandant Eloff <span class="pagenum"><a id="page309" name="page309"></a>(p. 309)</span> rushed to the
+door, and, summoning Colonel Hore, stated that if he could induce the
+town to cease fire the Boers would surrender. It was an altogether
+unexpected <i>d�nouement</i>, and in that moment there was not one amongst
+us who did not think that each in his turn was about to be summoned to
+an instant execution. We feared a ruse, and whispered to Colonel Hore,
+as he advanced to meet the commandant, to be careful. Our momentary
+hesitation caused Commandant Eloff to surrender himself as a hostage
+until the cessation of fire could be arranged. The Boers, like
+ourselves, were unable to grasp the situation, and seeing their
+commandant in our midst, made an attempt to rescue him, which only
+helped to increase the confusion of the moment. Commandant Eloff
+called out, "Surrender, surrender," and endeavoured strenuously to
+pacify his men. We, upon our part, shouted to the town to cease fire;
+this was at once done, whereupon sixty-seven Boers laid down their
+arms, handing them to the prisoners, who piled them up within the
+storehouse. Those of us who were not engaged in this work seized
+rifles and bandoliers from the heap and manned the defences of the
+fort until the prisoners could be delivered into proper custody. The
+Boers were then marched off and were found accommodation in the
+Masonic Hall and in the gaol. As I retraced my steps to the town and
+was passing the stables of the British South Africa Police Fort, the
+groaning of a wounded man caught my ear. I ran to him to find that
+lying within the shelter of the stables, with a wound through his
+thigh, was the man to whom I had surrendered myself in the morning. We
+smiled as he handed over to me his rifle and bandolier. My revolver he
+had lost, but lying beside <span class="pagenum"><a id="page310" name="page310"></a>(p. 310)</span> him, stiff and dead, with a
+bullet wound through his forehead, was, by one of those extraordinary
+coincidences which do happen, the man who had shot my horse. And thus
+this day of melodrama passed; dramatic in its beginning, dramatic in
+its conclusion, with enough bloodshed, firing, and animation to
+satisfy the cravings of the most dispassionate seeker after
+excitement. Commandant Eloff, Captain von Wiessmann, Captain Bremont,
+dined at Headquarters. The town came to greet the prisoners, drink was
+unearthed, and everybody seemed to be congratulating somebody upon
+their mutual good fortune. We who had been prisoners and were now free
+rejoiced in the liberty which was restored to us, yet it was difficult
+to restrain oneself from feeling compassionately upon the great
+misfortunes which had attended the extraordinary dash and gallantry of
+the men who were now our prisoners. They had done their best. They
+proved to us that they were indeed capable and that we should have
+kept a sharper look-out, while it was indeed deplorable to think that
+it was the treachery of their own general, in abandoning them to their
+fate, that had been mainly instrumental in procuring them their
+present predicament.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page311" name="page311"></a>(p. 311)</span> CHAPTER XXXVI<br>
+<span class="smaller">RELIEVED AT LAST</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">Wednesday Night</span>, 7.30 <span class="smcap">P.M.</span><br>
+  <span class="smcap">Mafeking</span>, <i>May 16th, 1900</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The relief of Mafeking is now an accomplished fact, and the first
+Imperial troops to enter our lines were eight of the Imperial Light
+Horse, under the command of Major Karri Davis. They had ridden in
+advance of the main body in an effort to pierce our lines while
+General Mahon, who had already formed a junction with Colonel Plumer,
+was engaging the main body of the enemy along the watershed of the
+Molopo, some seven miles north-west of the town.</p>
+
+<p>We had known since Sunday that an Imperial force was approaching
+Mafeking from the south, and during Monday immense activity was
+displayed in the Boer laagers, while towards the south-west a thick
+fringe of dust was drifting slowly under the commotion of a column of
+Boers who were retiring rapidly before the approach of the Southern
+force. During Tuesday we thought we heard the distant booming of the
+guns, and we could see the Boers preparing to take up positions along
+the north-western ridges of the Molopo River. At an early <span class="pagenum"><a id="page312" name="page312"></a>(p. 312)</span>
+hour on Tuesday morning news reached us that the respective commands
+of General Mahon and Colonel Plumer had joined at Saane's Town, a few
+miles up the valley of the river. From the moment that the town
+received this news the memory of the past seven months was dissipated
+in the first flash of the glad tidings. Speculation was rife as to the
+precise hour of the arrival of the relief, but the day passed without
+much prospect of the siege being raised before nightfall. However,
+this morning the most positive information had arrived during the
+night, and it seemed that within the next forty-eight hours the
+combined forces would be here. The morning passed uneventfully. No one
+seemed quite to know how to spend the few remaining hours which were
+all that remained of the siege. About noon it became known in town
+that the forces would not enter Mafeking without having a smart brush
+with the enemy. We had observed small, detached forces of Boers making
+from north and south of the town for the ridges about the western
+areas of the Molopo. Artillery accompanied these men, whose numbers
+had been drawn from the various Boer positions around Mafeking. A
+large contingent had moved from the eastern laager and similar bodies
+had been called out from the south-western and northern camps. It was
+an anxious time for us in Mafeking, and, although there was no doubt
+about the final result, we still felt that the fate of the relief
+column hung in the balance. About half-past two General Mahon's guns
+opened upon the enemy, the smoke of the bursting shells being plainly
+discernible away towards the north-west. There was a constant booming
+of artillery, and the smoke of heavy rifle fire just above the
+horizon. As the news swept <span class="pagenum"><a id="page313" name="page313"></a>(p. 313)</span> through the town there were many
+who gathered upon coigns of vantage to witness the action. It was
+impossible to see details, and indeed it was about half-past four
+before we even caught sight of the moving masses of men. It seemed
+then that the Boers were falling back; the artillery had ceased to
+play, and we were under the impression that they were engaged in
+taking up fresh positions. About five o'clock a large force of Boers
+was noticed moving rapidly along the ridge to the east, while a
+smaller body of three hundred men, detaching themselves from the main
+column, were riding rapidly towards the west.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime Colonel Baden-Powell, Colonel Hore, Colonel Walford,
+of the British South Africa Police, and Captain Wilson, A.D.C. to the
+Colonel commanding, had taken up their position upon the roof of the
+railway sheds, where during the last few days a special outlook had
+been prepared. The scene in the railway yards was animated and
+dramatic, and in order to be close at hand I secured permission to sit
+upon the ladder which led to the outlook. In the town people were
+taking events quite calmly. The final in the siege billiard tournament
+was taking place at the club, and in many other respects it seemed
+difficult to realise that our deliverance was at hand. Between the
+railway yards and the outposts there were men shooting small birds,
+while in the yards around us natives were engaged in skinning and
+cutting the carcase of a horse which, shot overnight, had been handed
+over to the soup-kitchens. For perhaps an hour everything was calm and
+peaceful, but ever and anon the bubble of voices reached me from the
+roof as orders were transmitted over the telephone to Headquarters.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page314" name="page314"></a>(p. 314)</span> Of a sudden Captain Wilson scrambled down the ladder,
+calling an order to Lieutenant Feltham to saddle up the horses and
+mount. While this work was in progress orders were issued to Captain
+Cowan, of the Bechuanaland Rifles, to march his men at once to the
+barracks of the Protectorate Regiment, while in a cloud of dust and
+with a cheering rattle Major Panzera galloped by with the guns. "I
+think we can catch them," said Colonel Baden-Powell, and a minute
+afterwards he had mounted his horse and was off. I found that he was
+referring to the detached party of three hundred Boers who were making
+their way from the scene of the fight in a south-westerly direction. I
+mounted and followed, and the small force which had thus been rapidly
+collected moved quickly towards our extreme position in the north-west
+of the town. It was just possible that we should catch them between
+the fire of General Mahon's guns and our own, and there was every
+necessity for speed. In a short time we were out at the "Standard and
+Diggers' News Fort," where, while our horses were given a short rest,
+the guns were unlimbered. That particular body of Boers who had been
+our objective seemed to be unconscious of the movement which had taken
+place in our own lines. As they emerged from the valley we opened fire
+and turned their head. For a moment they did not seem to realise their
+situation, when they rapidly wheeled about and put themselves out of
+range by a hurried retreat towards the main body. Dusk was now
+falling, and it was impossible to see any longer, and as a consequence
+the guns were ordered to retire to town and the men to return. It was
+half-past six when we reached town, and General Mahon's artillery had
+not been heard to fire for quite <span class="pagenum"><a id="page315" name="page315"></a>(p. 315)</span> an hour. We went to dine,
+cheered by the comforting and consoling thought that by noonday upon
+the morrow the siege would be raised. However, about seven o'clock, in
+the bright moonlight, and totally unexpected, eight mounted men
+suddenly appeared in the Market Square. In a short space of time the
+news flashed round the town, and a concourse of people gathered to
+cheer vociferously about the precincts of the Headquarters Office. As
+round after round of cheers broke out it became known that these
+mysterious horsemen had galloped in under Major Karri Davis with a
+despatch from General Mahon. In a trice they were surrounded, besieged
+with questions, clapped upon the back, shaken by the hand, and
+generally welcomed. These plucky troopers seemed as surprised as
+ourselves and as glad. Major Karri Davis called for cheers for the
+garrison, while the crowd took up with tremendous fervour the National
+Anthem and "Rule Britannia." It was an exciting moment and a
+picturesque scene, bathed in the soft moonlight and irradiated by the
+glow of countless stars; but the men were hungry, and Major Lord
+Edward Cecil, the chief staff officer, busied himself in making
+arrangements for the care of these eight Imperial Light Horse, who,
+not content with relieving Ladysmith, had insisted upon being accorded
+the privilege of making the first entry into Mafeking.</p>
+
+<p>That night the town retired early, but about two in the morning a
+subdued roar came from the direction of the north-western outposts,
+and in a very little time word was passed round that the troops were
+making their entrance into Mafeking. Just as the relief column had
+proceeded from Vryburg without any flourish of trumpets, so was their
+entry into <span class="pagenum"><a id="page316" name="page316"></a>(p. 316)</span> Mafeking unexpected and unostentatious. But the
+town had aroused itself and was soon flocking across the veldt to the
+ground where the combined columns had already begun to form their
+camp. It was not a large force; its full muster was below two thousand
+men; but amid the soft and eerie shadows of the starry, moonlit night
+there seemed no end to the lines of horses, mules, and bullocks, to
+the camp fires, to the groups of men, to the number and variety of the
+waggons. In a corner, as it were, were the guns, a composite battery
+of the Royal Horse Artillery, eight pieces of the Canadian Artillery,
+and a number of Maxims. It was these which we had heard booming to us
+the first distant echoes of relief, and we were of course proud of
+them. Then and there we examined them, felt them over, pondered upon
+them, and then and there we thanked our God that we had in our own
+hands at last some really serviceable artillery. But there were other
+sights to be seen, early as was the hour, tired as were the troopers.
+There were the men of the Kimberley Light Horse and their comrades of
+the Imperial Light Horse to be inspected, to be patted upon the back,
+to be admired, and to be congratulated. There was scarcely any one who
+could not claim a friend among the mere handful of men who had marched
+from Vryburg to our relief, but if by chance there were such a one he
+quickly placed himself <i>en amiti�</i> with the first group of troopers
+with whom he came in contact. Alas! such was our plight that we could
+not give them anything to drink, but we most willingly had prepared
+cauldrons of steaming soup and boiling coffee. A cup of coffee is not
+much to offer, but the goodwill was taken with the spirit, and there
+was no one who did not seem glad to <span class="pagenum"><a id="page317" name="page317"></a>(p. 317)</span> receive even so small a
+thing. It was not possible to stay long in the camp. The men were
+weary, and, moreover, there was much to be done before, with their
+martial cloaks around them, they were able to snatch a few hours'
+repose; and so the town returned to its bed, drunk with enthusiasm, in
+an abortive effort to calm its excited brain with sleep. But, good
+heavens! was such a thing possible? It was now four, and although it
+was somewhat early, in the morning we began to call upon one another,
+passing the hours between dawn and sunrise in hilarious uproar. About
+seven the camp was all a-bustle. There were rumours that the men were
+to move out and attack the Boers, who were still in position upon the
+east side of the town. Presently, as we moved about the streets down
+by the western outposts, clouds of dust were tossing themselves in the
+air. The guns were coming&mdash;our guns, if you please&mdash;and thereupon a
+pandemonium was raised. Every one seemed to be screaming, and as the
+Royal Horse swept through town we streamed after them, feebly
+endeavouring to keep pace with them, so as to be able to witness the
+effects of their power. The Market Square at this time presented a
+picture of military life which has never been equalled by any of the
+scenes that have been enacted there in its earlier days. Men in
+uniform were hurrying from point to point, troops from the various
+squadrons were coming in, squadron-leaders, majors and colonels were
+falling over one another. These were the beginnings of the fight, and
+much as the relief had fought its way into Mafeking so were they now
+going to secure definite freedom for the townspeople by driving out
+the Boers. As the guns came into the Square willing hands tore down
+and pushed aside the line of carts <span class="pagenum"><a id="page318" name="page318"></a>(p. 318)</span> and fencing of corrugated
+iron which for these seven months had served duty as a traverse. Then
+the guns of the Horse Artillery swept on, taking up positions upon the
+veldt in front of the town, in readiness to begin the bombardment of
+the Boer position, while, in simultaneous co-operation with this
+movement, the Canadian Artillery were sent out with orders to shell
+Game Tree. However, the fight did not last long. In a very short time
+the Game Tree fort was deserted, the Boers from there hurriedly
+joining their main body. But the presence of the guns had terrorised
+the Boers, and they fled precipitately, leaving their camp, their
+guns, their stores behind them. We shelled for an hour with the
+composite battery of the Royal Horse, comprising four 12-&frac12;-pounders
+and two pom-poms. Then we advanced in skirmishing order, extending our
+line rapidly until we had outflanked their position. Then we charged,
+and the day was ours. The enemy had vanished, and we were in
+possession of their camp, while so undignified had their retreat been
+that they did not even wait to remove their hospital. Upon General
+Snyman's house there was still floating the Republican flag, while the
+Red Cross hung drowsily in the air above the hospital. There were
+thirty wounded in the hospital, and these, for the time being, were
+placed under a guard, but otherwise left undisturbed; in this manner
+did the siege come to an abrupt conclusion.</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page319" name="page319"></a>(p. 319)</span> CHAPTER XXXVII<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE END</span></h2>
+
+<p class="date"><span class="smcap">Mafeking</span>, <i>May 26th, 1900</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The imprimatur has now been given to the siege, and that chapter of
+the war which bears reference to the investment of Mafeking must now
+be considered as closed. The end of the drama is with us; the curtain
+has dropped, and the people of the play are scattering&mdash;some are dead,
+some have been wounded, lying nigh to death in the Victoria Hospital,
+some have passed through this seven months' ordeal suffering neither
+monetary loss nor physical hurt, but bearing with them, in their
+minds, the almost indelible impress of an interesting but terrible
+experience. And so the play is ended, and the great historical drama
+in which we have enacted our part is soon to present fresh scenes, and
+with the transformation, let us hope some stirring incident and a
+picturesque scenario. To the end, of course, there is the story, but
+it is simple of fact, it is plain of feature, it deals only with what
+one may consider as the final obsequies of the siege, and in a brief
+space we will consider them.</p>
+
+<p>The siege is now officially returned as having been raised by General
+Mahon's force at half-past ten <span class="pagenum"><a id="page320" name="page320"></a>(p. 320)</span> upon the morning of May 17th.
+It has been quiet since then. The garrison has mainly rested, taking
+itself idly and participating in the few last deft touches with which
+Colonel Baden-Powell has adorned the siege. These issues to the relief
+have been sad, have been pleasing, but mournful or gay they have
+served their purpose, fitting in most accurately with the long chain
+of circumstances which has enclosed the siege. There was the time when
+the garrison attended just beyond the precincts of the cemetery, where
+the rank and file of the forces which have been beleaguered, stood to
+attention as they paid their last honour to the dead, to all of those
+who died so nobly, to those who had been the victims of disease, and
+who, one and all, had paid the penalty of our success. It was a
+mournful retrospect which was thus forced upon our notice as the names
+of our dead were passed slowly in review; but as the mournful cadences
+dropped from the lips of the preacher we braced ourselves to think
+that such an end, as we had gathered to conclude, was but the
+inevitable. As the Colonel stood before us&mdash;the man who reaped the
+glory of the siege&mdash;we wondered whether beneath the calmness of his
+demeanour there lurked any feeling of regret, any half-cherished
+desire to express aloud to those who stood around him the potency of
+his sorrows. To him it was but the simple ceremony, and one, moreover,
+to be got through quickly, and indeed there was but little in the
+service. Occasionally the breeze, which sighed so tremulously through
+the hedge of trees that fringe the graveyard, wafted to us snatches of
+prayer. And that was all, so far as we were concerned&mdash;the mere
+fragments of a passing communion, ending as abruptly as it began,
+seeming all to concentrate in that one moment when at command
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page321" name="page321"></a>(p. 321)</span> three rounds of blank cartridge were fired across the
+graves. That was the full weight of our honours to the dead, since
+afterwards&mdash;for it does not do to dwell too much upon these
+things&mdash;the Colonel commanding reviewed the remnants of his force,
+unbending insomuch that he addressed to each unit, a few words of
+appreciation and of thanks. And then where we had assembled, there did
+the Town Guard and other corps of the garrison receive their
+dismissal, since now that the siege was raised they might return to
+their businesses, to their homes, and to their families to spend a
+cheering hour or two in an endeavour to compute some estimate of the
+ruin which has fallen upon their fortunes.</p>
+
+<p>Now that the siege is over, it is not without interest to know to what
+extent the garrison has suffered. We have had 1,498 shells from the
+100-pounder Creusot, but in addition to this the enemy has fired into
+Mafeking some 21,000 odd shells of a smaller character. These have
+ranged from the 14-&frac12;-pounder high-velocity, armour-piercing,
+delay-action shell, down to the high-velocity one-pound Maxim,
+embracing in the series a variety of nine-pound shells&mdash;common,
+segment, shrapnel, and incendiary&mdash;several hundred seven-pound shells,
+and a multitude of five-pounders. This has been the weight of the
+enemy's artillery fire which has played upon the town since October
+12th, and which has supported commandos of Boers which were reckoned
+as 8,000 men in October, and whose numbers are believed never to have
+fallen below 3,000 rifles. Throughout the siege there have been some
+eight guns around us, including the big Creusot piece, but at times
+there have been eleven, and at rare intervals our spies reported that
+the strength of the enemy's artillery was fourteen <span class="pagenum"><a id="page322" name="page322"></a>(p. 322)</span> guns. And
+we have stood this with a certain cheerfulness and with a pretty
+spirit of determination: moreover, we have returned their fire,
+claiming to have disabled three guns and killing and wounding several
+hundred men. Our own casualties from shot and shell and sickness until
+the end of April were 476. In October there were 77; November, 49;
+December, 101; in January, 47; February, 68; March, 67; and April, 67.
+The admissions into the base hospital during this period were 685,
+while 496 were discharged. Among those who were admitted to the
+hospital there were 106 deaths. During a similar period and through
+identical causes, 180 natives were admitted to this hospital, 115 were
+discharged, 56 died, but irrespective of these figures 398 deaths were
+registered from amongst the natives. That their mortality was great,
+the monthly returns from the native population will show. In October
+12 natives died; in November, 13; December, 46; January, 64; February,
+44; March, 84; April, 135. These figures relate to those patients only
+who were passed through the base hospital, but the monthly returns
+bear upon the available strength of the garrison, and are in
+themselves an index to the conditions of the siege. The town itself
+has suffered to a great extent, although the amount of damage which
+the enemy's shell fire has created is insignificant when compared to
+what would have been the result had the main elements in its
+construction been bricks and mortar. The tin shanties and the mud
+walls have given to Mafeking a remarkable salvation, making it
+possible for the little town to compare, when the weight of metal
+brought against it is considered, even favourably with Ladysmith.
+Among the men forming the relief column there are many who were with
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page323" name="page323"></a>(p. 323)</span> Sir George White, and from these one gathers that the damage
+which Mafeking has sustained is infinitely greater than the injuries
+which Ladysmith can show.</p>
+
+<a id="img017" name="img017"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img017.jpg" width="500" height="342" alt="" title="">
+<p class="smcap">THE AUTHOR'S DOG "MAFEKING," WOUNDED THREE TIMES DURING THE SIEGE.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>And so the siege is ended; but if this were taken in its more literal
+sense it would imply that there has been an immediate change for the
+better in our condition. But such is not the case. We have been
+relieved of the presence of the Boers, a matter which did not greatly
+trouble us, but there has been no alteration in our scale of diet&mdash;a
+matter which does greatly trouble us; we are still issued four ounces
+of rusty bread and a pound of scraggy meat, and there is still an
+absence of table delicacies. We have no sugar, we have no milk, we
+have neither eggs nor fowls. In point of fact we have nothing, and
+indeed there has been no change. Yet we understood that Field-Marshal
+Lord Roberts in his kindly and generous way had sent us a mob of prime
+bullocks, and a convoy of something other than hospital luxuries. This
+is told to us upon the authority of Major Weil, who controls the
+commissariat, and if it be true, it is still most certainly the case
+that the commissariat officer who has controlled the food supplies of
+the garrison during the siege is still, relatively speaking, doling
+out his sugar by the thimbleful, and ladling his flour with a spoon.
+However, there is to come a time some day when Captain Ryan will be
+far away, and the hours of meal times will be graced with such
+luxuries as we have not seen for seven months. It is only recently
+that the issue of horse meat was stopped, but there is a very general
+belief that if the horses are not being slaughtered for human
+consumption, their carcases still play an important part in the soup
+with which the garrison is served. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page324" name="page324"></a>(p. 324)</span> Of course, the days of
+starch puddings and other table delicacies which were manufactured
+from toilet necessaries are over, while we believe that an effort is
+to be made to improve, but not increase, the bread allowance and to
+put fresh meat on the public sales. But these are the boons of the
+future; since we are relieved that is held to be sufficient for the
+present. However, our thoughts do not dwell much upon our food, we
+rejoice so much over our liberty that we can spare but little time for
+grumbling, and indeed feel but little inclination. The town is bright
+again, and people throng the streets as though a load had been lifted
+from off the backs of every one. The shops are open, the post office
+has resumed its work, and now once more accepts telegrams and letters.
+During the siege there has been but little opportunity to send to the
+outer world any message of a private character that contained more
+than a few words. Letters were almost out of the question, and were
+expensive luxuries even to war correspondents, who were compelled to
+employ special runners at high prices to carry their despatches to the
+nearest office. Lately, and when the investment of the enemy was not
+so close, the intelligence department did manage to pass through the
+lines small parcels of mail matter. The occasions have been
+infrequent, and there were so many people who were anxious to write
+that it became necessary to restrict the general public to a certain
+limit of space. It does not seem that many letters got through, since
+now that we have had time to overhaul the laagers of the enemy we have
+found much correspondence in their waggons. We have also found a
+number of telegrams, and these provide interesting reading and bear
+importantly upon the situation. Moreover, it would seem that our
+estimate <span class="pagenum"><a id="page325" name="page325"></a>(p. 325)</span> of the Boer forces in the field is much
+exaggerated, for President Kruger complains bitterly to
+Commandant-General Botha of the paucity of numbers at the command of
+the State President. The Commandant-General had but fifteen hundred
+men with him in Natal, while General Snyman mentions the numbers of
+the various commandos which he has summoned to his assistance, and by
+which he hopes to secure an additional eight hundred men. But from the
+telegrams it would seem that, for the most part, the Boers are
+timorous and tired of fighting. The Field Cornet of Christiana asks
+what he is to do with twenty men, and states that the Johannesburg
+Police are bolting. "What, then, am I to do with my men?" At this
+moment the British troops were within one hour's ride of Christiana.
+General Snyman has many interesting comments upon the situation on the
+Molopo, and if President Kruger believed one half of the intelligence
+that General Snyman telegraphed to him, his knowledge of the situation
+must have been obscure. From the despatches which passed between this
+worthy General and the State President, mention is made quite
+frequently of the desperate assaults upon our lines which General
+Snyman organised and in some cases personally carried out, and which
+upon many occasions resulted in the capture of one of our outlying
+positions. If this be true such positions as were captured must indeed
+have been outlying, in fact so far beyond the perimeter of our
+defences as to altogether have escaped the notice of the garrison. But
+it does not seem that President Kruger believed everything that
+General Snyman communicated to him. In one message Oom Paul requests
+immediate information upon the whereabouts of Colonel Plumer. There is
+a certain pathos in the question of the aged <span class="pagenum"><a id="page326" name="page326"></a>(p. 326)</span> President
+asking General Snyman, "Where is Plumer? You must know," and one
+gathers that the old man saw somewhat further into the future than the
+majority of his councillors, since he gives it as his opinion that
+Mafeking will be relieved. But prophets have never been respected in
+their own country. General Snyman does not seem to have found favour
+in Pretoria; perhaps the character of the man was too well known,
+since the State Secretary, Mr. Reitz, is ordered by the State
+President to inquire as to whether the failure of General Snyman's
+reinforcements to support Commandant Eloff in his attack upon the town
+on May 12th was due to drunkenness or to cowardice. "If it be
+drunkenness, let us say so," advises Mr. Reitz, "since it would be
+better that the truth be known than that it should be believed that
+General Snyman was a coward." Does this sentence contain the secret
+history of the failure of Commandant Eloff? If it be so one can afford
+to be generous and to sympathise with President Kruger, even to feel a
+certain pity for Commandant Eloff.</p>
+
+<p>The Commandant, since he surrendered to us, has taken life very
+philosophically. He is confined in the gaol, and with him are Captain
+de Fremont and some half-dozen others. The majority of the prisoners
+are lodged in the Dutch Church and in the Masonic Hall. Their time
+hangs heavily upon their hands, but when the tedium of their
+imprisonment becomes too great they indite long letters to their
+friends, using much paper, in villainous denunciations of the English,
+in complaining bitterly of their food, and in villifying Snyman.</p>
+
+<p>Commandant Eloff smokes and reads and talks. Sometimes he becomes
+abstracted, and again upon Sundays he is dejected. As I had the
+pleasure of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page327" name="page327"></a>(p. 327)</span> meeting him in the British South Africa Police
+Fort upon May 12th, the occasion upon which he captured me, I called
+upon him in the gaol. He was pacing the courtyard, but he stopped and
+smiled when he saw me, and as I saluted him he held out his hand. "My
+prisoner," said he, amiably. "The fortunes of war," said I, and he
+waved a hand in the air as he accepted a cigarette. His costume was
+free and comfortable. He wore a brown jersey, a pair of riding
+breeches, and slippers. The jersey fitted him, and he seemed to take
+some pains in showing the physical development of his shoulders. His
+arms also were strong, and with every move of his body his muscles
+quivered. He was lithe, supple and active, and as he stood there with
+the whitewashed walls of the gaol behind him, with his companions
+around him, and a guard upon each of the four walls which enclosed the
+courtyard, an air of romance clung to him and he might have been for
+the moment some creation of Anthony Hope, casting in his mind for some
+entrancing but desperate situation. He puffed my cigarette vigorously
+and began a conversation. "You know," said he, "I don't like
+horseflesh." "I am sorry," said I, "but you should have taken Mafeking
+before." "We shall have it yet," said a man at the table, whereupon
+the Commandant shrugged his shoulders and threw the end of his
+cigarette somewhat petulantly from him. "If," said I. "Ah," said the
+Commandant, and there was a pause in which we all laughed. He looked
+at me for a moment as though he thought. "It is possible," said he,
+and he punctuated his words with little nods. As he finished Captain
+de Fremont joined us. "My God," said he; "you English." Eloff laughed.
+"Do not let us make this Fashoda," said he. "Yes, it is possible," he
+began <span class="pagenum"><a id="page328" name="page328"></a>(p. 328)</span> again, "and I think we should have captured your town,
+but Snyman&mdash;&mdash;" he paused and spat. "I wish to God you would make
+Snyman a prisoner," said he. The conversation had become interesting,
+and I passed my cigarette case around again. It returned to me empty,
+but Commandant Eloff had begun to smoke a pipe. "Are not you Dutchmen
+tired of the war?" said I; "the end, after all, is inevitable."
+Captain de Fremont spoke again. He twisted his cigarette between his
+fingers and remarked with an air of incisive inanity, "Life and death
+are inevitable." "And the English," said Commandant Eloff, whereupon I
+laughed. The Commandant once more took up the thread of the
+conversation. "We attacked you because it seemed to me that you had
+relaxed your vigilance. How could we otherwise have pierced your
+lines?" His view was right&mdash;at least I thought so. "We expected you,"
+said I. The Commandant shook his head and looked at me somewhat
+quizzingly. After all it was a palpable lie. "No," said he; "you
+should at least allow us that amount of energy. You did not expect us,
+and had Snyman pressed home the attack upon your eastern front and
+supported me with the guns and reinforcements, I think that Mafeking
+must have fallen." He paused for a moment, and said, slowly, "I am
+certain that we should not be prisoners." "It was bad luck," said I,
+"we would rather have you with us than against us, but this time you
+will remain with us." He glanced at the four walls, upon each of which
+there was sitting a guard. "I notice," said he, "that I am well
+protected." The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders, as I suggested he
+would rather be outside. "Give me a chance," said he, and he snapped
+his fingers. "What, don't <span class="pagenum"><a id="page329" name="page329"></a>(p. 329)</span> you know," said I, "what has
+occurred this morning?" In a flash his mind reverted to the firing
+upon the previous day. "Tell me, what was that firing last night?"
+"Mafeking has been relieved," said I. The Commandant said nothing, and
+once more there was a pause; but before we spoke again the sergeant of
+the guard clanged upon the door with his musket. "Time is up," called
+he, and the door opened. For a moment the Commandant could see through
+the open space of the doorway, beyond and above the heads of the five
+guards who were waiting outside, the glimpse of blue sky, a line of
+trees, a stretch of veldt. "Is there anything I can do for you?" said
+I, before I went. He waved his hand. "Nothing," said he, "except fresh
+meat." I stayed for a moment and pointed outside. "Fresh meat and
+fresh air are both outside." I thought I caught a sigh: it seemed to
+lurk for a moment amid the harsh and grating noises of the bolts as
+they were thrust forward in their sockets.</p>
+
+<p>From the prison I strolled to my hotel. The day was fine, the cold of
+the morning had given place to a warm and brilliant sunshine. It was
+the Queen's birthday, and our little world seemed at peace. For the
+moment we were forgetting the strife and tribulations of the past
+seven months, and in our anxiety to do honour to her Majesty there was
+much commotion in the town. Flags were flying and bunting was
+fluttering from the verandahs of the houses. Here and there, passing
+in a cloud of dust, were the troops marching to the parade. There was
+to be a review and there was also a general muster of arms. In the
+centre of the Market Square were the guns which we had captured from
+the enemy. In a corner, but surrounded by an admiring crowd, were
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page330" name="page330"></a>(p. 330)</span> the two pieces which we had improvised during the siege.
+There was "B.-P.," there was also "The Wolf," and acting as guard to
+these guns, were two men who, the day before had reached Mafeking from
+Pretoria, having eluded the vigilance of their sentries and walked one
+hundred and eighty miles in a gallant and successful attempt to gain
+liberty and freedom. The men were almost as interesting as the guns.
+But time was speedy and the war correspondents were anxious to attend
+the parade. The review was a study in contrast, the contrast between a
+birthday parade and that review at the cemetery where the souls of the
+dead were passed in inspection and for whom prayers were offered. The
+parade stretched from end to end of the ground immediately in front of
+the British South Africa Police Fort, taking place upon the very spot
+where the town had so valiantly contested the attack which Commandant
+Eloff had organised. Behind the lines of the men were the white
+buildings of the Protectorate Barracks, while from the flag-mast,
+which stands aloft in the centre of the fort, there floated the Union
+Jack. The scene was indeed a study in contrast. We were at peace now
+with the elements of war within our midst. We were fighting then, a
+grim and determined struggle waging all round us, and in a way this
+birthday parade was the issue of that day's fighting, since had the
+end been otherwise, it might have been Commandant Eloff who passed in
+review order upon the birthday of our Queen Empress. We formed up,
+detachments from the different corps and the artillery upon the right
+of the line. It was only the siege artillery, and nothing very much at
+that. The pom-poms and the guns of the Royal Horse Artillery were
+guarding the front of the town, and could not be spared.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page331" name="page331"></a>(p. 331)</span> And so we waited, when of a sudden there came a cheer from
+the rear and we realised that General Mahon was approaching. There was
+no band, there were no horses, the entire parade were dismounted. The
+Colonel inspected, the men dressed, and the Colonel returned to the
+saluting base. He seemed conscious of the crowd, and stood as though
+he realised that the parade which he was now holding meant to him so
+much more than the mere abstract honour to the Queen. It signified the
+end of his labours, epitomising his successes, touching with ironical
+glory the honours which the near future must surely bring to him, and
+as he stood he seemed quite nervous. It was one of the few occasions
+upon which I have ever known him to be moved. The men who had come to
+his relief were passing by him, and ever and anon one heard the
+commands of the officers calling to their squadrons as they gained the
+shadow of the saluting base, "Shoulder arms; eyes left." Then Colonel
+Baden-Powell would raise his hand, taking and returning the salutes as
+they were made. In the distance there was a haze of dust through which
+a gaudy sunlight was flickering, and in the distance and, beside us,
+there was the heavy music of the armed tread, as squadron after
+squadron marched by. The air was filled with sound and sentiment, but
+yet the crowd that stood behind was quiet and quite subdued. It was no
+wonder that they were impressed, that they recognised in the rumble of
+the distant feet and in the flowing masses of men the hour of their
+deliverance. Their troubles were indeed past, their siege was over,
+and the moment was approaching when those who had been in their midst
+during so many months would be again upon the move, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page332" name="page332"></a>(p. 332)</span>
+advancing this time against the enemy upon Pretoria. But the hour was
+not one in which to say farewell. It was an hour which lived for
+itself, an hour that bore to each of us some knowledge of our liberty,
+and a secret appreciation of the duties which our Empire asked of us.
+We were all contented, happy in the knowledge that the siege was over,
+but imbued with even a greater happiness since, upon this day, her
+Majesty was sharing with us the joys of our good news. And presently
+the ceremony concluded, and for the remainder of the day we attended
+sports and organised a concert; while that night there was a dinner
+and a pyrotechnic display in Market Square. We dined and drank the
+Queen, and drinking this, streamed to the air where the rockets were
+already rushing to the <i>ewigkeit</i> with the roar of the racing tide.
+And then beneath the steely beauty of the moonlight and the soft
+radiance of countless stars we sang "God Save the Queen" and wandered
+home, chanting as we went the strains of "Rule Britannia." Thus in a
+cloud of loyal enthusiasm were brought about the closing scenes of the
+Siege of Mafeking.</p>
+
+<a id="img018" name="img018"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a href="images/img018.jpg">
+<img src="images/img018tb.jpg" width="500" height="452" alt="" title=""></a>
+<p class="smcap">PLAN OF MAFEKING.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2 center">THE END</p>
+
+<p class="center smaller">UNWIN BROTHERS, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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+</body>
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+Project Gutenberg's The Siege of Mafeking (1900), by J. Angus Hamilton
+
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+
+Title: The Siege of Mafeking (1900)
+
+Author: J. Angus Hamilton
+
+Release Date: April 2, 2012 [EBook #39348]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SIEGE OF MAFEKING (1900) ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Christine P. Travers and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
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+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: The Colonel at Work.]
+
+
+
+
+  THE SIEGE OF MAFEKING
+
+
+  BY
+
+  J. ANGUS HAMILTON
+
+
+
+
+  WITH FIFTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS AND TWO PLANS
+
+
+
+
+  METHUEN & CO.
+  36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
+  LONDON
+  1900
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE
+
+
+I have to acknowledge gratefully permission to publish in this book
+certain articles contributed before and during the siege of Mafeking
+to _The Times_ and _Black and White_. To the editor of the latter
+paper I am indebted also for leave to reproduce photographs taken by
+myself and published, from time to time, in that journal.
+
+I would acknowledge, too, in anticipation, any kindly toleration my
+readers may extend to me for the many shortcomings, of which I am
+dismally conscious, arising from the hasty preparation of this volume.
+When I explain that between the date of my return to England and this
+date--when I start for China--barely a fortnight has elapsed, I shall
+make good, perhaps, some small claim upon the indulgence of the
+critics and the public.
+
+                                                    J. A. H.
+  _July 21, 1900_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                               Page
+
+        I.  AT SEA                                         1
+
+       II.  A GLANCE AHEAD                                11
+
+      III.  ON THE ORANGE FREE STATE BORDER               22
+
+       IV.  BRICKS OF STRAW                               34
+
+        V.  DIAMONDS AND WHITE FEATHERS                   41
+
+       VI.  TWO DAYS BEFORE WAR                           49
+
+      VII.  THE SKIRMISH AT FIVE MILE BANK                57
+
+     VIII.  THE FIRST DAY OF BOMBARDMENT                  67
+
+       IX.  THE ADVENT OF "BIG BEN"                       78
+
+        X.  A MIDNIGHT SORTIE                             88
+
+       XI.  CANNON KOPJE                                  97
+
+      XII.  A RECONNAISSANCE                             108
+
+     XIII.  THE TOWN GUARD                               120
+
+      XIV.  WASTED ENERGIES                              130
+
+       XV.  SHELLS AND SLAUGHTER                         140
+
+      XVI.  A SOFT-WATER BATH                            147
+
+     XVII.  THE ECONOMY OF THE SITUATION                 152
+
+    XVIII.  A VISIT TO THE HOSPITAL                      158
+
+      XIX.  A LITTLE GUN PRACTICE                        165
+
+       XX.  THE ATTACK UPON GAME TREE                    175
+
+      XXI.  THE ADVENT OF THE NEW YEAR                   188
+
+     XXII.  NATIVE LIFE                                  196
+
+    XXIII.  BOMBAST AND BOMB-PROOFS                      202
+
+     XXIV.  SOME SNIPING AND AN EXECUTION                212
+
+      XXV.  LIFE IN THE BRICKFIELDS                      220
+
+     XXVI.  FROM BAD TO WORSE                            225
+
+    XXVII.  THE FIRST ATTACK UPON THE BRICKFIELDS        232
+
+   XXVIII.  THE SECOND ATTACK UPON THE BRICKFIELDS       240
+
+     XXIX.  THE NATIVE QUESTION                          247
+
+      XXX.  POLITICAL ECONOMY                            253
+
+     XXXI.  "A HISTORY OF THE BARALONGS"                 261
+
+    XXXII.  'TIS WEARY WAITING                           271
+
+   XXXIII.  TWO HUNDRED DAYS OF SIEGE                    278
+
+    XXXIV.  THE EPICUREAN'S DELIGHT                      283
+
+     XXXV.  THE LAST FIGHT                               290
+
+    XXXVI.  RELIEVED AT LAST                             311
+
+   XXXVII.  THE END                                      319
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND PLANS
+
+
+                                                        Page
+
+  THE COLONEL AT WORK.                         _Frontispiece_
+
+  MAJOR LORD EDWARD CECIL, C.S.O.                         45
+
+  OUTPOSTS AND ENTRENCHMENTS, SOUTHERN FRONT.             55
+
+  HEADQUARTERS                                            68
+
+  CANNON KOPJE                                            98
+
+  MAJOR GODLEY ON THE LOOK-OUT                           112
+
+  EFFECTS OF SHELL FIRE. I. BEFORE                       144
+
+  EFFECTS OF SHELL FIRE. II. AFTER                       146
+
+  BOERS INSPECTING BRITISH KILLED                        184
+
+  THE COLONEL ON THE LOOK-OUT                            192
+
+  WAR CORRESPONDENTS AND THEIR BOMB-PROOF SHELTERS       212
+
+  PLAN OF THE BRICKFIELDS                                222
+
+  CAPE BOYS HURLING STONES AT THE BOERS                  224
+
+  KILLING HORSES FOR THE GARRISON                        292
+
+  THE BRITISH SOUTH AFRICAN POLICE FORT                  298
+
+  "MAFEKING," THE AUTHOR'S DOG                           324
+
+  PLAN OF MAFEKING                                       338
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+AT SEA
+
+
+                                   R.M.S. _DUNVEGAN CASTLE_,
+                                     _September 16th, 1899_.
+
+A breeze was freshening, tufting the heaving billows with white crests
+and driving showers of spray and clots of foam upon the decks of the
+_Dunvegan_. Passengers stood in strained attitudes about the ship,
+fidgeting with the desire to be ill and the wish to appear
+comfortable--even dignified. In the end, however, circumstances were
+too strong for the passengers, transforming them, from a state of calm
+despair, into a condition of sickness and temporary dejection. Every
+one was perturbed, and those delicate attentions which the sea-sick
+demand were being offered by a much-worried deck steward. Here and
+there groups of more hardy voyagers were spending their feeble wit in
+unseasonable jokes; here and there bedraggled people, wet with spray
+and racked by the anguish of an aching void, were clutching at the
+possibility of gaining the privacy of their cabins before their
+feelings quite overpowered them. In this mad rush, not unlike the
+scramble of a shuttlecock to escape the buffetings of the battledore,
+I also joined, fetching my berth with much unfortunate sensation.
+Alas! I am a wretched sailor, and travelling far and near these many
+years, crossing strange seas to distant lands at oft-recurring
+periods, has not even tutored me to stand the stress of the ocean
+wave. I cannot endure the sea.
+
+The _Dunvegan Castle_ was steaming to the Cape, carrying the mails,
+together with a number of tedious and most tiresome people, whose
+hours aboard were passed in periods of distracting energy--in deck
+quoits, in impossible cricket matches, in angry squabbles upon the
+value of the monies which, day by day, were collected by the crafty
+from the foolish and pooled in prizes upon the daily run of the
+steamer. It was said that these were pleasant gambles, but the
+Gentiles paid and the Hebrews, returning to their diamonds, their
+stocks and shares, scooped the stakes. It is a way that the people of
+Israel and Threadneedle Street have made peculiarly their own; and,
+indeed, the multitude and variety of Jews upon this evil-smelling
+steamer suggested that she might have held within her walls the
+nucleus of an over-sea Israelitish colony, such another as the
+Rothschilds founded.
+
+Time was idle, dreary, and so empty! There was nothing to do, since
+nothing could be done. The monotony was appalling, and if this were
+the condition in the saloon, how distressful must have been the lot of
+the third class, who constituted in themselves, as good a class of
+people as that contained in the saloon. Surely in these days of
+systematic philanthropy something more might be done to brighten the
+lot and welfare of third-class passengers. Is it, for example, quite
+impossible to supply them with that not uninteresting development of
+the musical-box--the megaphone? Of course it should be quite
+possible; but antiquated, even antediluvian, in its arrangements, the
+Castle Company cannot initiate anything which has not yet been adopted
+by the other lines of ocean shipping. And yet I have been told by
+numerous merchant captains that it is the steerage which provides the
+profits, making lucrative the business of carrying cargoes of goods
+and human freight from our shores to more distant lands. But that also
+is the way of the world; yet when a rude prosperity enables the
+emigrant Jew and Gentile to throng the saloons, making them altogether
+impossible for the gentler classes, we shall find the economy of the
+third class appealing to an ever-increasing and ever-superior body of
+people until these "superior" people will not endure the dirt,
+unwholesome surroundings, and fetid atmosphere of the steerage
+accommodation of ocean-going steamers, but will cry to Heaven upon the
+niggard's policy which controls the vessels.
+
+As the days wore away, and Madeira came and went, even the flying
+fishes ceased to attract, and the noises of the ship grew more
+distant, the people less obtrusive. Moreover, I became at rest within
+myself, and the gaping, aching void which has filled my vitals these
+many days, became assuaged. It was then we began to inspect the
+passengers; to consider almost kindly the African Jew millionaire who
+ate peas with his fingers and mixed honey with his salad, thought not
+disdainfully of the poor lady his wife, who, suffering the tortures of
+the damned when at sea, shone at each meal valiantly and heroically
+until the menu was pierced by her in its entirety, and she made still
+further happy by the administration of an original preventative
+against _mal de mer_ of sweet wine biscuits bathed in plentiful and
+sticky treacle. It was her way of pouring oil on troubled waters. Oh,
+those were dreadful people, never ill, always eating, ever complaining
+of a curious dizziness which, nevertheless, occasioned them no loss of
+appetite. Surely they, of all others, were indeed of the specially
+select! Then there was Mr. Clarke, a friend of the two Presidents,
+who, undaunted by the most violent motions of the steamer, kept to the
+deck in a constant promenade, discoursing amicably the while, and
+punctuating his utterances, of a somewhat patriarchal order, with
+brief pauses, in which he stroked, with much dignity, a long white
+beard. He was a dear old man, and, unlike other Boers, he did not
+quote from the Scriptures, a concession which, to be properly
+appreciated, demands the lassitude and extreme prostration of violent
+nausea. There is something inordinately irritating about the man who
+proposes to soothe the irruptions attendant upon sea voyages by the
+assurance that such discomfiture is to be endured, since in Chapter
+i., verse 1, of a pious writer, the Lord hath there written that the
+ungodly shall be everlastingly punished. Personally I objected only to
+the form of punishment.
+
+The friend of the President, a fine specimen of sturdy masculinity,
+touching eighty-two years of age, was quite the most impressive figure
+aboard this particular Castle packet. He had been a sojourner in the
+Orange Free State for forty years, coming to it from Australia shortly
+after the riots at Ballarat goldfields. The old fellow had fought
+against the Boers, championed their arms against the Basutos, raided
+the blacks in Queensland, and tumbled through a variety of enterprises
+ranging from mining in Australia to successful sheep farming near the
+Fickersburg. I liked him, taking an intense anxiety in his future
+movements, and wondering whether this fine old specimen of life would
+also become our enemy. Who could tell! So much depended upon the
+situation, so much upon the action of the President and the will of
+Providence. He stood, as he himself was apt to remark, upon the border
+of the next world--looking back upon a span of four score years,
+possessing a knowledge of the affairs of these African Republics which
+had obtained for him the friendship of President Steyn and President
+Kruger; indeed, they had been comrades-in-arms, Oom Paul and himself,
+while he had seen Steyn spring into manhood from a stripling, and when
+his thoughts dwelt upon those days the voice of the old man became
+flooded with emotion. These tears of memory were a sidelight to his
+real character, and I was convinced that if he shouldered arms at all
+these earlier friendships were held by such ties as were too sacred to
+be violated. In his heart he hated fighting, yearning merely for the
+attentions of his children, the cool delights of his mountain home. In
+his domestic environment he was a happy man, since prosperity had
+brought him certain cares of office, much as the dignity of his age
+had brought him the respect of his fellow-burghers. And yet he figured
+as an illustration of countless hundreds, each one of whom was in
+close relationship with the crisis in the politics of the country.
+
+Morning, noon and night he strolled, the one figure of interest in
+the ill-assorted company of passengers which the good ship--to my
+nostrils an evil-smelling tub--was carrying to the Cape. There were
+few others of importance upon this journey. There was a colonel of
+the Royal Engineers, who had a snug billet in the War Office, and
+who was leaving Pall Mall to inspect the barracks at Cape Town, St.
+Helena, Ascension, and all those other places to which certain
+preposterous War Office officials devoted that attention which
+should so much more properly have been paid to the defenceless
+condition of the frontiers in South Africa. But then, after all,
+what is the destiny of the War Office unless to meddle and make
+muddle? If Colonel Watson might be said to have represented the
+Imperial Government among the passengers, Mynheer Van der Merure,
+Commissioner of Mines in Johannesburg, might be considered as
+representing the Pretorian Government. It seemed to me that these
+two worthies were quite harmless, representing, each in his own way,
+the acme of good nature, the gallant--all colonels imagine that they
+be gallant--colonel by reason of his advanced age; the worthy--all
+commissioners imagine that they be worthy--commissioner because he
+lived off the spoil of the mines. But even the spectacle of these
+three--the grand old man, the War Office _attache_, the wealthy
+Randsman--did not suffice to break the hideous monotony of a most
+depressing voyage.
+
+With the peace of nature enveloping us in a feeling of security, it
+was difficult to realise that each day we drew a little nearer to a
+possible seat of war. There was much rumour aboard; the stewards
+hinted that the hold was filled with a cargo of munitions of war. The
+captain flatly denied it, even the War Office pensioner thought it
+improbable. "You must understand, sir," said he one morning, across the
+breakfast table, "that it is contrary to the custom of her Majesty's
+Government, and, if I may say so, sir, especially contrary to the
+custom of her Majesty's War Office, to squander the finances of our
+great Empire upon unnecessary munitions of war because the _Times_ and
+other papers choose to send half a dozen irresponsible individuals to
+South Africa. Now, sir--pooh!" When Colonel Watson broke out like this
+the friend of the President would intervene, suggesting in his kindly,
+paternal fashion that "the War Office--given half a dozen colonels,
+gallant or otherwise--might well afford to follow the lead of the
+_Times_ newspaper." "It has been my experience," the Colonel
+retaliated on one occasion, "that when people begin to interfere they
+cease to understand." It was always quite delightful to watch these
+two cross swords; the elder invariably took refuge in his age when the
+sallies of the War Office could not be directly countered.
+"Experience! You are only old enough to be my son." The Colonel
+spluttered--colonels do. By these means the elder man usually carried
+off the honours, replying, as it were, by a flank movement to the
+frontal attack of his superior adversary.
+
+The farmer from the Orange Free State talked much to me, giving me,
+towards the end of the voyage, an invitation to his home. It was a
+visit in which I should have found much pleasure, since the splendour
+of his years, his gentleness and nobility of character were
+attractive. It seemed to me that among all sorts and conditions of men
+this one was indeed, a man, and I do most sincerely hope that the end
+of the war may find him still living and enjoying his farm in his
+usual prosperity. He was so set against the war, and dreaded the
+consequences of hostile invasion into the Orange Free State, insomuch
+that he realised, if some immunity were not guaranteed, the ruin and
+desolation which would spread over the land. In August as we left
+England there was nothing known about the future action of the Orange
+Free State. The question was one of debate, altogether confused,
+almost intangible, and this man, knowing Steyn as he knew Kruger, was
+convinced that the Orange Free State would alienate itself from the
+Transvaal difficulty. But who can tell? We look to the sea for our
+answer, and it throws back to us only the echoes of the sighing waves,
+the pulsing throbs of the screws pounding the green masses of water in
+an effort to reach the Cape. Nevertheless, I am inclined to believe
+that there will be war. I hope that there may be, since it is to be my
+field of labour.
+
+The journey nears its end, and the weather breaks, for a few hours
+into grey cold; while the sea, where it laps the bay at Cape Town,
+darkening into thin ridges of foam, tumbling and tossing amid the
+eddies of the bleak water, looks menacing. A fog lies off the land,
+dense and weighty, impeding the navigation and impressing no little
+conception of the perils of the deep upon the minds of timorous
+passengers, and folding the surface of the ocean in its expanse. The
+weather threatens to be wild. All day the sea fog broke and mingled,
+merging, as the day wore on, into one conglomerate mass of cloud,
+impenetrable to the mariner and screening the signs of the sea from
+those who were upon land. Here and there, low down upon the horizon,
+the storm fiend from the shore had broken into the garland of mist
+which hung so drearily upon sea as upon moor, detaching parcels of
+cloud from the main and toying with them with the coy and heartless
+grace of Zephyr! But as yet the wind only came in minor lapses, and
+was followed by intervals in which there was no movement in the fog.
+From the waste of sea came a ceaseless, muffled roar which seemed
+loudest and most full of mystery when carried upon the wings of the
+wind. Then these echoes of mighty waters, tumbling upon the rocks off
+the land, seemed ominous and charged with deadly peril, and, as the
+fog belts lifted or dispersed before the gusts of the wind, the sea
+would look as though swept with growing anger, heaving in tremulous
+passion, until the great reach of quivering waves was flecked with
+white. Closer and closer lapped the tiny waves, until, under the
+pressure of the freshening wind they mingled their crests, rising and
+falling in foam-capped billows of growing volume and increasing
+majesty. Thus developed the storm; the wind beating on the face of the
+waters and breaking against the clouds until rain fell, in the end
+assuaging, by its raging downpour, the tempest of the ocean. Down came
+the storm in one panting burst of tempestuous deluge. The heaving
+waves threw sheets of foam from their rain-pierced summits, and the
+wind whistled and screamed as it swept through the rigging. Flashes of
+lightning and thunder claps parried one another in quick succession.
+The rain fell in torrents, the decks, shining in the lightning
+flashes, roared with rushing water. So that night we rode at anchor,
+rocking idly at our cables within the shadow of the mountain, and upon
+the morrow, beneath the light of coming dawn, we drew nearer through
+the cool greyness of the bounding ocean. At first the figures, the
+walls of the fort, the cranes, the shipping, and the scarred and
+crinkled facing of the mountain were silhouetted in black against the
+grey of early morning, but as the day broke more firmly across its
+slopes, the finer and more subtle light gave to everything its actual
+proportion. All kept growing clearer and yet clearer, and more and
+more thoroughly outlined, until the sun, shooting over the horizon,
+bestowed upon the coming day its first wink of glory.
+
+And so we landed, passing from a sluggish state of peace into a world
+where everything was lighted with martial glamour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A GLANCE AHEAD
+
+
+                          CAPE TOWN, _September 20th, 1899_.
+
+To be in Cape Town in September would seem to be visiting the capital
+of Cape Colony in its least enjoyable month; since, more especially
+than at any other time in the year, the place be thronged with
+bustling people, who plough their way through streets which, by the
+stress of recent bad weather, are choked with mud and broken by pools
+of slush and rain-scourings. The rain is falling with a determination
+and force of penetration which soaks the pedestrian in a few minutes
+and makes life altogether miserable. Moreover, there are signs of
+further foul weather. There is a white mist upon the mountain and a
+sea fog enshrouds the shipping in the harbour: everywhere it is cold,
+colourless and damp. Everywhere the people are depressed. It is as
+though the wet has drenched the population of the town to the bone and
+drowned their spirits in the cheerless prospect which the rainy
+season in Cape Town provides. If the sun were to shine the aspect
+might be brighter, a little warmth might be infused in the character
+and disposition of the constantly shifting streams of mud-splashed,
+bedraggled pedestrians who, despite the rain and mud and an air of
+general despondency, impart some little animation to the dirty
+thoroughfares.
+
+Other than this air of depression there is but little external
+evidence of the momentous crisis which impends. It may be that the
+Cape Town colonist has forgotten the responsibilities of his colony in
+the cares of his own office, and is become that mechanical development
+of commerce, a money-making man. Who can tell? Is it even fair to
+hazard an estimation of the man in his present environment? But it
+would assuredly seem that the troubles of the Government, the menace
+which is imposed upon the colony by the Bond Ministry, do not touch
+him, do not even stir his loyalty to the ebullition of a little
+doubtful enthusiasm. Just now, although there may be war upon his
+borders, although the spirit of disturbed patriotism be in the air,
+and although his neighbours may be thinking of joining some one of the
+Irregular Corps who are advertising for recruits, the ordinary
+inhabitant of Cape Town is unmoved. He is too lethargic, or is it that
+his loyalty is not of that degree which regards with concern the
+arming of the border republics, the near outbreak of bloody war? It
+would seem that each, after his own caste, be happy if he be left
+alone; the money grubber to gain more shekels, the idler and the
+casual to bore each other with their stupendous, even studied
+indifference to the propinquity of the latest national crisis. Within
+a few days, it may even be within a few hours, our questions with the
+Pretorian Government will have reached their final adjustment or their
+perpetual confusion, and it may be that we shall be at war. It may be
+also, although it be difficult to believe, that a peaceful solution
+will be derived. At this moment the services of such pacific measures
+as can be adopted should be utilised, since if war should come within
+a brief measure the position of the people of this country will indeed
+be grave--the utter absence of adequate defensive measures, the entire
+lack of efficient military preparations being factors which are
+calculated to incite to rebellion those who incline to the Dutch
+cause, and indeed, most positively, their name is Legion. There is, I
+think, the essence of revolt beneath this heavy and depressed
+condition of the people: it were not possible otherwise, to exist
+within such intimate proximity to a state of war and be unmoved; it is
+not possible either to find other explanation. It may be that in their
+hearts, as in their heads, they are weighing the consequences of
+revolt, succouring one another in their distress of mind and body with
+seditious sympathies, maintaining a spirit of antagonism to the
+Imperial fusion under pretence of the mere expression of a lip
+loyalty. And in their immediate prospect there is everything which may
+be calculated to disturb their equanimity, and to force upon them the
+consciousness of their impotency. It is perhaps this knowledge of
+their actual weakness which subdues them since they cannot afford to
+openly avow feelings which are inimical to us and which would betoken
+their own hostility. Nevertheless, Great Britain can do nothing which
+could encourage these people in their loyalty; nor can they
+themselves, in reality, assist to remove their unfortunate
+predicament, since they must needs sacrifice their possessions to
+substantiate their views, and to do this implies complete
+disintegration of their fortunes. This they will not do; since they
+cannot suffer it. They will remain discontented partisans, however;
+slaves of commerce, restrained by the possibilities of further
+aggrandisement from declaring their mutual connection, and manacled by
+the bonds of free trade and crooked dealings. They will be neutral, as
+indeed the greater proportion of the inhabitants of the towns along
+the coast and within the littoral zone will be, since with every
+feeling of unctuous rectitude in relation to the values of their
+trade, they will leave to the provincial areas, which lie between the
+borders of the Orange Free State and the metropolitan circuits, the
+onus of the situation, the work of supplying active and more potential
+supporters of the Republican arms.
+
+This is the middle of September, and I am assured that the crisis
+should not be expected before the middle of October, inclining to the
+first two weeks of the coming month. If this be possible, and the
+information is difficult to discount, our sin of indifference is the
+greater, our apathy the more criminal. Indeed, everywhere there is
+nothing doing--God forbid that the steady warlike preparations of the
+Transvaal Government should intimidate us, but let us at least be
+heedful and not over sleepy. If we can gauge the situation by the
+public press of the Empire it is most critical, and the time is rather
+overripe in which we also should indulge in a few military exercises.
+There is a situation to be faced which will tax all the resources of
+the Castle, and strain even the vaunted excellence of the home
+administration--that army for which Lord Wolseley has claimed such
+splendid mobilisation, such insensate volition. If these fifty
+thousand men were here now the turns of the political wheel would not
+be regarded with such intense apprehension, while in their absence
+there lies perhaps the answer to the rain-drenched dulness of the
+population. The land is naked; from Basutoland to Buluwayo and back to
+Beira, mile upon mile of smiling frontier rests without protection of
+any sort. We are inviting invasion, and it is impossible that such a
+movement will not be attempted. To invade our territory--it will sound
+so well round the camp fires of the Boer laagers--a mere scamper
+across the frontier, a pell-mell, hell-for-leather retreat to their
+own lines, and the manoeuvres would be executed felicitously and with
+every sign of success. But such a contingency is submerged under an
+accumulation of theories and official explanations each of which deny
+the possibility of the Boer taking upon himself the responsibility of
+rushing the situation. Moreover, it does not seem that the Boers
+require much instigation to attempt such an act. We have laid open our
+borders to such an enterprise, even taking the trouble to leave
+unguarded many towns whose adjacency to the border is singularly
+perilous. In many cases a Boer force need only make a short march to
+arrive in the very heart of some one of these border towns, when,
+should they appear, the turn of affairs could be said to be complex;
+and some emotions might be felt by those worthy and effete military
+noodles who so persistently shout down the "pessimists" who, knowing
+the country, the ambition and resourcefulness of the Boers, persist in
+declaiming upon the hideous neglect which characterises our frontier
+defences, and strenuously assert the probability of Boer invasion into
+those districts which superimpose themselves upon the borders of the
+Transvaal and Orange Free State Republics, and which, possessing
+values of their own, can be held as hostages against the slings and
+arrows of an outrageous fortune elsewhere.
+
+It is the duty of the Crown at the present juncture to bear this
+contingency in mind, to confront it with the determined resolution to
+repair the negligence of the past at once and at all costs, and to
+allow neither the opinion of the Bond Ministry, nor the ignorance of
+the existing military advisers to the Governor, to persuade the
+Executive from adopting the only course which remains to us, which is
+to push men and materials of war to the border with the least possible
+delay. If we do not take these steps now it will be too late in a
+little time, and the course of the war must necessarily be the more
+protracted. There are many who would have us delay lest our premature
+acts should expedite the despatch of the ultimatum, and we should lose
+the opportunity, which the next few days will give to us, of receiving
+delivery of the troops who are already upon the water. But the
+presence of these men means little and forebodes, in reality, a slight
+accentuation of the gravity of the actual situation. It is with the
+forces that we can control at this moment that we must count, and it
+is with them that we must deal. It does not suffice to have
+parade-ground drills in Cape Town as a preliminary flourish; we should
+at least show ourselves as ready as the Boers be willing. This of
+course we cannot do, since, with a handful of exceptions, we have not
+a modern piece of artillery in the country. Moreover we do not quite
+know what armaments the Transvaal Government possess; it is with a
+pretty display of pretence that we conceal the nakedness of our
+borders and bolster up the situation. There is Kimberley,
+Ramathlabama, and Buluwayo--what _is_ to happen upon the western
+frontier?--and although it be doubtful if the Boers would pierce the
+Rhodesian border and seize Buluwayo, it is not too much to expect that
+if they should inaugurate any movement into the Colony from the Orange
+Free State, even if their activity only should assume the shape of a
+demonstration against Kimberley, that this southern advance would
+receive sympathetic co-operation from a parallel movement in a
+northerly direction by which they might temporarily secure possession
+of our line of communication and menace Buluwayo by encroaching upon
+Rhodesia.
+
+Then there is the position of Natal, which must be more or less
+hampered by the war in the Transvaal if it does not become actually
+and potentially concerned. That Natal will play an important _role_ is
+elaborately evident from the Boer patrols who, even now, are reported
+to be in possession of all strategical points in the mountains, and
+who are also said to be busily engaged in fortifying the rocky
+fastnesses of the Drakensburg Mountains, and to dominate Laing's Nek
+tunnel as well as the line of railway which curvets through the chain,
+by having emplaced some heavy ordnance upon prominent and immediate
+commanding slopes. It would seem as though Natal may play a part, so
+distinctive and so vitally important in its own history as a colonial
+dependency, that the prospect of the war there may become a campaign
+in itself, and one which will be almost detached and isolated from the
+movements in the Orange Free State and Transvaal, where I have reason
+to believe there is some intention of formulating, what may be
+regarded as a dual campaign, which will avoid all invasion of the
+Transvaal territory until the Orange Free State has been completely
+pacified and the lines of communication effectively and securely held.
+In support of this scheme it is generally conceded that it will be
+impossible to carry war into the Transvaal until every provision has
+been made against the risk of local rising in the areas of the Orange
+Free State, and thus endangering our lines of communication, as well
+as our flanks.
+
+These, then, are the signs of the day, and in such signs do we read
+something of the terrible struggle upon which we are so soon to be
+engaged, and in appreciation of which, local opinion is in such marked
+contrast--I almost wrote conflict--with the opinion and views of the
+special service officers from India and England. To whom, then,
+belongs the honours of accurate estimation; to the man from home as it
+were, or to the man who has passed his life in South Africa and
+understands the Dutchman as the mere military interloper can never
+hope to understand him? There is, I think, no doubt as to what point
+of view be erroneous, and it is because we so persistently ignore the
+worth and reliability of the men who are upon the spot, that we shall
+have the falsity of our intelligence some day brought home to us by
+the tidings of a terrible disaster. South Africa is already the grave
+of too many fine reputations; but let us, at least, hope that we shall
+not add to the disgrace of the private individual any loss of national
+prestige. The wind soughs ominously just now, however, while there is
+a note in it which I do not like, and which I cannot understand. At
+the Castle they talk airily of being home by Christmas! If they be
+sailing within twelve months they will be lucky, and at Government
+House Sir Alfred Milner is beset with the difficulties of his very
+onerous position. For the moment he takes--I am glad to be able to say
+it, since I would have him upon the side of sound common sense--a
+somewhat depressed view of the general outlook. Kimberley and
+Ramathlabama were his especial concerns when I called there to-day,
+insomuch that they extend an especial invitation to the mobility of a
+Boer commando, while it is quite beyond his powers to save them from
+their fate. It seemed to me that he despairs of these towns in
+particular, but I will withhold his remarks upon them until I myself
+have been there. Yet it may be taken as granted that, should Sir
+Alfred Milner be concerned for their immediate and eventual safety,
+the gravity of their situation is extreme, pointing even to the
+closeness of the danger which would arise from a Boer invasion into
+those areas.
+
+But in this hurried letter I am dealing with the colony, and
+singularly enough we have to consider how our colonists will behave,
+what may be their attitude, and how near are we to rebellion? It is of
+course an all-important question, and one which, in relation to a
+British colony, is untoward. If I were asked to localise the possible
+area of revolt I should decline, since the question be so serious and
+infringes so much upon the life and existence--the central forces--of
+the colony that it would be difficult, definitely and evenly, to
+demarcate any zone of loyalty, as opposed to any area of disaffection,
+without unduly trespassing upon the sentiments of less favoured
+districts. But I do think that the possibilities of this question are
+enormous, emanating as it does from the life teachings and doctrines
+of the people of the country, and however much we try to draw a line
+between what constitutes due loyalty and what infringes the spirit as
+well as the letter of the individual's allegiance, we must
+unconsciously perpetrate much injustice either upon the one or upon
+the other side of the question, which, owing to the dualistic
+temperament and inclinations of no small majority of the people, it is
+impossible to avoid, and which will have to be endured by individuals,
+loyal or disloyal, as their penalty. The spirit of the Dutch pioneers
+still impregnates much of Cape Colony; its presence south of the
+Orange Free State and in the actual territory of the colony receiving
+direct support and sympathy by the increasing numbers of the Dutch
+population in these African Republics; an increase which, being
+unrestricted in its development, has spread far and wide until it has
+created a partial exodus from the recognised centres of Dutch
+influence and Dutch population into those areas from which the traces
+of the earliest Dutch occupation were rapidly vanishing--if they have
+not altogether disappeared--and which has been the medium of
+resuscitating a feeling of sympathy and clanship which, augmented by
+still closer ties of commerce, has promoted the functions of matrimony
+and friendship and gradually released a current of feeling throughout
+the district which was avowedly Dutch, and, equally avowedly, in
+silent and semi-subdued opposition to the instincts and ideals of the
+Anglo-Saxon colonist. And it is against the rapid spread of this
+feeling which we have to contend, much as we must guard against the
+conversion of these prejudices into tacit support and effective
+co-operation with the armed burghers of the sister Republics should
+their arms secure any initial successes. With this danger in our
+midst, in itself an almost insurmountable obstacle, no precaution
+which could render the safety of these districts the less precarious
+should be omitted; and to effect this--and it is quite essential to
+our temporal salvation--men and materials of war should be in
+readiness to forestall, or, at least, to circumvent, the consummation
+of the Boer operations. If we can accomplish even so little, it maybe
+possible to prevent the no small proportion of the colonists
+discharging their obligations to the Crown by combining with the Boer
+forces. To this end our efforts will have to be seriously directed,
+and the sooner this simple fact is realised by the authorities in
+South Africa as in London, the more convincing will the scope and
+measures of our policy become. At present it is chimerical, and we
+hesitate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+ON THE ORANGE FREE STATE BORDER
+
+
+                                           THE CAMP, DE AAR,
+                                     _September 23rd, 1899_.
+
+Africa was streaming past the dusty windows of the railway carriage,
+presenting an endless spectacle of flat, depressed-looking country,
+with here and there a hut, here and there a native. I am in the
+earliest stages of a journey which should lead to Ramathlabama, and
+the command of Colonel Baden-Powell. Slowly and with much effort the
+train drags itself along; the road is steep, the carriages hot and
+uncomfortable, and there is nothing to attract attention, nothing to
+fill the emptiness of the mind. I slept at intervals, to awaken at
+some roadside station where fussy people were struggling to eat too
+much in too short a space of time. There, for a moment, was the
+scamper of bustling, hurrying passengers, who pushed and menaced one
+another in a thirsty rush to the refreshment room; with a cloud of
+officers, orderlies, and troopers I stood apart, listless, bored, and
+travel-stained, feebly interested, more feebly talking in disconnected
+phrases, until, with shrill blasts of his whistle, the guard signalled
+the departure of the train. Then off again, the jerking, swaying
+flight of eighteen miles an hour--the rumbling monotony of express
+speed which was conducive to drowsiness and nothing more. The
+landscape faded in the distance, a raucous voice sang of 'Ome, while,
+in a monotonous buzz of nothingness, I slept again.
+
+The train was slowly thrusting itself forward as, with much panting
+and purring and some screaming, it cut the borders of the Great Karoo.
+Slowly the wheels clenched the metals as the waggons rocked in a
+lullaby of motion, and the passengers were fanned with draughts of
+scented air. The Great Karoo, lying in the shades of evening,
+hearkening to the secret calling of mysterious voices, heeding not the
+ravages of time, wearing majestically the massive dignity of its
+grandeur, threw back its barriers of resistance to our intrusion and
+delighting our senses with ever-changing and oft-recurring glimpses of
+its beauty. But the picture faded with the passing of the train, the
+golden and crimson delights of the overgrowing flowers gave place to a
+soulless expanse destitute of beauty.
+
+I stopped at De Aar, which is the junction where the Orange Free State
+and Transvaal lines connect with the Cape Colony system. At De Aar I
+was anxious to observe the press of traffic. From Cape Town for
+Kimberley, Borderside, Fourteen Streams, and Mafeking, truck loads of
+horses and mules, waggon loads of general military stores were passing
+northwards to the front. In the interval, there were Imperial troops
+and men of the Cape Mounted Police. Indeed, the scene upon the
+platform was animated by martial spirit. If the train from the south
+was loaded with war material, the trains from the two Republics were
+packed with fugitives, among whom were many men who, in the hour of
+necessity, will, it is to be hoped, consider flight as the least
+satisfactory means of procedure. However, no goods are going through
+to the two Republics from Cape Colony, unless Mr. Schreiner has passed
+more ammunition over the Cape lines to the Transvaal. But things are
+working more satisfactorily down in Cape Town since it became known
+that the Cabinet would be discharged by the Governor, unless----and to
+a discerning politician of the Bond, whose income depends upon his
+salary from the House, a blank conveys many wholesome home truths.
+
+Travelling, even with the variety of emotion which the Karoo excites,
+is no great comfort in South Africa. One lives in an atmosphere of
+dust and Keating's. If the trains go no faster to Cairo when the rails
+be through, than they do to Buluwayo, the steamers will still retain
+the monopoly of passenger traffic. It takes a "week of Sundays" to
+reach railhead at Buluwayo, but there is some small consideration in
+the fact that such a journey has been made. It will become a feature
+in our Sabbatarian domesticity some day, and among railway journeys at
+the present time it is unique. Where else do express trains arrive
+several hours in advance of their scheduled time? Where else do goods
+trains arrive several days late? These are but the manifold and
+maddening perplexities of railway travelling in Africa. Yet if one
+kicks against the uncertainties of the desert service, there is sure
+to be an Eliphaz somewhere upon the train, whose philosophy being
+greater than his hurry, recognises that the element of expedition,
+when his train does arrive, is greater than the prospect of moving at
+all where no train comes. Time passes somehow on these journeys, and
+the chance prospect of obtaining a good meal, when one is dead certain
+to get a bad one, is enlivening. If it were not for such trifles, the
+journey would have no interest. To look forward to luncheon and an
+afternoon nap, to anticipate dinner and then digest it, makes the day
+run with pleasant monotony into the night. And night is worth the
+inspection. The beds in the train are comfortable enough, but the
+night is vested with misty beauty, and its fascination woos the
+traveller from his rest. There is the roar of the engine, the rumble
+of the carriages, the buzz of insects, and the faint rustle of the
+night wind over the plains. Then, looking into the night, one falls
+asleep, tired and stunned by the spectacle of the never-ending desert.
+But, in the morning there comes a change. The stretches of the Karoo
+are past, and breakfast at De Aar is in sight.
+
+At De Aar--a sea of tents with here and there a man--there begins the
+outward and visible signs of preparation against the necessities of
+the coming struggle. There are men and arms at De Aar and munitions of
+war, comprising the Yorkshire regiment, a wing of the King's Own Light
+Infantry under Major Hunt, and a section of the Seventh Field Company
+of Engineers under Lieutenant Wilson; but their numbers are
+impossible, much as their supplies be limited and seriously
+insufficient; and, as a consequence, I must not talk much about the
+interior linings of the British camp which has sprung up at De Aar,
+and which, within a few days of what must be the turning point of the
+present crisis, is so little able to cope with the exigencies of the
+situation. It is a protective measure, this little camp at the
+junction of the divergence in the railway system of the colony, placed
+in its present situation to guarantee the safety of the permanent way,
+and to ensure a modicum of safety to the traffic which is crowding
+north over the points at the meeting of the rails. It is a gorgeous
+piece of impudence; this minute establishment of British soldiers, and
+if it be impressed with the might and majesty of our Imperial Empire,
+it is also beset with the innumerable difficulties and trials which
+attend an isolated State.
+
+We are guarding the lines of communication between De Aar Junction and
+Norvals Pont, the bridge across the Orange River which unites the
+territory of the Orange Free State with the land of the Colony,
+between De Aar and the Camp at Orange River, between De Aar and many
+miles to the south in the direction of Cape Town. I believe that the
+practical influence of this particular unit extends so far south as
+Beaufort West, where the custody and patrol of the line is handed over
+to the care of the railway authorities, whose men are detailed to the
+all-important duty of guarding the culverts and bridges of the system.
+The greatest menace to our weakness in the present situation springs
+from the vast lines of communication over which we must watch and
+which, although lying well within our own borders, are endangered
+through the contributary sympathy of the Dutch who, resident and
+settled within our own Colony, and boasting some sort of idle
+observance of the obligations entailed upon them by such residence,
+have seldom by word, and not at all in spirit, forsworn their entire
+and cheerful assistance to the cause of the Transvaal. In any other
+campaign these fatigues would be unnecessary, and the services of the
+innumerable small detachments delegated to the duty would be released
+for more active work, but with this war the safe maintenance of our
+lines of communication will become a problem of most vital concern,
+and will be necessarily imbued with absorbing interest. Moreover,
+whatever the nature of the scheme for efficiently guarding these lines
+may be, due attention must be paid and every consideration given to
+the superior mobility of the Boer forces to that of our own troops, an
+advantage which will increase their facilities and chances of success
+should they exert themselves to harass any particular section of our
+inordinately long lines of communication.
+
+With the formation of a camp at De Aar, the trend which our campaign
+may assume becomes more definite. De Aar is but a little removed from
+Norvals Pont, an important bridge into the Orange Free State, which it
+is proposed to protect from the immediate base of the troops at De
+Aar, or to hold altogether from an ultimate base in the same direction
+at Colesberg. I propose to visit there before the next mail departs,
+since it be rumoured here that the town of Colesberg has been left
+entirely undefended by the military authorities, and that the end of
+the bridge, remote from this border and within the limits of the
+Orange Free State, is in the hands of an armed patrol from that
+Republic. When these things happen, and De Aar becomes the centre of a
+big base camp, the position will constitute another link in the chain
+of towns which are to be occupied by the Imperial forces along the
+western and southern borders of the Orange Free State, and whose
+occupation, should the troops arrive in time thus to execute the
+initiative, indicates our probable line of advance to be from a
+number of points, so that General Joubert will be unable to
+concentrate his troops before any one force. Upon our side, also,
+those frontier detachments that may be in occupation of the towns,
+will harass Transvaal and Free State borderside, suppress any rising
+within our own border areas, and be entirely subsidiary to the main
+columns, which will be simultaneously thrown forward from these three
+or four special points on the same extreme line of progression.
+
+Moreover, this plan of operations accentuates the detached and
+especial character of the Natal Field Force, restraining them to
+service in that colony, and restricting their activities to that
+sphere. These troops will occupy Laing's Nek, the ten thousand men
+already assembled in that Colony being reinforced before hostilities
+are declared, until the Field Service footing of the Natal Field Force
+will equal that of an army corps. The critical points in the present
+situation are the western and eastern borders of the Transvaal, where
+the young bloods from the backwoods are mostly gathered, and in their
+present state eminently calculated to force the hand of Oom Paul into
+an impromptu declaration of belligerency. The movements of the Natal
+forces will be confined for the moment to holding Laing's Nek,
+maintaining communication with the permanent base at Ladysmith and
+Pietermaritzburg, and in occupying Dundee, Colenso, and all such towns
+as fall within the limits of its exterior lines.
+
+From De Aar a division will support the left flank of the advance of
+the First Army Corps, divided, for purposes of more speedy
+concentration upon its ultimate base, into two divisions, which will
+reunite at Burghersdorp, _via_ the railways, to Middelburg and
+Stormberg Junction from their immediate bases of disembarkation at
+Port Elizabeth and East London. The total force will then advance in
+exterior lines upon the Orange Free State, maintaining the railway
+system upon their individual western flanks, so far as possible, as
+their individual lines of communication.
+
+While the Second Army Corps supports the situation in Natal, it is
+hoped that our forces in the Orange Free State border will either
+crush or drive the Boers back upon their ulterior lines towards
+Bloemfontein, which, with the assistance of the De Aar flanking column
+traversing the watershed of the Modder River in the direction of
+Kimberley, and in possible co-operation with a force from that base,
+they should be in a position to occupy. The capital will be held by
+the De Aar and Kimberley divisions, upon whom will then fall the work
+of protecting the lines of communication of the Southern Army Corps as
+it advances.
+
+After supporting De Aar, Kimberley, and the lines of communication
+with defensive units, and maintaining a western column by employing
+the service of the Mafeking force, the First Army Corps will begin the
+move upon Pretoria, in collaboration with the Second (Natal) Army
+Corps, the former once again advancing in twin columns from a mutual
+base. The western border will probably be held from Kimberley to Fort
+Tuli by the forces composing the western column, while a flying column
+is to be in readiness lest a wider area be given to the theatre of
+war, and it become necessary to cross the Limpopo River. It would
+appear, too, that there is also some possibility of a column moving
+from Delagoa Bay. By this advance Pretoria becomes the objective of
+the campaign after the occupation of the Orange Free State, but this
+depends to a great extent upon the policy pursued by General Joubert
+and the nature of the Natal operations. If the Boers give way and,
+acting upon interior lines, fall back upon Pretoria, as General
+Jackson fell back upon Richmond in 1864-1865, the Transvaal capital
+will at once become the objective of the British forces advancing upon
+exterior lines, the object of the campaign, once the Transvaal has
+been invaded, being to force a battle upon the combined forces of the
+Boers or to beset Pretoria. It will thus be seen that the theory of
+the British advance favours the concentration of troops upon the
+Transvaal and Orange Free State frontiers so that the Boer forces may
+be dislocated, retaining the railways and their lines of communication
+and, leaving the actual protection and pacification of the frontier to
+the local mounted police and to the special service corps assisted by
+a few detachments of Imperial troops, while no progressive movement
+will be made from any one point until the exterior line, upon which
+the entire advance will be conducted, has been thoroughly established.
+For the nonce extraordinary precautions are being taken to conceal the
+movements of troops, and I have withheld from publication at this
+moment much which could be given in support of the lines by which I
+have suggested our advance will be governed. This plan of campaign
+reads very prettily, but it seems to me, that we are making no
+allowances for possible disasters, for possible defeats, for
+unavoidable delays, which, should they occur, will hamper the mobility
+of our advance and restrict the celerity of our movements to a great
+and most serious extent. Despite the fact that the massing of troops
+at the selected points between De Aar and Mafeking, between Cape Town,
+Port Elizabeth, East London, and the ultimate and interested bases
+will proceed almost immediately, the successful evolution of our
+plans, the wisdom or foolishness of which are so soon to be put to the
+test, demands much greater forces than are calculated to be available
+during the next few weeks. At present, and until the latter days of
+October, the combined strengths of the Regular and Irregular forces in
+South Africa will not equal twenty thousand men, and yet we are
+dabbling with and making preparations against a plan of campaign which
+requisitions two Army Corps at least, and will probably require the
+services of not less than one hundred thousand men. I dread to think
+of what may happen if war should come within a few days, but we can do
+nothing but face what is a most intolerable position, and one which
+most easily might have been avoided. The outlook in the absence of
+efficient men and stores is indeed disheartening.
+
+Since I arrived upon the Orange Free State border I have omitted no
+opportunity to discuss with the Boers the question of the war. A
+friendly Boer, hailing from Utrecht, suggested the probable direction
+which the Boer plans, so far as they concerned Natal, might assume,
+and while they appear to be feasible, they reveal how curiously
+predominant among them is the idea that their arms will again defeat
+the British troops. The Transvaal Boers from Vryheid and Utrecht
+propose to attempt raids upon Natal and Zululand as the preliminaries
+to a rush upon Maritzburg and the southern district of Natal, by
+Weenen and Umvoti; Orange Free State Boers from the border areas will
+harass our soldiers as they move towards Laing's Nek, and, thus
+drawing the attention of the British troops, the road will be clear
+for those marching south on their attack upon the capital of Natal.
+All approaches to Laing's Nek upon the Dutch side of the border,
+already alien, have been fortified, fourteen guns being actually in
+position at the more important points. The British troops soon after
+leaving Ladysmith will have the Transvaal Boers on one side, the Free
+State Boers upon the other, and long before the Imperial troops can
+occupy the extreme border a commando of Boers from Wakkerstroom will
+have concentrated upon it. In the opinion of the Boers the effective
+occupation of Laing's Nek by either force will decide the war. The
+Boers all seem convinced that they can sweep the British forces from
+South Africa. The procedure of a campaign which finds much favour in
+their eyes includes the rising of the Swazis, the Zulus and the
+Basutos, who will be permitted to devastate Natal and as much of the
+south as they can penetrate, and whom they claim will be easily
+stirred against the Rooineks. The Boers will then feint with a small
+force upon the centre of our military occupation, while their entire
+army marches down upon Port Elizabeth, East London, or Cape Town, or
+proceeds by railway if they can secure the lines. They will hold open
+no lines of communication, because by that time Imperial arms will
+have been defeated, and it will only remain for President Kruger to
+dictate peace from Cape Town.
+
+This is actually the opinion of a Boer who administers for the
+Transvaal Government an important district, and who is under orders to
+proceed to the Natal border without loss of time. Surely he must be
+consumed with delusion and impotent fanaticism; nevertheless, educated
+Boers from the border side and living in the Cape Colony, who have
+come to the camp to invite the officers to a cricket match or some
+buck shooting, have all expressed this view. At present I have not
+met the Boer who can conceive the defeat of his own countrymen, while
+both Imperial and Republican Governments count upon the assistance of
+the natives. Upon the other hand, however, I am informed that there
+are many Boers who do not wish to fight, since they recognise the
+futility of any effort which they can direct against British troops;
+but, at the same time, should they be called out upon commando, there
+is no fear of their declining to obey, while, so far as my inquiries
+go, they have failed to elicit anything which would show the Boers to
+be moved by any view so eminently sound as this would be.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+BRICKS OF STRAW
+
+
+                                     THE CAMP, ORANGE RIVER,
+                                     _September 26th, 1899_.
+
+Soldiers and sand--clouds of sand whirring and eddying through the
+air, drifting through closed windows, piling in swift-mounting heaps
+against barred doors. That is the camp here, stretching upon both
+sides of the railway line in orderly rows, flanked upon either
+extremity by a ragged outspan of waggons, empty to-day but soon
+creating work for numerous fatigue parties when the orders come to
+push forward the supplies. At present it is only a small cluster of
+tents, many more tents than men--this to confuse the friendly Boers
+who, visiting the railway station refreshment bar for the purposes of
+espionage, stop to drink in an effort to gauge the strength of the
+camp by counting the ranks of dirty white tents which flap and quiver
+in the breezes. Such an impossible little camp, but so impressed with
+the true spirit.
+
+Colonel Kincaid, R.E., commands at Orange River, and his force
+comprises a few companies of the Loyal Lancashire Regiment, a troop or
+two of the Cape Police District II., sections of the Field Company of
+Engineers, a composite field battery and a few stores--but a general
+numerical insufficiency of men and munitions. Major Jackson, with
+Major Coleridge, commands the companies of the Loyal Lancashires that
+were detailed with him from Kimberley, where his regiment lies, for
+duty at this camp. Surgeon-Major O'Shanahan takes care of the field
+hospital which has been attached to the camp, and Captain Mills, R.A.,
+controls the artillery. It is a happy family, this British camp in
+which the necessity for hard work is understood and the members of
+whose circle willingly endure the difficulties and privations of their
+situation. From the ends of the earth they have come together to be
+dumped down upon the Orange River flats, where for many days they will
+remain an important unit in the scheme of preparation, but one which
+stands alone and aside from the general hurry and scurry of our
+belated movements. There is a bridge across the Orange River at this
+point, and it is the duty of protecting it and guaranteeing it from
+the attentions of the Boers, guarding its approaches by cunningly
+contrived gun emplacements and enveloping its definite security in a
+network of defensive measures, which is, for the time, the sole
+objective of the various officers and detachments that compose Colonel
+Kincaid's command.
+
+The conformation of the country abutting upon Orange River presents
+those composite peculiarities of construction which contribute more
+generally to the setting of the high veldt. Orange River is broken by
+hills and river-beds, dry courses with rock-strewn banks, patches of
+sand, sparsely grassed and destitute of bushes. The land to the west
+rolls smoothly to the watershed of the river, breaking into bush and
+short rises about the banks of the stream. The water clatters among
+stones and rocks to the north-west, leaving to the south-west and due
+west the same barren open sand flats. Upon the east there is a slight
+contrast to the evenness of the pastureless country which meets the
+sunset; but the fall of the land due south, south-east, south-west, is
+unchanging, the compass shifting due east and north-east before the
+abrupt and rugged lines of the country are exposed. Then, and then
+only, does the face of the country reveal its uncouth and
+uncomfortable character. East, whence the waters stream beneath the
+railway bridge, the watershed is herring-backed, concealing, beneath
+rough folds of rising ground, stretches of bush veldt and stony
+patches. High ridges debouch at right angles to the stream, with
+uncertain contours and abrupt declivities; detached kopjes rise from
+upon the face of the country, claiming classification with the ages
+around them, but standing aloof with forbidding mien--a formidable
+menace to the chance of successful storming. Parallel hills and ridges
+distinguish the hinterland of this watershed so far inland as the
+areas of the Orange Free State, while the broken and dangerous
+character of the country east-north-east, continuing until the
+watershed of the Modder River, still further prolongates these
+disturbing features. The valley of the river, within a mile from the
+stretch of flats which rolls away from the bases of the hills,
+converges until the sides lie within a few hundred yards of each
+other. There the stream rushes and roars with some force, until the
+wider reaches of the plain give to the pent-up waters a greater space
+of revolt. From the mouth of the valley the river wanders with easy
+indifference across a broader course to the west; gathering its volume
+from the seasons, and leaving in the hot weather a margin of shining
+stones upon both sides of the river bed. The hills are in pleasant
+contrast to the even tenour of the veldt, and the cool waters of the
+river invite repose. Small game lurk within the cover of the scrub,
+mountain duck haunt the mountain cataract; cattle roam across the
+land, snatching mouthfuls of dry herbage, while just now the sides of
+the hills throw back the echo of the military occupation, the noises
+of the camp, the calls of the horses upon the picket lines, the heavy
+thudding of the picks, the shrill rasping of the shovels in the places
+where the men are throwing up the necessary field works.
+
+Everywhere is the spectacle of orderly bustle. The summits of the
+hills are crowned with earthworks, brown lines of trenches traverse
+the valley, block houses command the entrances of the bridge. These
+are the signs of the times, encompassed in an unremitting rapidity of
+execution. Colonel Kincaid rides from point to point, throwing advice
+here, praise there, and expressing general satisfaction over the
+labours of his men, as the scheme of defences runs to its conclusion.
+Out across the plain, upon Reservoir Hill, the sappers are
+constructing an entrenched position under the direction of Captain
+Mills, R.A., and especially designed to protect the water supply.
+Roads have been cut across the rear face of the hill, a breastwork of
+stones and earth encircles the Reservoir, and gun emplacements flank
+either extremity. It is a pretty work, carefully conceived, skilfully
+constructed, commanding the portion of the camp, and sweeping the
+approaches to the bridge. From the top of Reservoir Hill, no great
+eminence, the surrounding country is easily inspected, and the more
+one scans and studies the peculiarities of its formation, the more
+one becomes impressed with the fact that it presents the gravest
+obstacles to the British principles of military operations. A
+well-equipped and mobile force will hold the hills for eternity--but
+God help the troops who are launched against these awful kopjes which
+create the strength of such positions. The officers commanding these
+detached units along this border have received instructions to prepare
+extensive lines of fortifications round their bases, and at De Aar, as
+at Orange River and elsewhere, these commands have been complied with,
+until now the positions need only the service of some good artillery
+to be made impregnable. When cables be at the disposal of a possible
+enemy, it is as well to be reticent upon the cardinal weaknesses
+within our lines, but already there are signs of the extreme haste
+with which the troops have been despatched to the front. No unit would
+appear to be complete, despite the months of warning in which there
+has been ample opportunity to prepare. Everything is rushed through at
+the last, and although urgent orders be issued to make ready against
+attack, no artillery is available for the purpose. Everything is
+obscured in idle talk or deferred by empty promise, and the
+authorities appear to be continuing a policy which gives to the Boers
+some justification of their hopes of success. The Imperial
+authorities, in relying so much upon the moral effect of their
+artillery, appear to forget that the better it is, the more important
+the results it achieves; the more important the position to be
+defended, the better it should be. The Boers lose nothing by
+possessing modern weapons of defence. But with a wing only of the
+King's Own Light Infantry to occupy De Aar, and four companies of the
+Loyal Lancashires to hold Orange River, the need of strong artillery
+support is manifest. It has been laid down that the proportion of guns
+to men is as near as possible three guns to one thousand men, but this
+proportion must depend upon the nature of the service upon which the
+force is to be employed, the topography of the theatre of war and the
+quality of the troops. A force intended more for the occupation of
+strong positions, must have a larger proportion of guns than an army
+intended for offensive operations in the field. De Aar, as one base of
+operations toward the lines of least resistance to the western,
+southern, and south-eastern approaches to the Orange Free State, is
+even more important than our position at Orange River, which is
+intended, in the event of any campaign, to protect the railway bridge
+and the lines of communication with the north. But at De Aar the lines
+of railway, which converge upon it, link Pretoria and Bloemfontein to
+Cape Town, connect the north with the south, join Cape Town with the
+south and south-east by a stretch of line almost parallel with the
+southern border of the Orange Free State. Yet, so dilatory have been
+the efforts of headquarters to obtain the necessary artillery, that,
+having reduced South Africa to a condition of war, they split up
+between De Aar, Orange River, and other defenceless, but important,
+strategic positions along the western border, improvised field
+batteries drawn from any garrison lumber room which came handy.
+
+The artillery at present upon this border is, as a consequence, the
+seven-pound muzzle-loader which was obsolete when the passing
+generation of officers were at the "shop." The inadequacy of the
+artillery is a matter of the gravest concern, since, even if the
+troops at these places be sufficient to police the disaffected areas,
+and to hold in check the local disposition to rebel, in face of the
+weapons of precision with which the Boer forces be armed, it would be
+impossible, should they move forward, for the British artillery to
+maintain any position which was incumbent upon the possession of good
+artillery. So well is this realised by our Intelligence Department,
+that elaborate precautions are taken by that Bureau, as well as all
+commanding officers, to prevent the enemy from discovering that, in
+its main part, the strength of the batteries in opposition has been
+drawn from derelicts in the garrison stores. These improvised field
+batteries might be of service in maintaining the line of communication
+if any advance of British troops be made, but as an actual factor in
+any defensive or offensive movements which the forces may undertake,
+their restricted utility escapes all serious consideration, and puts
+our present artillery almost at once out of action. The physical
+configuration of the country urgently calls for the immediate despatch
+of modern weapons, similar to those which the Sirdar used in his
+Soudan campaign. In addition to this an exchange, piece by piece,
+between these seven-pounder muzzle-loading monstrosities and the
+converted twelve-pounders, breech-loaders and high-velocity quick
+firers, might be seasonably effected. Five-inch howitzers, too, should
+also be sent forward. But the lack of reliable artillery is
+scandalous, and the sooner that guns, of a calibre which is in a true
+proportion to the importance of the positions which they will command,
+arrive upon the scene, the less uncertain will be the results of any
+actual contact between our forces in their present deplorable
+condition and those of the African Republics with whom we are so soon
+to be at war.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+DIAMONDS AND WHITE FEATHERS
+
+
+                                        THE CAMP, KIMBERLEY,
+                                     _September 28th, 1899_.
+
+This usually dull and dirty mining station has now been occupied by a
+small detachment of British troops. The force arrived here from the
+camp at Orange River within the week, and include the 1st Loyal North
+Lancashire, with its usual complement of machine guns, No. 1 Section
+of the 7th Field Company of Royal Engineers, 23rd Company of Garrison
+Artillery with 2.5 seven-pound muzzle-loaders on mountain carriages
+(which are almost useless and certainly obsolete weapons), an
+organised Army Medical Staff, and a transport most indifferently
+equipped if it be intended for immediate and prolonged field service.
+Yet it is claimed that nothing has been omitted which could make this
+force an imposing factor in the chance of attack to which, from its
+exposed situation, the hapless Kimberley is threatened. The Loyal
+Lancashire Regiment is in full strength, but the battalions have been
+divided between the positions here and the camp just south of the
+Orange River. It is, of course, doubtful whether much be gained by
+splitting up our forces along the border into small units, but at the
+present juncture, when so few troops be in the colony, this policy is
+receiving its own justification. We are all urgently hoping for the
+arrival of troops, since if there were a general advance of the Dutch
+troops, a contingency not by any means altogether remote, upon any one
+of these well-defined but indifferently manned places, the task of
+maintaining the advanced lines would be a severe strain upon the
+efforts of the very limited number of men that are available at each
+point. It is surely only within the limits of the British Empire that
+a frontier line over 1,500 miles in extent would be kept absolutely
+without any defensive measures; while it is Boer activity during the
+past few weeks that has induced the Colonial authorities to adopt
+their present precautions. Our troops are now more or less efficiently
+prepared at certain points along this Western boundary, and, if no
+order has yet come for their mobilisation, the steps necessary to
+effect it have all been completed. At Kimberley, in the few days which
+have elapsed, wonders in the preparation of the town's defences have
+been worked, and the alarm which caused so much panic there before the
+arrival of the soldiers has now, in part, subsided.
+
+For many hours before the arrival of the troops at Kimberley crowds of
+interested spectators besieged the railway station and thronged the
+dusty thoroughfares of the town. The Imperial men detrained very
+smartly to the sound of the bugle, off-loading the guns and ammunition
+to the plaudits and delights of an admiring crowd. The actual
+detraining took place at the Beaconsfield siding, two miles from
+Kimberley, the men not making their camp in the town until the next
+morning. For the time the transport was stored in the goods sheds,
+and the troops arranged to bivouac beside the railway. The traffic
+manager had prepared fires and boiling water before the men came, so
+that soon after their arrival they were all served with dinner. The
+detailing of guards, posting of sentries, and other evolutions
+incidental to open camp, permitted Kimberley to indulge its taste for
+military pomp and vanities. Imperial troops have not been here since
+two squadrons of the 11th Hussars passed through from Mashonaland in
+November, 1890, and the presence of the troops has inspired the
+townfolk with a magnificent appreciation of the gallant men who have
+come up for their protection. It is hoped that special means will be
+taken to interest the troops in the few hours which they have free
+from work. At present all attention is being devoted to the
+construction of the defences of the town, to the formation of adequate
+volunteer assistance, to the arrangement of a complete system of alarm
+and rallying spots. Lieut.-Colonel Kekewich, in command of the
+Imperial camp here, is anxious to assist the people in rifle practice
+and field-firing; while the Diamond Fields Artillery and the De Beers
+Artillery are to be called out for temporary service in conjunction
+with the Imperial Artillery.
+
+The rumour that a Boer force is within the vicinity of Kimberley has
+done much to assist in the speedy formation of local forces, and now
+that the train mules and private bullock teams have been requisitioned
+for the Imperial service, there is much solemn speculation upon the
+date of hostilities. The fact is that no one here can, with any
+certainty, predict an hour. A shot anywhere will set the borderside
+aflame. Moreover, the Boers are daily growing more impudent. At
+Borderside, where the frontiers are barely eighty yards apart, a field
+cornet and his men, who are patrolling their side of the line, greet
+the pickets of the Cape Police who are stationed there with exulting
+menaces and much display of rifles. But if the Dutch be thirsting in
+this fashion for our blood, people at home can rest confident in the
+fact that there will be no holding back upon the part of our men once
+the fun begins. Seldom has such a determined and ferocious spirit
+animated any British force as that one which is now stimulating the
+troops in South Africa. Every man is sick of the Cabinet's delay, but
+they find consolation in the fact that the slow movement of the
+Ministerial machine is undertaken to avoid any precipitation of the
+crisis before the forces to be engaged have arrived upon the scene.
+Then it is every man's ambition to take his own share in "whopping"
+Kruger.
+
+I did not hurry to leave Kimberley; but the place where the diamonds
+come from, the least admirable of any town on earth, is no longer
+essential to my existence. It has neither charm nor elegance, and it
+is sufficiently irregular in its construction to be the most barbarous
+example of architecture in South Africa. It greets the traveller
+enveloped in the haze of heat, and it bids him farewell through a
+cloud of sand. But if one has once imagined what the appearance of the
+mining town may be, let him give it a wide berth. It is a conglomerate
+jumble of tin houses with dusty streets dedicated to modern industry,
+and palpitating with the mere mechanical energy of native labour.
+
+[Illustration: Major Lord Edward Cecil, C.S.O.]
+
+Kimberley, however, was a convenient immediate base between Orange
+River and Mafeking. Around these two places rumour was spreading a
+well-woven net of probabilities, intimate yet inherently
+impossible. War, bloody and fierce, was alternately looming large in
+the horizon just above their situations, so for the moment I tarried,
+watching the approach of impending battle from afar off. It was a fine
+feeling, the constant thrill caused by the mere vividness of martial
+rumours. They came from Buluwayo in the North, they came from Cape
+Town in the South, they were brought daily from Bloemfontein; and if
+they gave infinite zest to the passing hours, it was but the
+happenings of the hour that they were doomed to be misbelieved. To
+listen to the gossip and rumours of Headquarters at once became the
+most serious interest which our life contained just now. Spies are
+seen everywhere. Within the shade of every shadow there is said to
+lurk a Boer secret service agent, and, as a consequence, the attitude
+of the public is one in which each figuratively lays a grimy finger to
+his nose and breathes blasphemies in whispers to his confiding friend.
+The spy mania which swept through France but a few weeks ago has
+appeared here, endowed with magnificent vitality. At Mafeking it has
+dominated both the military and the public, and, as an illustration, I
+append the official notice, on page 46, in which many of these gentry
+are warned from the town by Lord Edward Cecil, Chief Staff Officer to
+Colonel Baden-Powell.
+
+    NOTICE.
+
+    =SPIES=
+
+    There are in town to-day nine
+    known spies. They are hereby
+    warned to leave before 12 noon to-morrow
+    or they will be apprehended.
+
+    By order,
+    E. H. CECIL, Major,
+    C.S.O.
+
+    Mafeking,
+
+    7th Oct., 1899.
+
+    THE NOTICE TO SPIES ISSUED BY COL. BADEN-POWELL.
+
+Kimberley has not yet gone so far as this notice, but a similar step
+is in serious consideration, and the notice will soon be promulgated.
+What with spies, war scares, reports of Boer invasion, and of active
+hostilities having commenced, the Western border is living in a seethe
+of excitement, and appreciating the crisis with but doubtful
+enjoyment, and many signs of such indisputable terror. Kimberley has
+called forth its volunteers, who in name are glorious, but in
+utility uncertain. The Town Guard, after fortifying itself with much
+Dutch courage, has taken unto itself a weapon of precision of which it
+knows nothing. Infantry and musketry drill have not existed for the
+town of diamonds; they are for the Cape Police, for the Mounted
+Rifles, for Imperial troops; but for those who are regular in their
+mining, but irregular in their drill, there is none of it. These
+heroes shake with terror in private, but they gnash their teeth with
+impotent valour in public; at heart they are rank cowards, for the
+most part leaving to the few decently spirited the duties of volunteer
+defence, and to the soldiery and constabulary the rigours of the
+coming battle.
+
+Nothing perhaps has been so discreditable as the hurried flight of men
+from these towns which are within the area of possible hostilities. It
+is perhaps different where they belong to the Transvaal, but one would
+expect Englishmen, who have seen their womenfolk to places of
+security, to proffer such service as could be turned to account in
+these hours of emergency. It is an unpleasant fact to reflect upon
+that the leaders of the general panic and consequent exodus from these
+towns are mostly Britishers. From sheer force of numbers the
+white-feathered brigade merits solicitous contempt.
+
+Such is Kimberley in the passing hour, and as I waited there to see
+whether the rumours would crystallise into actualities, the word was
+passed round that three commandos of the Boers were concentrating upon
+Mafeking. Heavens! how the specials skittled! By horse and on foot, by
+cab and cart, they dashed to the station. Lord! and the train had gone
+some hours! But, with the instinct of true war-dogs, they fled in
+special expresses to the scene where attack was threatened. They might
+have crawled from Kimberley to Mafeking on hands and knees, for Boers
+may camp and Boers may trek, but war is still afar off. Had we not
+travelled in such haste, the journey might have proved of interest,
+but impatience made the time speed quickly, and the frontier posts
+upon the road went by unnoticed. Just now these frontier stations are
+of public interest. At Fourteen Streams, at Borderside, at Vryburg,
+Boer commandos have laagered within a few yards of the frontier fence,
+and since human nature is ever prone to politeness, it has become the
+daily fashion for Boer and Britisher to swear at one another across
+the intervening wires. John Bosman, a Borderside notoriety, implicated
+in a late rising of the natives against Imperial authority, is in
+command of one hundred and fifty "cherubs," as the Boer captain dubs
+his gallant band. Matutinal and nocturnal greetings have enabled the
+two forces to become acquainted with one another, and it is held to be
+a sporting thing for men, from either force, to invade each other's
+territory, inviting blasphemies and creating some excitement, since at
+Borderside the friendly relations between the two countries be
+altogether gainsaid.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+TWO DAYS BEFORE WAR
+
+
+                                         THE CAMP, MAFEKING,
+                                        _October 9th, 1899_.
+
+Mafeking lies a day's journey by the train from Vryburg, and was once
+the terminus of the Cape railway system pending its extension
+northwards. Just now it is the embodiment of a fine Imperialism. There
+is the dignity of empire in the shape of her Majesty's Imperial
+Commissioner, Major Gould Adams, C.B., C.M.G.; the majesty of might,
+as suggested by Colonel Baden-Powell, of the Frontier Force; by
+Colonel Hore, of the Protectorate Regiment; by Colonel Walford, of the
+British South Africa Police; by Colonel Vyvyan, base commandant; and
+there are, too, the various strengths attached to the respective
+commands. For weeks this little place has been terrorised by Boer
+threats, until the presence of the military has reassured them. Now,
+however, the veldt beyond the town has been effectively occupied by
+the different commands, while within the town, or beyond its outer
+walls, noise and bustle everywhere embody the grim reality of war. It
+has not been possible to visit the different camps, in time for this
+mail, since the exigencies of war have interfered with the dispatch
+of the English letters from the more remote districts, and until the
+country is more settled the night train service is altogether
+discontinued. This week's mail is two days in advance of its usual
+fixture; but perhaps we are fortunate, since the mail coach to
+Johannesburg has discontinued running, its last journey from Mafeking
+being confined to taking back to the Transvaal the few things which
+belonged to it in Mafeking. The supplementary coach was behind, its
+harness was stored in sacks upon the top, and thus it made its
+departure. It had better have remained at Mafeking, for no sooner had
+the coach passed the border-line than its mules were commandeered for
+transport by order of the Transvaal Government.
+
+Mafeking has entered into warlike preparations with commendable zeal,
+but in reality men are uncertain whether to face the music or to skip
+with their women and children. Ostensibly they wish to bear the brunt
+of an attack upon their town, but as time wears on and the numbers of
+the Boer force concentrated upon the border increase, the number of
+men available for actual volunteer service grows beautifully less.
+Mines have been laid down, fortifications thrown up, the volunteers
+and local ambulance services have been called out, and an armoured
+train patrols the line. The staff officers are everywhere, a crowd of
+journalists drifts about smothered beneath a variety of secret
+reports. Every one wears a worried look, and still the expected does
+not happen. To break the monotony of false alarms, of the sound of
+armed feet marching anywhere, of bells by day and rockets by night, of
+irresponsible gossips chattering upon subjects they do not understand,
+of the plague of locusts thick as fleas on Margate Sands (a plague as
+great as the military bore)--there is lacking but one thing--WAR. The
+troops want it to prove their efficiency, the journalists demand it to
+justify their existence, the countryside approves since it has sent
+the price of foodstuffs and of native labour to a premium, the Boers
+want it as the first step in that great scheme by which they hope to
+reduce London to ashes and sweep the red-vests of Great Britain into
+complete oblivion.
+
+But if the path of glory lies in that direction for the Boer
+sharpshooter, Mafeking will present him with a splendid spectacle just
+so soon as the curtain rises upon the drama of mortal combat between
+Boer and Britisher. It is a straggling town this Mafeking, and covers
+an area wider than its dignity demands. But should Commandant Cronje,
+who is hovering upon the border at Louw's Farm with 6,000 Boers, come
+down, in that spirit of unctuous rectitude which epitomises the
+Scripture and so distinguishes the Boers, a bill will be settled by
+this little town against the man who, already the hero of many
+historical iniquities, baulked Jameson of his raid.
+
+Upon this point Colonel Baden-Powell's notice to the inhabitants is
+instructive:--
+
+     NOTICE.
+
+     DEFENCE MINES.
+
+     "The inhabitants are warned that mines are being laid at
+     various points outside the town in connection with the
+     defences. Their position will be marked, in order to avoid
+     accidents, by small red flags.
+
+     "Cattle herds and others should be warned accordingly.
+
+     "Mafeking: Dated this 7th day of October, 1899."
+
+If this throws a sidelight upon the situation here, the second notice
+paints in the background with gloomy shadows:--
+
+     "NOTICE.--It is considered desirable to state to the
+     inhabitants of Mafeking what is the situation up to date.
+
+     "Forces of armed Boers are now massed upon the Natal and
+     Bechuanaland Borders. Their orders are not to cross the
+     border until the British fire a shot, and as this is not
+     likely to occur, at least for some time, no immediate danger
+     is to be apprehended. At the same time a rumour of war in
+     Natal or other false alarm might cause the Boers upon our
+     border to take action, and it is well to be prepared for
+     eventualities.
+
+     "It is possible they might attempt to shell the town, and
+     although every endeavour will be made to provide shelter for
+     the women and children, yet arrangements could be made with
+     the railway to move any of them to a place of safety if they
+     desire to go away from Mafeking, and it is suggested that
+     some place on the Transvaal border, such as Palapye Siding,
+     or Francistown, might be more suitable and less expensive
+     places than the already crowded towns of the colony. The men
+     would, of course, remain to defend Mafeking, which, with its
+     present garrison and defences, will be easy to hold. Those
+     desirous of leaving should inform the Stationmaster,
+     Mafeking, their number of adults and children, class of
+     accommodation required, and destination.
+
+                                      "COLONEL BADEN-POWELL,
+                        "Colonel Commanding Frontier Forces.
+                                    "October 7th, Mafeking."
+
+One turns from this to learn that streets in the town are barricaded,
+that the houses are sandbagged, that the railway is patrolled by an
+armour-plated train, which is imposing if incapable of much
+resistance. It is fitted with Nordenfeldt and Maxim quick-firing
+machine guns, and provided with a phonophone and an acetylene
+searchlight which stands like a fiery dragon at one end of the car.
+The train is in three parts, the engine being placed between two
+trucks. Each of the vehicles is about thirty feet long, mounted on
+four pairs of wheels, and is capable of holding sixty men. The entire
+train is covered over with 3/4-inch steel armour-plate over double
+iron rails, but at some recent trial the bullets from Lee-Metfords and
+Martinis penetrated at 200 yards' range through all thicknesses of
+armour.
+
+Mafeking is situated upon a rise about three hundred yards north of
+the Molopo River, and from time to time its history has been
+associated with military enterprises. It is not an unimportant town,
+and in that day when it has been connected by railway with the
+Transvaal and its present system has been improved, its commercial
+importance will receive material increase. The present railway, which
+cuts through Mafeking in its journey to Buluwayo, is to the west of
+the town, running north and south and crossing the Molopo River by an
+iron bridge, at which point the trend of the railroad inclines to the
+west. To the west of the railway again is the native stadt, extending
+to both sides of the river, and commencing about half a mile from the
+railway. The stadt extends to the west from the base of a rise beyond
+the bed of the river which, at present, covers the exterior line of
+the western outposts. Near the railway the ground slopes gradually for
+a considerable distance, while the country around Mafeking is flat in
+general, but across the Molopo, to the south and south-east, it
+commands the town, while the ground to the west of the stadt commands
+the stadt. The native village rests upon this western face, and, owing
+to the rough character of the country upon which the stadt lies, this
+native town has received the name of "The Place among the Rocks."
+About a mile from the town, and slightly east, there is an old fort
+called Cannon Kopje, a hideous collection of stones, which is held by
+a detachment of the British South Africa Police. It has an interior
+diameter of some thirty yards. The native location lies between Cannon
+Kopje and the town, on the southern bank of the river. The native
+stadt consists of Kaffir huts. Further east, and between the native
+location and Cannon Kopje, on the northern bank of the river, extend
+the brickfields, while a little further in the same direction is
+MacMullan's Farm. Between the farm and the ground to the north-east is
+the racecourse and the waterworks, which are connected by a pipe with
+The Springs, a natural water-hole to the east of the town. Cannon
+Kopje is due south of the town, the cemetery north, the native stadt
+west, the racecourse east. Between these points there are a few
+buildings which serve as local landmarks. There is the Convent to the
+north-east corner, Ellis's Corner south-east, the Pound south-west,
+and the British South Africa Police Barracks west.
+
+[Illustration: Outpost and Entrenchments, Southern Front.]
+
+The town of Mafeking has been built upon a rock, the centre of the
+town being the market square. Buildings extend at all points from the
+square, running into the veldt, showing an irregularity of design and
+no architectural perfection. The town is principally composed of
+bungalows, built of mud-bricks, with roofs of corrugated iron. The
+population in time of peace includes some 2,000 whites and some 6,000
+natives. Just now there are perhaps 1,500 whites, 8,000 natives, the
+ordinary population of the native village being swelled by the influx
+of some native refugees from the Transvaal. The perimeter of the
+defences is between five and six miles. The armoured train protects
+the north-west front. Between the railway on the north-west and the
+Convent, there are some trenches, built with an eye to their future
+use. Upon the western and eastern bases of the town there are further
+trenches, manned by the Protectorate Regiment, the Town Guard, and
+other local volunteer corps. The town was garrisoned by the Cape
+Police under Inspector Marsh and Inspector Brown. Colonel Walford held
+Cannon Kopje with the British South Africa Police. Colonel Hore
+commanded the Protectorate Regiment, which was scattered about the
+defences of the town under its squadron officers. The western outposts
+were entrusted to Major Godley, while in this direction there were
+also the Women's Laager and the Refugee Laager in Hidden Hollow. To
+the south-west was Major Godley's headquarters. Below this, and
+further to the west, was Captain Marsh's post, upon the other side of
+which, along the eastern front of the town, there are many forts in
+process of construction. There are De Koch's, Musson's, Ellitson's
+Kraal, Early's Corner. These forts will be garrisoned by the Town
+Guard, and it is hoped that they will be provided with adequate
+protection from the enemy's artillery. The Railway Volunteers
+garrisoned the cemetery and controlled an advanced trench about eight
+hundred yards to the front. In the meantime, every effort is being
+made to press forward the work of constructing the defences, and every
+one appears to be willing to assist. The aspect of the town is
+gradually changing, and in the little time that is left to us we hope
+to ensconce ourselves behind something of an impregnable defence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE SKIRMISH AT FIVE MILE BANK
+
+
+                                         THE CAMP, MAFEKING,
+                                       _October 14th, 1899_.
+
+Early this morning a mounted patrol under Captain Lord Charles
+Bentinck reported the Boers in strong position to the north of the
+town, and engaging them at once a general fight ensued.
+
+Colonel Baden-Powell, upon receiving this information, instructed
+Captain Fitzclarence, D Squadron Protectorate Regiment, which is
+commanded by Colonel Hore, to cover the right flank of the armoured
+train, which had already moved out to support the patrol of A
+squadron, and which, under the direction of Captain Williams, British
+South Africa Police, drove the Boer artillery from two positions.
+
+It may be said that this movement began the more serious and certainly
+the more determined portion of the engagement. Captain Fitzclarence
+was accompanied by seventy men. Upon the termination of the fight he
+had twelve wounded, two dead, and two others wounded so seriously that
+they since died. The firing-line at no time contained more than two
+troops, who, in extended order, and having seized the little cover
+which was available, hotly contested the position against four hundred
+Boers. Upon the arrival of the squadron under Captain Fitzclarence the
+Boers again began to fall back, and withdrawing their right flank from
+its propinquity to the armoured train, they projected their entire
+force well beyond the right flank of Captain Fitzclarence. The two
+forces both in extended order, the one falling back upon the lines of
+a position which had been carefully selected and which was admirably
+adapted to their methods of fighting, the other pursuing, then
+prepared to settle matters between themselves. Had Captain
+Fitzclarence but realised it, and had this young officer not been so
+intrepid, he would have recognised in this Boer movement the ruse by
+which they hoped to entice the "Red necks" within range of a position
+from which they could be more effectually surrounded. The motive in
+their movement to the rear was to secure the ample protection which
+was offered to them by the low ridge covered with timber, scrub, large
+masses of rock, and cut up by many little sluits, which extended along
+the line of their retreat. When once the Boers had gained this ridge
+they faced about, though it must not be imagined their retirement was
+in any way a mad gallop. They fell back in as good order as our
+squadron advanced, but so soon as they had lined up upon the ridge it
+could be seen how very greatly the Boer detachment out-numbered the
+men opposed to them. Moreover, in a little their artillery again spoke
+for itself, impressing the situation with still greater gravity. When
+the Boer guns opened fire Captain Fitzclarence very wisely availed
+himself of the shelter of three native huts, for the better protection
+of the horses and any wounded that might come on. Leaving his horses
+here, he advanced with his men in extended order, until he had secured
+a line of front immediately adjacent to the Boers. Indeed, our
+firing-line was at first only four hundred yards from the ridge; but,
+after a short experience of such close quarters, it was found to be
+wiser to take up a position some four hundred yards further off. The
+action of Captain Fitzclarence in endeavouring to meet the Boer
+commando was one of those inopportune acts of gallantry where loss,
+should the fight be successful, is overlooked. Technically speaking,
+of course, the strategy was all at fault, and it soon was seen how
+very serious the situation of Squadron D had become. By good luck I had
+joined this squadron in its move to the front, and it was very
+interesting to observe how a force, whose composite qualities were
+quite unknown, showed itself to be worthy of the utmost respect, and a
+corps upon which every reliance could be placed. Our men did not seem
+to mind the formidable odds against which they contended. The only
+disconcerting thing at the outset of the action being the position of
+the artillery on the Boer side, but for some reason the Boers ceased
+their shell fire very shortly after the action had begun. This again
+is another of those extraordinary blunders which creep into most
+fighting. The Boers might have wiped Squadron D out of existence by
+playing their nine-pounders upon our position. As it was, the Boer
+commandant withdrew his artillery from the fight and relied solely
+upon his rifles. From the little ridge, which, when our own
+firing-line had fallen back, was barely five hundred yards distant,
+there came a shower of Mauser and Martini bullets. The direction from
+which the fire came at first suggested that the Boers were undecided
+as to the area of the position which they would occupy, since shortly
+after the action began the enemy's line of fire expanded until it
+extended beyond our front. For the moment the firing-line developed,
+continuing to expand until it became evident that the fire of their
+either flank was here most effectually enveloping the rear of our
+position, and endangering our line of retreat as well as those who had
+been sent to the improvised hospital in the native huts. But it was
+impossible to avoid such a contingency with the numbers against which
+we had to contend. Indeed, there was no point from which this
+enveloping movement could be escaped, since the men with Captain
+Fitzclarence were already unduly extended. The rifle fire was very
+heavy.
+
+From the ridge of the Boer position our complete formation and the
+situation of each unit could be seen. It merely required a little
+sharpshooting, keen sight, and sufficient energy to cause a disaster.
+Our men lay upon the ground seeking cover where they could find it,
+but they had neither the trees, nor the low-lying shrubs, nor the
+rocks, nor the sluits which had lent themselves to the Boers' shelter.
+They simply lay, a determined body of men, individually keen for
+distinction, and individually keen to put the Boers out of existence.
+The firing became hot and so rapid that in a very short time the heavy
+drain upon our ammunition was beginning to have effect. This again
+establishes the position of D Squadron. There were no supplies, nor
+was there any artillery support until too late. There was no
+ambulance, and no effective preparation for retirement. The horses
+behind the huts, the men in the front, were each in a position from
+which it certainly seemed that escape was impossible. The Boers, upon
+the contrary, had a train of supplies and an excellent line of cover
+for retreat.
+
+The first Boer shell killed two horses and reduced to ruins a hut from
+the group which had given some protection to the wounded. The second
+shell fell wide, exploding, with no effect, into a sand heap. Between
+the intervals of shelling, the fire from the Boer Maxims whistled
+across the open spaces between the two firing-lines with a discord
+which was altogether out of harmony with the calmness and coolness of
+our men who, so soon as they had settled down to the serious business
+of the engagement, did not seem at all to mind the firing.
+
+Two cousins, Corporal Walshe and Corporal Parland, Irishmen, were shot
+dead very soon after the engagement opened, but the absence of
+ambulance arrangements prevented those who were wounded in the
+advanced position from falling back to the rear. With a quiet and
+unsuspected courage they just stopped where they were shot until they
+could muster sufficient strength to drag themselves to the rear. Each
+wounded form became, as it crawled along, the objective of the Boer
+rifle fire, and no few of those who had been hit in action were hit
+again as they made their way to the field hospital. Here Major
+Anderson, with whom I remained from the moment of my arrival until we
+retired--who told me afterwards that it was a mere chance which caused
+him to accompany the squadron to the field, since in the confusion and
+din no one had thought to give him his orders--was busily dressing the
+men as they came in. The total area of the improvised dressing station
+was perhaps half a dozen yards; into that crowded six or seven horses,
+seven or eight wounded men, the Surgeon-Major, his orderly, and all
+those others who made their way through the firing-line from time to
+time. There seemed to be indescribable confusion in this little spot.
+The wounded men lay between horses' legs, rested upon one another,
+crouched against the walls of the huts, each recognising that the
+situation was one of gravity, and endeavouring to assist so far as he
+was able; those who were not too severely wounded helped to undress
+those who had been less fortunately hit, and to each as he fell back
+from the firing-line to have his wounds dressed, there was thrown a
+merry jest from his comrades. The nature of the wounds created no
+little interest among the men, since it was the first time that any
+one had seen the effect, upon human beings, of the Mauser bullets. One
+man as he came back was advised not to sit down; another man, with
+extraordinary coolness in seeing the nature of his wounds, which were
+seven, exclaimed with a quaint blasphemy, that it still might be
+possible for him to enjoy the functions of a married man. But if this
+were the scene at the hospital base, the scene at our firing-line and
+at that upon the Boer side was very different. We possibly occupied a
+line of front some eighty yards in extent, and as the Boers saw that
+the hospital hut was becoming the centre of our position, so they
+extended their lines until a direct cross fire from the extremities of
+the two flanks were added to the direct fire from the centre; each
+man, therefore, was under a converging fire from three distinct
+points, and had it not been that the Boers' aim was not so good as
+their range our losses would have been much more serious than has
+happily proved to be the case. We could see the Boers sitting in the
+branches of the trees; we could see them crouching beneath bushes; we
+could detect them, from the fire of their rifles, in the shelter of
+the rocks and in the depths of the sluits. It soon became the first
+serious consideration with our men to try to hit them as they sat in
+the branches of the trees, and it was because Private Wormald caught
+sight of a piece of a paper as it dropped from a tree that he was able
+to shoot the Dutchman who was known to have shot the two cousins. It
+was almost a unique method of warfare. Anon and again our fellows
+enjoyed a little Boer potting among the foliage of the trees. Here and
+there a body was seen to fall heavily from a branch, or to spring up
+and fall heavily into a bush; that was as much as we could gauge of
+the effect of our own handiwork. Those who were behind the stones were
+possibly as safe as those who were in the sluits, but through the lack
+of any effective support our shooting, good as it may have been, was
+not sufficiently strong for us to maintain our position. If D Squadron
+were to save itself from an unfortunate disaster it seemed that it
+would have to fall back. The wounded men had come in so rapidly from
+the front, and ammunition had been so heavily expended, that many of
+those situated upon the extreme flanks of our position were completely
+without ammunition. In one case five men had no ammunition left, and
+one volunteered to go to the rear to obtain some from those who had
+been wounded, and were consequently out of action. He successfully
+accomplished this errand, sustaining, however, such wounds as must
+prove fatal.
+
+Captain Fitzclarence maintained his splendid isolation as long as
+possible, and just as every one was wondering why, in the name of
+Heaven, no artillery had been sent to support the squadron in a
+position it was never intended to occupy, a gun detachment was seen
+to gallop into action on the extreme right flank. Between our men and
+the gun perhaps a mile stretched, and when we could see that they were
+preparing to fire, each for a brief moment stopped to congratulate his
+fellow upon the succour at hand. In this they didn't think of
+themselves, but they hoped that with the aid of the gun they might
+still be able to maintain their position and give the enemy a hiding.
+
+Suddenly a cloud of smoke hung over the gun and a shell shrieked
+through the air. We rapidly speculated upon the amount of damage it
+would make, when, with noisy force, it burst among us. We thought at
+first that the shell had fallen short, and we hoped the next would
+reach the enemy, but when Lieutenant Murchison, who was in charge of
+the gun, dismissed his second shell, and it was so well directed as to
+fall upon one of the three huts behind which we were sheltering, the
+luckless position of D Squadron received unmerited but instantaneous
+aggravation and aggrievement, since it was turning the tables with a
+vengeance upon the enemy when the guns coming to our support set,
+forthwith, to shell us. The menace which our own artillery had thus
+unconsciously become to one portion of our wounded men about these
+huts had to be immediately removed, and I was one of two who were
+permitted to carry intelligence of his mistake to the officer in
+charge of the seven-pounder. In galloping across to the position of
+the gun, the third shell thrown in this direction burst just past my
+horse's head, the force of its wind almost lifting me from the saddle.
+The moment was of interest, and I only realised my escape when, upon
+returning, I found the base of the shell and my helmet lying quite
+close to each other. When a new direction had been given to the guns,
+and their fire brought to bear upon the position which the Boers
+occupied, the rifle fire from the front of the ridge gradually
+slackened, while, under cover of the very excellent work which this
+gun was executing, our men fell back upon the hospital. Here an order
+had just arrived instructing Fitzclarence to send back his wounded to
+the armoured train, those uninjured covering the movement. While the
+squadron was engaged in completing this order, no shots were fired
+from the position of the Boers, and we concluded that they also were
+engaged in withdrawing at discretion. Captain Fitzclarence, Lieutenant
+Swinburne, and myself were the last to leave the line of action,
+tailing off ourselves in the same open order that the remainder of the
+squadron had been ordered to preserve. As we retired Captain
+Fitzclarence put three wounded horses out of their misery, leaving
+their bodies for the vultures that were already wheeling in circles in
+the realms of space above us. These were the last shots fired in this
+action, although through mistake, the Boers had fired upon the
+ambulance train, mistaking it for a new instrument of destruction.
+Subsequently we heard that the Boers buried their dead at
+Ramathlabama, and we also have heard that all the houses in that place
+have been seized as accommodation for the 107 Boers who were wounded
+in the fight. These numbers may probably be exaggerated, but there is
+no cause to doubt that their loss was much greater than ours, since
+the proportion of their men to ours was greater than twelve to one.
+Saturday thus initiated the Boer war along this frontier, and after
+the morning's excitement the rest of the day passed without incident.
+Colonel Baden-Powell, Colonel Hore, and Colonel Walford, the one as
+the colonel in command, the others as the commanding officers of the
+Protectorate Regiment and the British South Africa Police,
+congratulated their men upon the stand which they had made in the
+morning, and the courage which they had displayed. Brevet-Major Lord
+Edward Cecil, C.S.O., described Captain Fitzclarence's movement as
+brilliant. It is a question whether this movement was not, at least,
+characterised by an equal amount of foolhardiness. However, the
+officer himself showed such coolness in this his baptism of fire as to
+deserve much congratulation upon his individual gallantry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE FIRST DAY OF BOMBARDMENT
+
+
+                                         THE CAMP, MAFEKING,
+                                       _October 22nd, 1899_.
+
+There was some sign that the engagement of Saturday between the
+Protectorate troops and the Boer forces investing Mafeking would have
+been the precursor of a series of minor fights, which, if not of much
+importance in themselves, yet would have been of interest and
+encouraging to the command generally.
+
+As it happens, however, the engagement of Saturday is the first, and,
+up to the present, the only action of any importance, of any interest
+whatsoever, that has been brought about between the two forces.
+General Cronje is evidently a man of some humanity, though it is
+perhaps possible that the motives which direct his present policy of
+exceeding gentleness towards the "Rooineken" that he be besieging in
+Mafeking, aims at procuring for himself, when the inevitable does
+come, terms perhaps not quite so extreme as would have been the case
+had the Boer commandant not conducted his operations in accordance
+with the articles of war.
+
+During the progress of the Sunday following the engagement at Five
+Mile Bank, Commandant Cronje made a curiously sincere, but not
+altogether unhumorous demand for our unconditional surrender. Colonel
+Baden-Powell very properly felt he was unable to comply with any such
+demand, and with the exchange of notes of a courteous character this
+incident closed.
+
+During Sunday the town put the finishing touches to the earthworks,
+lunettes, and to the gun emplacements, which will form a more or less
+complete chain of fortifications around the town. So much as possible,
+and so far as it lay within the knowledge and experience of the Base
+Commandant, Colonel Vyvyen, and Major Panzera, each distinct earthwork
+was made shell-proof.
+
+From the outside the town looks as if a series of gigantic mounds had
+been suddenly created. At different points tiers of sandbags, several
+feet high, protect the more exposed places, and to these again has
+been added, as an exterior facing, banks of earth. Within such a
+position as I am now describing there is a deep trench, which is of
+that depth which enables a man standing upright to fire through
+loopholes between sacks of sand. Behind the trench is a low shelter of
+deals with an upper covering of sandbags, intending to serve the
+garrison of the fort as protection against shell fire.
+
+To those points which are exposed to the more direct attack of the
+enemy, a Maxim has been detached or a seven-pounder emplaced. The Town
+Guard man these positions: the work of patrolling, of forming Cossack
+posts, of maintaining the outer lines of sentries, being undertaken by
+the Protectorate troops and the Bechuanaland Rifles.
+
+[Illustration: Headquarters, Bomb-proof Shelter.]
+
+An elaborate system of signals has been arranged. A red flag will
+fly from Headquarters should the Boers be coming on, and an alarm will
+be rung in the centre of the town. The streets have been barricaded
+with carts, and all open places protected by traverses of a useful
+character. Mines have been placed within and without the town, and an
+improvised field telegraph or the telephone has been connected with
+every point which lies beyond the immediate precincts of the defences.
+Every possible precaution that human ingenuity can devise and the
+resources of the town supply for the protection of the place, is in
+order.
+
+Thus did Mafeking prepare for the Boer bombardment, and upon the
+Monday following this took place; but it is perhaps no exaggeration to
+say that nothing so ludicrous in the history of modern warfare has
+been propagated as the gigantic joke which Commandant Snyman, who
+directed the fire of the artillery, played off against us that day.
+For many weeks we, along this frontier, had heard what the Boers
+proposed to do once war should be declared. These forecasts had indeed
+been sanguinary; the heads of the English people, had we believed in
+these rumours, were to lie upon the veldt like the sand upon the sea
+shore.
+
+The bombardment as such was totally ineffective, and so curiously
+amateur, so wholly experimental, as to move one to astonishment rather
+than derision. It began at 9.15 a.m., and the first shell fell blind.
+The second and the third also pitched short, but once the bombardment
+had been initiated, the feelings of those who had dreaded such an
+event, more on account of their women and children than on account of
+themselves, were unperturbed. When the shells began to fall into the
+town it was found that they were of such poor quality as to be
+incapable of any explosive force whatever. Judging from their effect
+the area of damage was not three square feet.
+
+Shortly after the first few shells had been dropped the Boers found
+the range, and from Signal Hill, their position to the east of the
+town, threw several shells at the hospital and monastery. Strange as
+it may seem our most grievous cause of complaint against the Boer plan
+of war is that they do not respect sufficiently our Red Cross flag.
+Commandant Snyman had given us no time in which to remove our women
+and children, and, as a consequence, we established somewhat hurriedly
+a laager, in which they were confined and which it was hoped would be
+beyond the fire of the Boer, since we afforded it the protection of
+the Red Cross flag. This, so far as the laager was concerned, luckily
+proved to be the case, since on the occasion that Commandant Cronje
+sent in to apologise for the firing upon the Red Cross by his younger
+roughs during the Five Mile Bank fight, Colonel Baden-Powell took the
+opportunity of pointing out to him the precise significance of this
+flag, and the exact whereabouts of the buildings which enjoined its
+protection. In the absence of direct evidence of the enemy's intention
+upon this day, in the repugnance with which one would charge them with
+wilful abuse of the Red Cross, it is good to believe that Colonel
+Baden-Powell's letter was not communicated to Commandant Snyman
+previous to this action, for from the moment that this officer opened
+the bombardment until his artillery ceased fire for the day, each
+individual missile was thrown directly across the hospital and
+monastery. It was unfortunate that these buildings should have been in
+the line of fire, and it was a fact greatly to be deplored that the
+hospital should be filled, at such a moment, with women and wounded,
+the former magnanimously devoting themselves to the work of looking
+after those who had been disabled in Saturday's engagement. It was
+perhaps unavoidable, with such a line of fire, that the shells should
+not drop upon the hospital and monastery. Fearing this as we did, the
+garrison was filled with consternation when, so abruptly that we had
+scarcely realised what had been the actual object of the nameless
+dread by which the camp was suddenly depressed, the inevitable
+happened and we knew that a shell had burst within the hospital
+itself. Had this shell been of the quality and explosive character
+that we had been led to expect, one entire side of the hospital would
+have been reduced to ruins; as it was, however, the area of
+destruction most remote from the point of penetration was not three
+feet in circumference. A little of the masonry was destroyed, a few
+boards of the floor ripped up, and that was all. Dust and dirt,
+however, covered everything.
+
+Two more shells penetrated the same building in the course of the
+attack--the one burst in the principal waiting-room, the other played
+havoc with the children's dormitory. Fortunately no one was injured,
+and it was a happy omen for future shelling that throughout the whole
+of the first bombardment no human life was lost in Mafeking. There
+were no casualties, and three buildings, the hospital, the monastery,
+and Riesle's Hotel, alone were struck. The dead comprised one chicken.
+There were many narrow escapes. My horse was fastened to the
+hitching-post outside Riesle's Hotel at the very moment that a shell
+burst against the steps of the verandah, but this animal would seem
+to enjoy a happy immunity from shell fire, since at the Five Mile
+Bank engagement there was a shell which burst within three or four
+feet of him.
+
+Our guns made no return whatever to the fire of the Boers, beyond a
+chance shot which exploded by accident. After this very ineffective
+and amusing bombardment had continued for some hours the enemy ceased
+firing, and from their position only 2,000 yards from the town, and to
+which they had moved from Signal Hill, where the attack had begun, the
+usual messenger, half herald, half spy, was despatched to our lines.
+It has become quite a feature of the Boer operations against Mafeking
+for them to enjoy at every few hours a cessation of hostilities under
+a flag of truce, and, I regret to say, that these constant messages in
+the middle of an action, from the Boer Commandant to Colonel
+Baden-Powell, are sent with an ulterior motive. The Boer Commandants
+would appear to lack that experience of the conditions of warfare
+which should enable them to perceive the folly and futility--if not
+the guilt--of such procedure as they have been following since
+operations against this town began. It was, perhaps, as much through
+our own ignorance of the character of the enemy whom we were fighting
+as anything, that they secured any profitable information by these
+tactics, since we had expected that they would observe the unwritten
+regulation which restricts the progress of a flag of truce to a point
+half-way between the lines of the two forces. Upon no occasion at this
+period in the investment did the Boers recognise this custom, but
+securing cover where they could they crept down to our lines under
+protection of the white flag. By these means they secured valuable
+intelligence.
+
+The Boer emissary was allowed safe conduct into our lines, and was
+escorted by Captain Williams, of the British South Africa Police, who
+was in command of the armoured train, and Lieutenant the Honourable
+Hanbury-Tracy of Headquarters Staff, who had been sent out to meet
+him. The messenger was conducted to Colonel Baden-Powell, who received
+through this medium a second demand for unconditional surrender.
+Commandant Snyman presented his compliments to Colonel Baden-Powell,
+and desired to know if, to save further bloodshed, we would now
+surrender. Colonel Baden-Powell received this message with polite
+astonishment, and while not telling the deputy of Commandant Snyman
+that his shell fire had only spilt the blood of a fowl, and knocked
+small pieces out of three buildings, replied, that so far as we were
+concerned, we had not yet begun. While the Headquarters Staff were
+deliberating upon the reply to such a momentous message, the messenger
+was regaled with beer and bread and cheese. He was escorted back at
+4.45 p.m., and for the time being shell fire ceased.
+
+On Monday the armoured train took up a position in advance of the
+town, and in such a manner that it was completely sheltered from the
+Boer position. It so happened that the Boer messenger came directly
+upon this train, which was patiently waiting for the enemy's line of
+fire to be advanced a few hundred yards further, before opening its
+artillery. The little ruse which we had so carefully planned was thus
+forestalled, and to prevent further disclosures being made the herald
+was therewith blindfolded. It was a strange spectacle to see this Boer
+being brought through our lines with a somewhat soiled handkerchief
+across his eyes. His flag of truce comprised three handkerchiefs tied
+to a bamboo, and as he came forward it waved with a motion in which
+fright played as great a part as dignity.
+
+The Boer Commandant had evidently determined to shell Mafeking from
+three positions, but force of circumstances, and the undesirability of
+throwing up earthworks under the telling fire which would have been
+poured into him from our own trenches, prevented him bringing his
+heavy artillery into position. He had stormed Mafeking from Signal
+Hill with a twelve-pound Krupp, but when he advanced into a range of
+2,000 yards he fell back upon a seven-pounder, and a nine-pound
+high-velocity Krupp. These guns were quite unprotected by earthworks
+and could be easily seen from the town. Indeed it was the possibility
+of their being put out of action by our guns which instigated the
+Commandant to secure a cessation of hostilities by despatching his
+messenger upon some fatuous errand to Colonel Baden-Powell while he
+and his entire force busied themselves in erecting breastworks about
+his field pieces.
+
+The Boer emissary arrived at 2.30 p.m., and no sooner had he been
+received by us than the Boers began to work with pick and shovel,
+continuing their labours throughout the conference. By the time that
+their herald had returned two emplacements had been prepared and their
+locality partially concealed by a quantity of small bushes and scrub
+with which they had been covered.
+
+It may be that Commandant Snyman was unaware of the breach of faith he
+was committing in working upon his trenches under a flag of truce. It
+is our hope that this should prove to be the case, since we would not
+willingly believe that the Boers be so lost to the sense of fairness
+which should underlie the provisions which prevail during any
+cessation of hostilities as to promote a condition of truce for
+interests of their own. But should this be, indeed, the extent of the
+ignorance of the Boer Commandant upon the conditions governing war,
+let us trust that he may soon furbish up his knowledge upon these
+especial points.
+
+When the messenger returned to his lines, the Boers proceeded to
+advance in force upon the waterworks, and, driving in our outposts,
+they have since maintained a control over our water supply. The town,
+therefore, is wholly without water from this source, although we be
+not in any way frightened at the loss of the springs, since many wells
+have been opened out and many promising springs have been located
+within the radius of the town, some of which watered the troops of the
+Warren expedition. When we consider that to the majority this is their
+first experience of war, and that the length of the siege is unknown
+and more than likely to be protracted, it must be admitted that
+Mafeking is bearing itself wonderfully well. The few women and
+children who remained here show a dauntless front, while the men are
+only too anxious, and indeed too willing, to indulge in some sniping
+on their own account.
+
+Nevertheless, the position of Mafeking at the present moment is one
+which, if giving no cause for alarm, is at least unsatisfactory. Our
+wires are still cut to north and south. Our line is up, and all around
+us the Boers are supposed to be encamped, yet as the days go on it is
+becoming harder and harder to realise that we are seriously engaged in
+war, and we are more inclined to believe in the cheery optimism of
+Colonel Baden-Powell. It is very like some gigantic picnic, although
+it may doubtless be food for disquieting reflection. Occasionally we
+sleep out at night, and are in the trenches all day, but upon the
+whole it is quite impossible to believe that we are engaged in
+repelling an enemy who already are investing us.
+
+To get away from the hotels, to get more into contact with the spirit
+of the siege, I have been camping out for some days at the most
+outlying position upon the west facing of the town, but even by such
+means it is infinitely difficult to find much that is instinctive with
+active and actual campaigning. We perform the duties of a vedette,
+watching by day and night, sleeping at oddly-snatched moments, ever
+ready, and straining our vision in wild efforts to find trace of the
+foe. But it amounts to but little in the end.
+
+Since Monday we have seen small detachments of the Boers daily, we
+have even exchanged outpost fire with them, while we have on three
+different occasions turned our guns upon their position at the
+waterworks; but these occurrences are purely incidental and not wholly
+relative to the main features of the situation. It has become quite
+necessary for us to justify our own existence, and since there be but
+such vague signs of war around us, this desire has become infinitely
+more difficult of fulfilment. As the time passes we receive messages
+daily from different units in the Boer commando to friends in
+Mafeking, which are sometimes amicable, sometimes impudent in
+character; but to increase the irony of our situation, if we be
+engaged in the press of battle at dawn, it is certain that at dusk we
+shall be dining with no small degree of luxury at the hotel.
+
+At present there has been no misery, for there has been no war, and
+apart from the five lives that have been lost already, Mafeking to-day
+is as it was a month ago. It would seem as though this gigantic war,
+which so many people have been urging upon the Government, in relation
+to the operations of the enemy along this frontier may develop into a
+series of cattle raids by armed Boers. But if there be little in the
+immediate situation to alarm us, there is behind the rose and silver
+of the clouds a dark spot, a spot which growing bigger, ever bigger as
+the days go by, implies that signs of the times are not wanting to
+prove that our official optimism, forecasting the siege as but of
+three weeks' duration, is based upon anything less secure than the
+imaginings of a man who, knowing the hollowness of his words in his
+own heart, seeks but to cheer the hearts of the garrison. There was
+little sign of readiness in the Imperial troops, little to show that
+they can relieve Mafeking before the year dies out in the birth of the
+closing twelve months of the nineteenth century. But it were heresy to
+say so now. The idle singer of an empty day dares not pronounce the
+denunciation of his country in her hour of danger. Nevertheless, if
+Mafeking be not relieved before the Christmas season, the hour of our
+existence will be an hour of travail, impressed with the echoes of
+much suffering and saddened by the memories of many who will be dead.
+But for the time we will ignore the gravity in our situation, mock at
+our splendid isolation, our scanty resources, since to dwell too long
+upon the guilty splendour of the naked truth is to beget an
+earnestness which will depress our spirits, allowing us to read out
+the future of the siege in words of deadly omen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE ADVENT OF "BIG BEN"
+
+
+                             MAFEKING, _October 25th, 1899_.
+
+To-day is the third day of the bombardment by which Commandant Cronje
+is attempting to realise his threat of reducing Mafeking to ashes. Up
+to the present it has been impossible to consider very seriously the
+attempt of the Boers to besiege Mafeking. The earlier bombardment and
+the series of events which have occurred during the interval have not
+augmented the gravity of the situation. The Boer Commandant
+endeavoured to carry out his word by opening the second bombardment of
+Mafeking upon the day which he had notified Colonel Baden-Powell. We
+had been incredulous at the threat of the Boers to send to Pretoria
+for some siege guns. Monday, therefore, was a day of some anxiety for
+us, and each was curious to know what result the enemy's fire would
+produce. Upon this occasion, however, the townsfolk had reckoned
+without taking into account the intentions of Colonel Baden-Powell,
+and it was a very pleasant surprise to find that the bombardment of
+Mafeking by the Boers had been converted into the bombardment of the
+Boers by Mafeking. At a very early hour, two guns, which had been
+placed near the reservoir, opened fire upon the enemy's artillery in
+position at the water springs. The artillery duel which was thus
+started continued for some hours, and if it did not do much damage to
+either side it made manifest to the Boers that the defences of
+Mafeking were not altogether at their mercy. About noon, however, the
+Boers, who had been observed to place some guns in position upon the
+south-west side of the town, threw shells at Cannon Kopje. Here again,
+fortunately, no material damage was done.
+
+Somewhat early in the afternoon, the look-outs reported tremendous
+activity in the Boer camp. Across the veldt, those who cared, might
+have seen the enemy engaged upon some enormous earthwork, which the
+general consensus of opinion very quickly determined to be the
+emplacements for the siege guns. They were about three miles away from
+the town, and in a position different from that from which the guns
+had shelled the kopje in the morning. The frequency with which shells
+had exploded within the limits of Mafeking, had rendered the people
+somewhat callous of the consequences, and despite an official warning
+which was issued to the town, a large number of people stood
+discussing, in excited groups, the value of this news, while no small
+proportion of the population had gathered upon the west front to watch
+with their glasses the completion of the enemy's earthworks. It was
+three miles across the veldt, a mere black shadow upon the skyline,
+distinguished by its proximity to a local landmark, the "Jackal Tree,"
+where the Boers had intrenched their Creusot gun. It was not so much
+that there were no other guns around us which had drawn the crowd, as
+the morbid curiosity to see for themselves what perhaps in a few
+hours they might never see again. At different points upon the eastern
+and western heights the Boer guns had been stationed. To the
+south-east there was a twelve-pounder at a very convenient range, and
+so placed as to act as a flanking fire to the direct onslaught of "Big
+Ben." Upon the extreme east there were two seven-pounders, one in
+position at the water springs, the other covering the entire front of
+the town. Upon the west and to the north the enemy had similarly
+placed their guns. There was a seven-pounder emplacement, with a
+Nordenfeldt support due west, 1,400 yards from the native stadt. Below
+that, and between it and the north, the Boers had a Maxim. It is,
+perhaps, somewhat extraordinary that an enemy who has procured the
+best available artillery advice, should proceed to attack the town in
+such a fashion, and much of the failure which has distinguished the
+Boer bombardment is due to the fact that, instead of concentrating
+their fire upon a series of given spots, they have maintained
+simultaneous shelling from isolated points. As their shells fell, the
+damage which they caused was scattered over a wide area, and confined
+to a building here and there. Indeed, the greater portion of the
+shells had merely ploughed up the streets. However, it was not to be
+confirmed that afternoon. An hour after noon on the following day the
+alarm rang out from the market place, the red flag was seen to fly
+from headquarters, and the inhabitants were warned to take immediate
+cover. Within a few minutes of the alarm, the proceedings for that day
+began, and the first shell thrown from the Boer battery burst over our
+camp. Presently on the distant skyline a tremendous cloud of smoke
+hurled itself into the air. The very foundations upon which Mafeking
+rests seemed to quiver, all curiosity was set at rest, and there was
+no longer any doubt as to the nature of the new ordnance which the
+Boers had with them. With a terrific impact the shell struck some
+structures near the railway, and the flying fragments of steel spread
+over the town, burying themselves in buildings, striking the veldt two
+miles distant, creating a dust, a horrible confusion, and, an instant,
+terror throughout the town. For the moment no one seemed to know what
+had happened, when the sudden silence which had come upon the town was
+broken by the loud explosion of the shell as it came in contact with
+some building. It was a scene of unique interest, the rush of air, the
+roar of its flight, the final impact, and the massive fragments of
+steel and iron which scattered in all directions, gave no time for
+those who had been exposed, to realise the cause of the disturbance.
+Much as people throng to the spot where some appalling catastrophe has
+occurred, so, a minute after the shell exploded, people appeared from
+all directions to run to the scene, and although the shell had caused
+no very great damage, the noise which it had made, its unusual size
+and explosive force, did not tend to pacify people. Many were
+convinced that Mafeking was doomed, and although no loss of life
+occurred, there were few who did not think that their days were
+numbered. In the course of the afternoon, after a rain of seven-and
+nine-pound shells, the Boers opened with this gun again, and although
+happily no loss of life occurred, the missile wrecked the rear of the
+Mafeking Hotel, falling within a few feet of Mr. E. G. Parslow, the
+war correspondent of the _Chronicle_. The force of the explosion
+hurled this gentleman upon a pile of wood, blew the walls out of
+three rooms, set fire to a gas engine, and effectually littered the
+yard of the hotel. With the curious inconsequence which has marked the
+Boer proceedings in their investment of Mafeking, the enemy threw no
+more of these heavier shells during the afternoon, contenting
+themselves with discharging at odd moments those of lesser calibre.
+
+The two shells which had been fired during the afternoon gave the
+inhabitants of Mafeking some little ground by which to judge the
+nature of the bombardment on the morrow. After the cessation of
+hostilities word was passed round that the two shells which had been
+launched at Mafeking were a 64lb. howitzer and a 94lb. breech-loading
+siege gun, and that it might be reckoned that these were but the
+preliminary shots by which to measure the range. Officially it was
+notified that every precaution must be taken to remain within the
+bomb-proof shelters which the inhabitants of Mafeking had been advised
+to construct. It is the presence of these pits which explains the
+slight loss of life that has occurred during the Boer bombardment of
+Mafeking. Up to to-day the effect of the terrible hail of shells which
+has poured into the town has been but a few slight wounds. But there
+could be no doubt that the more serious fighting was at last to take
+place, and it seemed to us only natural to expect a general advance
+upon Mafeking in the morning. The night passed with every man sleeping
+by his arms and at his post. The women and children had been removed
+to their laager, the horses were picketed in the river-bed, and once
+again all preparations for defence, and all those measures which had
+been taken to secure immunity from shell fire were, for the last time,
+inspected. Firing began very early on Wednesday morning, a gun
+detachment under Lieutenant Murchison opening with a few shells from
+our position to the east of the town. When the light had become clear
+the Boers brought their new siege guns once more into play. We
+estimated at nightfall that the enemy must have thrown rather more
+than two hundred shells into Mafeking, and if Mafeking be saved for
+future bombardment its salvation lies in the fact that it is,
+relatively speaking, little more than a collection of somewhat
+scattered houses with tin roofs and mud walls. Any other form of
+building would have been shaken to its foundations by the mere
+concussion of these bursting shells. Where bricks would have fallen,
+mud walls simply threw down a cloud of dust. But if Mafeking be still
+more or less intact, it can congratulate itself upon having withstood
+a most determined and concentrated shell fire.
+
+It is difficult to defend the action of the Boers in laying upon
+Mafeking the burden of these siege guns. We have heard no little from
+Commandant Cronje upon the rules of warfare, as set out by the Geneva
+Convention, by time-honoured practices, and by that sense of custom
+and courtesy which at the present day still brings back some slight
+echo of the chivalry which distinguished the wars in dead centuries.
+Nevertheless, there is a grim and ill-savoured travesty in the Boer
+bombardment of this town. We do not complain, and we must be forgiven
+if we find some ironical and melancholy interest attaching itself to
+our situation. Three times has Colonel Baden-Powell pointed out to
+Commandant Cronje the buildings which enjoy the immunity of the Red
+Cross flag, yet these buildings are still deliberately made the
+objective of the Boer artillery; twice have we received flags of truce
+from the Boers, ignoring altogether the fact that they were but the
+clumsy subterfuge by which an unprincipled enemy secured to itself
+some new and advantageous position for its guns; then, as a crowning
+act of mercy, we have this Boer Commander, so blatant a gentleman that
+he is by sheer force of his aggressive impudence worthy of our
+attentions, training upon a defenceless town a 64lb. howitzer and a
+94lb. breech-loading siege gun, pieces whose action is relegated by
+these self-same observances of civilised warfare to towns who possess,
+in the first place, strong fortifications; in the second, masonry and
+concrete in their construction.
+
+After the early morning hours had been whiled away Commandant Cronje
+made preparations for a general advance upon the town under the
+protection of his cannon fire. This was the moment which each of us
+had longed for. As the Boer advance seemed to be concentrated upon the
+eastern side, I proceeded to the redan at De Koch's Corner under Major
+Goold-Adams, and, later on, to another a little lower down in the same
+quarter of the town under Captain Musson. At this time, any one who
+can, is supposed to bear arms to defend our position, and, so as to
+more completely identify themselves with the movement for protection
+of this place, the correspondents that are here are each carrying
+their rifle and bandolier, and taking up their stand in some one of
+the trenches. The correspondent of the _Chronicle_, Mr. E. G. Parslow,
+the correspondent for Reuter's, Mr. Vere Stent, and myself, requested
+Captain Musson, a local dairy farmer, who has been placed in charge of
+one of the redans upon the east front, to allow us to assist him in
+the protection of his earthwork, and it was from there, as a
+consequence, that I watched the bombardment of Mafeking, taking an
+active part in any rifle practice which Captain Musson permitted to
+his men. At Major Goold-Adams's there had been stationed a Maxim
+detachment, and it was not long before its sharp rat-a-tat-tat was
+heard speaking to the enemy. The warm reception which was accorded to
+the Boers from this redan soon began to draw their fire. With "Big
+Ben" discharging its 94lb. shells in every quarter of the town, and a
+12-pounder from the north-west dropping shrapnel with much
+discrimination over that quarter, the enemy upon the east side soon
+followed the example so shown them and discharged shells at the redans
+along their front. The range was singularly good, and in a very few
+minutes shells were dropping over and in very close proximity to our
+two redans. Between the two, and but a little removed from the line of
+fire, was the building of the Dutch Reformed Church, and several of
+the shells intended for the Maxim in Major Goold-Adams's fort found
+lodgment in its interior. The front of this church had been penetrated
+in several places by the shells, when the gun was slewed suddenly
+round upon the hospital and a shell fell in an outhouse attached to
+the monastery with disastrous effect. When the smoke had cleared away
+little was left of the building beyond a pile of smoking ruins. Above
+Captain Musson's redan our untimely visitors constantly burst and
+scattered, and we began to realise fully the value of the bomb-proof
+shelters. In a little while, however, the Boers relaxed their shell
+fire, and beyond maintaining sufficient fire to cover their advance,
+the heavier guns were for the time silent. With this, the Boers began
+to open out in extended order upon the east side of the town,
+advancing on our west to within 900 yards of our defences. At each
+point the Boer advance was protected by the guns, the heavy artillery
+to the south-west seeming to be the centre of a circle of armed men,
+who were advancing slowly upon this gallant little town. At no time
+did the enemy, however, beyond the few upon the west side, come within
+effective range of our rifles or our Maxims, contenting themselves
+with taking up positions at 2,000 yards, and dealing out to us
+prolonged rifle fire with some intermittent shelling. The firing was
+very rapid, very general, and more or less impotent. Indeed their
+expenditure of rifle ammunition and their extreme prodigality in
+shells was as much playing into our hands as reaping them any
+advantage.
+
+By night we reckoned that over two hundred shells had been fired
+alone, though it was very doubtful whether there be two hundred pounds
+worth of damage to credit to them. We have had two men wounded, while
+here and there it is believed that certain of the enemy received their
+quietus. Whether we beat them off or whether they lacked the spirit to
+attack us it be impossible to determine, and it is enough to say that,
+whatever may have been their intention, Mafeking remains as it was
+before the first shot was fired. At night, after the attack, Colonel
+Baden-Powell issued a general order congratulating his forces and the
+people in Mafeking upon their calmness during the heavy fire to which
+they had been subjected.
+
+As we are situated at present, it is impossible for us to leave our
+trenches in order to give battle to the enemy, but we are still buoyed
+up by the hope of being able before long to take in our turn the
+offensive. In the meantime, most of us live with our rifles in our
+hands, our bandoliers round our shoulders, existing upon food of the
+roughest kind, peering over sandbags at the distant position of the
+Boers, or crouching in the shell-proof trenches as their shells burst
+overhead. There is much gravity in our isolated position; there is the
+danger that, by good luck more than by skill, Mafeking may be reduced,
+but there is no reason to fear that the determination and courage of
+the town will give way. Above all else that may be calculated to
+endure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+A MIDNIGHT SORTIE
+
+
+                             MAFEKING, _October 28th, 1899_.
+
+Last night there occurred one of those isolated instances of gallantry
+by which the British sustain their high reputation. For some days, in
+fact ever since the Boers secured their siege guns from Pretoria, the
+enemy has been building a circlet of trenches around Mafeking. At the
+least distance they are perhaps 2,500 yards, unhappily beyond the
+reach of our rifle and Maxim fire. We have seen them lounging in their
+breastworks, we have seen them gathered around their camp fires, and
+the inability of Mafeking to shake off these unwelcome intruders has
+been daily a source of irritation. We have not, of course, allowed
+them to enjoy, undisturbed, the seclusion of their own earthworks,
+and, as a continual goad in their side, little expeditions have been
+despatched to make night fearsome to our besetting foe.
+
+Another of these midnight sorties was undertaken last night, proving
+in itself to be the most important move on our side since Captain
+Fitzclarence and his men engaged the Boers two weeks ago. The same
+officer, 55 men of D Squadron Protectorate Regiment, with Lieutenant
+Murray and 25 men of the Cape Police, were the prime movers in an
+attempt to rush the first line of earthworks of the Boer position.
+Shortly after 11 o'clock Captain Fitzclarence, Lieutenant Swinburne
+and their men started on the perilous undertaking. In the faint light
+of the night we could see their figures from our own redans, silently
+hurrying across the veldt. In the blue haze of the distance a black
+blur betokened the position of the enemy, and it seemed that at any
+moment the hoarse challenge of the Boer outpost would give the alarm.
+The men crept on in slightly extended order, holding themselves in
+readiness for the supreme moment. Nearer, and yet nearer, they drew to
+the Boer entrenchments. The silence was intense. The heavy gloom, the
+mysterious noises of the veldt at night, the shadowy patches in the
+bush, all seemed to heighten the tension of one's nerves. In a little
+while our men were within a few yards of the enemy; then furtively
+each fixed his bayonet to his rifle, and as the blades rang home upon
+their sockets the gallant band raised a ringing cheer. Instantly the
+Boer position was galvanised into activity, figures showed everywhere,
+shots rang out, men shouted, horses stampeded, and the confusion which
+reigned supreme gave to our men one vital moment in which to hurl
+themselves across the intervening space. Then there was a loud crash,
+for, as it happened, many of our men were nearer the entrenchments
+than had been anticipated, and their eager charge had precipitated
+them upon some sheets of corrugated iron which the Boers had torn from
+the grand stand of the racecourse for protection from the rain. With
+our men upon the parapet of the trench, a few rapid volleys were fired
+into the enemy, who, taken completely by surprise, were altogether
+demoralised. Those in the first trenches seemed to have been petrified
+by fright. Where they were, there they remained, stabbed with bayonet,
+knocked senseless with the rifle's butt, or shot dead by the fire of
+their own men. Captain Fitzclarence himself, with magnificent
+gallantry and swordsmanship, killed four of the enemy with his sword,
+his men plying their bayonets strenuously the while. This was the
+first trench, and as the fight grew hotter, some little memory of
+their earlier boasts, inspired the Boers to make a stand. They fought;
+they fought well. Their vast superiority in numbers did not enter into
+their minds, since Commandant Botha told Lieutenant Moncrieff, who had
+charge of the flag party that arranged for an armistice upon the
+following morning, that he thought that at least a thousand men had
+been moved against his position. The long line of front held by the
+enemy flashed fire from many hundred rifles. Houses in the town caught
+the bullets, the low rises to the east of the position threw back the
+echo of the rifle shots. Our men became the centre of a hail of
+bullets. The Boers fired anywhere and everywhere, seeming content if
+they could just load their rifles and release the trigger. Many
+thousands of rounds of ammunition were expended in the confusion of
+the moment, the enemy not even waiting to see at whom, or at what,
+they were aiming.
+
+After the first fury had been expended, our men charged at the bayonet
+point right across the line of trenches. It was in this charge that
+the Boers lost most heavily. So soon as the squadron reached the
+extremity of the Boer position they retreated independently, their
+movement covered by the flanking fire of the Cape Police, which added
+still further to the perplexities of the enemy. The galling fire of
+the Cape Police disturbed them for some time longer than was required
+in the actual retirement of the force.
+
+The Boers had been completely unnerved by the onslaught of the
+Protectorate men, and a feature of the hours which elapsed between the
+final withdrawal of our force from the scene of conflict, and the
+advent of dawn, was the heavy firing of the enemy, who still continued
+discharging useless volleys into space. The loss to us in this
+encounter had been 6 killed, 11 wounded, and two of our men taken
+prisoners, but the gravity of the loss which the enemy sustained can
+be most surely measured by the fact that, until a late hour this
+afternoon, they could not find the spirit to resume the bombardment.
+It is said in camp here that one hundred Boers will have reason to
+remember the charge of the Protectorate Regiment.
+
+The way in which these respond to the duties asked of them is shown by
+their conduct during this night attack. Nevertheless, when the
+enrolment of the Protectorate Regiment began in August, 1899, any
+practical opinion upon the future value of its individual units, as
+upon its possible mobility, was the merest hazard. When Colonel Hore
+accepted the command of the regiment, and endeavoured, by every means
+in his power, to promote its development, there were many who
+expressed, after witnessing the preliminary parade of the recruits at
+Ramathlabama Camp, the verdict that the short space of time which was
+allowed to the officers to knock the squadrons into shape would not
+permit the men attaining any proficiency whatsoever. In those early
+days of the war volunteers came from near and far, from Johannesburg
+upon the one side, from Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, and East London
+upon the other, to enlist in the service of her Majesty. Time-expired
+men threw up their billets when the opportunity presented itself of
+rejoining the colours, and while enlistment was proceeding, the
+immediate vicinity of Ramathlabama and the roads from the Transvaal
+into Mafeking presented the appearance of a district which has been
+made the final destination of some mining rush. Pedestrians from the
+Transvaal humping their swags, passengers by train from the south,
+well-to-do youngsters from different parts of the Protectorate or from
+the back-lying areas of the colony, all made their roads converge upon
+Mafeking. At that time, however, when the work of enlisting was in its
+infancy, and the services of able-bodied men were much required, the
+Colonial Government, at the instigation of Mr. Schreiner, whose
+dubious policy was cheerfully endorsed by his colleagues, refused to
+allow her Majesty's soldiers, who were in process of enlistment for
+that special purpose, to afford Mafeking the moral value of their
+presence. No sooner had word reached the ears of the Colonial Cabinet
+that the work of recruiting was proceeding around Mafeking, than the
+recruiting officers were ordered to withdraw immediately from the
+precincts of the colony so long as they continued to act in a way
+which might give some possible offence to the dear friend, guardian,
+and patron saint of Cape Colony, Paul Kruger. After a very decorous
+and manly remonstrance, Colonel Hore withdrew his headquarters and his
+men sixteen miles across the border to Ramathlabama Camp, from which
+point the enlistment of the Protectorate Regiment was continued.
+
+The Protectorate Regiment is strictly an irregular soldiery, composed
+of men drawn from every rank of African life, many of whom are gentle
+by birth and education and possessed of no little means. In the ranks
+of the regiment there are those who have been at the university and
+public schools; there are also mechanics, miners, farm hands, and men
+who have known office life. The nationalities of the men are as varied
+as their occupations in peace times are diffuse. There are a few
+Americans, some Germans, and Norwegians, although for the most part
+the regiment is British; as a whole, perhaps, it is an ill-assorted
+assembly of adventurers, animated with the same love of fighting and
+the glories of war, of lust and bloodshed which characterised the
+lives of the buccaneers of old. In other days, and in other lands,
+they would be sailing the sea for treasure, or combining in the quest
+for gold in some hidden extremity of the world's surface. The prospect
+of free rations, of uniform, and allowance of pocket money, was of
+course sufficient to draw a few; but, as a body, the idler upon the
+farm, the bar-loafer from the town, and the thoroughly incompetent are
+as distinguished by their absence, as the general tone of the regiment
+is suffused with martial ardour. It is quite impossible to treat these
+men with the cast-iron regulations which enthral the Imperial soldier.
+He does not understand the petty exactions, the never-ending restraint
+which would be imposed upon him had he accepted the conditions which
+govern and regulate life in our army. He experiences and gives voice
+to a very genuine aversion to fatigues of every description, and it
+has required the exercise of much tact and no little personal
+persuasion to induce the men to become reconciled to the labours of
+their calling. They have accepted with some diffidence the fact that
+it is necessary for them to fulfil, at the present moment, many
+irritating, but essentially important fatigues which may not have
+entered into their original forecast of the duties which would be
+allotted to them. They frequently indulge in outbursts of choice
+expletives, at the expense of their non-commissioned officers, while
+they do not hesitate to correct, or at least to argue about what they
+imagine to be wrong in the execution of some order.
+
+The conditions under which these men were enrolled were supposed to
+admit those only who could ride as well as shoot, and before the
+initial tests were applied the standard of the regiment upon paper was
+exceptionally high. After the first parade, however, it was seen that
+by far the great majority of the regiment was incapable of managing
+their horses. Upon parade, when horses and men were put through
+cavalry exercises, detached and riderless steeds would be seen
+galloping and bucking in all directions. However, those who were
+unproficient did not propose to allow their cattle to hold the mastery
+for any longer than was absolutely necessary, and many was the tough
+fight fought to a bitter end between the raw recruit and his unbroken,
+unmanageable mount. After many days and an inordinate amount of hard
+work, the troop officers managed to lick their men into a very
+presentable appearance until, with the beginning of the war, the
+squadrons of the Protectorate Regiment were as capable and efficient a
+body of irregular mounted infantry as any that had been enrolled by
+local movement in South Africa. During the siege there has been no
+chance to continue those early exercises, and it is not at all
+unlikely that when they become mounted once more the former
+difficulties will again assert themselves and, bearing this in mind,
+it is difficult to conclude that as a fighting force they will not be
+more at home upon their feet than in the saddle, since they will find
+their attentions occupied as much by the management of their steeds as
+with the handling of their weapons.
+
+If they be not quite so mobile in the field as more experienced
+troops, there is no doubt that they present a determined front to the
+fire of the enemy. They have a keen relish for any preparation which
+appears to lead to some immediate collision, while they profess an
+equally profound disgust at their enforced inactivity. How these men
+might act if, through the smoke-filled air, they saw an array of
+sparkling bayonets, or heard the serried ranks of hostile lines
+advancing to the charge, it is impossible to say; but in the few
+fights which we have had the personal element has been strong, and the
+individual courage high. We have lacked the spectacle of the
+many-coloured, steel-edged columns impelled forward by the impulse of
+some dominant power, with the dusty faces of the men, the stumbling,
+sore-stricken feet, the gasping breath of the stragglers who tired,
+dead beat, and thirsty, limp to the rear; but the play of human
+passion in our little fighting force has not been absent. We have had
+the wager of life against life, the angry, turbulent crash of
+fierce-blooded men, fighting under the shadow of death, with their
+emotions strained as they struggled in the very atmosphere of passion.
+And it has done us good to see how reliable the force has been about
+which so much doubt existed. Unlike the Imperial service, these
+irregular corps act as much for the unit as they do for the mass, as
+animated by terror or by valour, by a fatal despair, or by a blooded
+triumph, they fight for an individual supremacy. That is the moment
+of their triumph, and it is these splendid qualities of savage and
+physical animalism which makes it more easy to treat them with a wider
+latitude than is usual. Their magnificent hardihood, their splendid
+fighting gifts, their lurid blasphemy, their admiration for officers
+who are men, their appalling debauchery, gives to them the ideal
+setting of the rough but very gallant soldier of fortune, who,
+scorning his enemy and hating a retreat, has played so omnipotent a
+part in the history of the universe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+CANNON KOPJE
+
+
+                             MAFEKING, _October 31st, 1899_.
+
+Cannon Kopje is in itself a hideous cluster of stones, perched upon a
+rocky ridge, which commands the town, a mile across the veldt. It is
+impossible to conceive any more positive death-trap than that which
+was contained in this kopje, and whatever may have been the
+determining element in its original construction, it is infinitely to
+be regretted that the possibilities of its being under shell fire were
+never very seriously contemplated. It was thrown up during the Warren
+expedition, and much as these things go, was neither removed nor
+replaced until Monday's bombardment established its complete
+uselessness under shell fire, and the folly of which Colonel
+Baden-Powell was guilty in leaving it unprotected. It is too late to
+say much now, but we have paid a heavy price for our neglect and
+carelessness. We found it here when we came; we put men into it, we
+are maintaining men there, and it is essential to the safety of our
+town that we should still hold it. Since the action an effort has been
+made to improve it; a splinter-proof shelter has been thrown across
+the trench, and traverses have been thrown out, but the work of the
+past few days has perhaps prepared the kopje for further shelling at
+the enemy's convenience. As a _piece de resistance_ in the defence of
+Mafeking, Cannon Kopje is the most strategically important position
+near Mafeking, and we may reckon that, at the moment when these
+wretched shepherds who are besieging us, secure this fort, to Mafeking
+itself there remains but a few hours.
+
+Colonel Walford had under his command at the fort forty-four men with
+a Maxim detachment from the Protectorate Regiment. The fairest
+estimate of the men against him would place the Boer forces at no less
+than eight hundred with four guns. Sunday night, the look-out from
+Cannon Kopje saw a body of Boers making their way to a point somewhat
+nearer the town than had hitherto been their custom, and our
+expectations having been aroused by this movement we were inclined to
+believe that the enemy might attack upon the following morning. Our
+anticipations were further grounded upon the fact that the Boers to
+the south-west of the town, had by no means despised the claims of
+Cannon Kopje upon their attentions, and to every three shells which
+their guns had thrown into the town during the days which the siege
+had lasted, one, in a proportion of one in three, had been fired at
+Cannon Kopje. It has gradually come to be considered, therefore, that
+Cannon Kopje was a point against which the Boers would, sooner or
+later, direct an attack, since its capture was necessary to the
+successful execution of any general movement against the town.
+
+[Illustration: Cannon Kopje.]
+
+The detachment of Police, who formed the garrison at Cannon Kopje,
+upon this day performed a most brilliant service for the town by
+their determined and gallant stand. Perhaps in war more than in
+anything else, chance is a greater arbiter than we like to consider,
+and if it had not been for the chance attack against Cannon Kopje,
+which resulted in the defeat of the Boer forces, it is not improbable
+that Mafeking itself would have been invaded by the enemy. The
+subjugation of this point, in reality the turning point in the siege,
+was, however, of vital concern to Commandant Cronje, since it had been
+his intention to bombard the south-east portion of the town, and to
+carry it with a large force which he had assembled during the night in
+the adjacent valley of the Molopo River. When day had dawned, the
+look-out from Cannon Kopje had already reported to Colonel Walford
+that there was unusual activity in the Boer camp; at the moment this
+was stirring news, and indeed the fatigues for the night had been
+barely dismissed when an experimental shell from the Boer artillery to
+test the range, opened the action. During the night, and about the
+close of Sunday, the enemy's artillery had taken up their position,
+and as the grey of dawn ushered in the fatal day, a large force of
+Boers moved out from their laager and occupied any point by which they
+might command the area of the fort. It seemed to me, as I witnessed
+their disposition, that at least a third of the forces before Mafeking
+had been concentrated upon Cannon Kopje, and if so great a tragedy had
+not attended the action, we could have afforded to laugh at the
+efforts of an enemy so hopelessly incompetent as the Boer force has
+proved itself to be. Against a mere gun emplacement and forty-four
+men, shell fire from four guns was directed, and the services of eight
+hundred men utilised. In the extreme west there was "Big Ben" and a
+seven-pounder; in the extreme east there was a twelve-pounder. Within
+a circle from these two points, and within effective range, a
+seven-pounder and quick-firing Maxim-Nordenfeldt had been stationed.
+The big gun took no part at all in this attack upon the kopje, but at
+every moment that the enemy's shell fire lapsed, the Boer marksmen
+opened with their Mauser rifles. Their rifle fire stretched from the
+extremities of either flank and enfiladed the interior trenches of the
+kopje. Nothing perhaps in the history of their operations along this
+frontier, was so calculated to prove successful as the Boer attack
+upon Cannon Kopje. They had the guns, the men, and they held all
+commanding points, while they themselves were snugly ensconced behind
+cover almost impervious to shell fire. With these advantages it would
+seem morally impossible that forty-four men could withstand the
+unceasing stream of shells, the mist of bullets, which comprised the
+zone of fire of which the kopje was the centre. Had these men wavered,
+such a thing is easy to explain; had they fallen back upon the town,
+their movement would have been in order. But by preference they
+stopped at their posts, the mark for every Boer rifle, the objective
+of the enemy's shell fire, until so great had been our execution upon
+the enemy that the Boers themselves proclaimed an armistice under the
+protection of the Red Cross flag. When this was decreed one-fourth of
+the detachment in the kopje were out of action, and eight of these
+were killed. But the lamentable list of fatalities had been piled up
+only at great cost to the enemy, since around the circle of the fort,
+and not four hundred yards away, we could see the Boer ambulances
+picking up their dead and wounded. It has been stated that they lost
+one hundred men, and that a further fifty were seriously wounded, but
+this is preposterous; while if we err at all towards our foe it is in
+the computation of the losses which we claim to have inflicted upon
+them. It is almost impossible to kill a Dutchman on the field, since
+they are as pertinacious and industrious as beetles in seeking cover.
+We saw two waggon loads pass from their firing-line to their laager,
+but I am inclined to doubt if we killed and wounded forty of the
+enemy. To have scored that number in the face of the most remarkable
+fusilade of bullet and shell which was directed against the fort is a
+wonderful feat, since it should not be forgotten that to every shot
+which we fired, there were at least four hundred barrels emptied at
+our marksmen in return. Such was the unfortunate construction of
+Cannon Kopje, however, and the gross neglect with which it has been
+treated to prepare for the present war, that it was not possible for
+our men to use their loopholes, and as it was most necessary to hold
+the fort each man who fired stood to his feet, and exposed himself
+above the breastwork to the full force of the Boer rifles. The enemy
+had carried out their movement so well, that under cover of their
+guns, and the great annoyance of their enfilading fire, they had made
+it almost impossible for the defenders of the fort to pay much
+attention to their advance. They compelled men to take cover, since if
+anything were seen to move behind the parapet of the fort, the Boers
+swept the area of the position with most cruel and deadly volleys. But
+cover was sought only at intervals, and when the hail of shells became
+too tempestuous, since the brave little garrison were impressed with a
+courage which scorned the fire which was turned upon them. When they
+manned the defences and maintained a sturdy front the Boers were
+nonplussed. They had expected to carry the position whereas they were
+losing men more rapidly than they were killing them. We fired by six,
+we fired independently, and whenever it was possible, the Maxim swept
+the front of the enemy, but, relatively speaking, nothing could
+prevail against the Boer numbers. It was easy enough to hold them in
+check, since the first well-directed volley made them fall back some
+few yards, but the heavy shell fire would sooner or later have told
+its tale. It had already claimed the majority of those who were hit,
+since if the shells did not burst and strike some one of those who
+were lying near, they splintered upon the stones which composed the
+defences of the fort and these splintered in their turn, coming into
+contact with any one who was crouching behind them for shelter. Cannon
+Kopje in itself was a terrible lesson; but it was also a magnificent
+example of gallant conduct in the field. Captain the Hon. D. Marsham
+who was killed, and Captain Charles Alexander Kerr Pechell, who died
+in the course of the morning from wounds received, were individually
+setting as fine an object lesson to their men as could be conceived,
+yet it must not be imagined that the standard of their bravery was
+much finer or much greater than that of their comrades. Colonel
+Walford and Colonel Baden-Powell have each expressed their high
+appreciation of the conduct of the men who survived the attack, and
+although, as befits their rank, the example of the officers was
+admirable, it was no better in reality than the action of the men over
+whom they were commanding. Captain Marsham was struck by a rifle
+bullet in turning to render some assistance to a wounded comrade. As
+he attempted to do this a second bullet passed through his chest, and
+a moment later he was dead, just as a third bullet passed through his
+shoulder. It was as fine a death as any soldier could perhaps have
+chosen, and it had the crowning mercy of being instantaneous.
+
+Captain Pechell was busying himself in directing the rifle fire from
+the fort, and thereby directly drew the attention of the enemy. He,
+with a detachment of six men, ranged up from time to time, and picked
+off the enemy with well-aimed volleys. They had taken up their
+position behind the eastern wing of the kopje, engaging a body of the
+enemy whose flank fire enfiladed our position. The first shell which
+came at these six men fell short, and the second and the third
+bursting in the same place, scattered the outer covering of the
+breastwork. Pechell ordered his men to retire from the direct line of
+shell fire, when just as they were shifting their position a shell
+struck the stone parapet, and burst among them. Private Burrows was
+killed at once, just as he had been admiring the shooting of a
+comrade. Sergeant-Major Upton and Captain Pechell received some
+terrible injuries; poor Pechell died of injury extending from the
+thigh to the shoulder. No one regrets, so much as his comrades,
+Captain Pechell's gallant act, since had he not been endowed with most
+magnificent courage he would have preserved discretion in the method
+by which he exposed himself to the enemy, and by the death of these
+two officers, Captain Marsham and Captain Pechell, her Majesty loses
+two officers of exceptional promise and soldierly qualifications.
+
+The casualties of this action alone were eight killed and three
+wounded, four being killed upon the spot, four dying of their wounds
+within twelve hours of the action. Captain Marsham, Sergeant-Major
+Curnihan, Private Burrows, and Private Martin were killed in the fort;
+Captain Pechell, Sergeant-Major Upton, Private Nicholas and Private
+Lloyd died of wounds; Sergeant-Major Butler, Corporal Cooke and
+Private Newton were wounded.
+
+That night the garrison paid its farewell duties to those gallant men
+who were killed at Cannon Kopje. Their interment took place at six
+o'clock, and as we followed in the wake of the _cortege_ we felt the
+shock which brought home to each of us the bitter fact that we should
+henceforth know them no more. The attack of the Boers upon Cannon
+Kopje had been so sudden, so utterly unexpected, and the manner in
+which these men of the British South Africa Police had met their
+death, had been so valorous that the sympathies of the entire town had
+been most keenly aroused and overcome by the appalling swiftness of
+the tragedy; there was no one who did not feel that in some way he was
+himself a mourner even though the men who had been killed were quite
+indifferent to him. Doubtless before the siege terminates we shall
+become accustomed to our situation, and realise that after all it is
+but the natural issue to a condition of belligerency that no one can
+quite tell what sorrow the day will bring forth. But at present these
+tragedies come upon us with a vivid freshness which is almost
+unnerving and which stimulate disquietening fancies in the minds even
+of the most callous.
+
+The cemetery here is in close proximity to the Boer lines, and lies to
+the north of the town. It is a small enclosure banked by white rough
+stones, and set amid green trees, where gentle fragrance imparts a
+balminess to the breeze. It is as quiet and peaceful, by force of
+contrast to the dried-up veldt around, as some oasis in the desert.
+There is a winding path from the hospital to the cemetery; a road
+which at the present moment is flanked in two places by the forts of
+the Railway Division, and kept well defined by the footsteps of those
+who bear their burdens to the tomb. Since the siege began we have lost
+twenty-five, and with one engagement following rapidly upon another,
+nightfall usually ushers in a scene in which a small body of men may
+be seen gathered round an open grave, waiting irresolutely to take
+some share in the rites of the burial service. We paced slowly and
+solemnly along this veldt track, depressed not so much by the fate
+which had befallen them, as by the hideous realism with which the
+appalling uncertainty of war had been brought home to us. In the
+darkness of the evening we could see across the veldt the fires of the
+enemy's position, and as the _cortege_ wound its way from the hospital
+we marched to the boom of the Boer artillery, while passing bullets
+sang the notes of our evening hymn above our heads, and dropped about
+us in the sand. Along the eastern front of the town as it lay behind
+us, an occasional blaze of light in the sky told us where the shells
+of the enemy were bursting, and to many came the thought that perhaps
+even of those who had remained to do their duty in the trenches, there
+were some who, less fortunate than others, might have already kept
+their last vigils. In time we reached the grave side, then as we
+gathered round the open spaces which had been so quickly prepared,
+those who felt their loss the keenest, those who had been comrades and
+close friends of the killed, paid their last homage to their memory
+by placing some little trinket, some slight token of personal
+friendship and affection, upon the winding sheet. At this juncture,
+when war is all around us, when every able-bodied man is standing to
+his arms, it is not possible to provide the dead with anything better
+than a simple sheet. The men who fall in these days are interred in
+their blood-stained uniforms, since there be no time in which to dress
+their bodies. Those upon whom the funeral service was about to be read
+lay in two waggons, silent shrouded witnesses to the fleeting vanity
+which attends all heroes. Around the entrance to the cemetery the
+officers of the staff, the commanding officers of the outposts,
+representatives of every corps and every troop had foregathered,
+following closely upon the heels of those who, bearing the grim
+burdens upon their shoulders epitomised in their action the horrors of
+war. It seemed as we stood there waiting, listening to the solemn
+words of the service, punctuated now and then as they were, by the
+screams of shells, by the angry snap of the Mauser, and the droning of
+the Martini bullets, that these men who were now dead had achieved the
+full honour of their calling. Indeed, many were there who would have
+given gladly their own lives in exchange for that of their friend,
+while there was not one who did not feel that the manner in which
+their end had come to them was impressed with all that was most noble.
+
+For a moment after the service had concluded, we stood listening to
+the strains of the Last Call. As its solemn notes died away, and we
+retraced our steps to the various trenches and earthworks which, for
+the moment, gave us shelter, we little imagined that within a few
+hours, those of us who were correspondents would follow the body of
+one from amongst ourselves once more upon this road. The following
+night Lieutenant Murchison, who was in charge of the guns, wilfully
+shot with his revolver Mr. E. G. Parslow, war correspondent of the
+London _Daily Chronicle_. The horror of such a crime still hangs over
+us, and is not in any way diminished by the fact that an officer who
+had already distinguished himself by his career, should now be
+awaiting the verdict of a Field Court Martial upon the gravest charge
+in the criminal calendar. Poor Parslow had endeared himself to
+everybody by the genial sympathy which he extended to those who were
+themselves in trouble. He had won the admiration of many by the
+calmness with which he conducted himself under the heaviest fire.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+A RECONNAISSANCE
+
+
+                             MAFEKING, _November 7th, 1899_.
+
+A short canter from Mafeking across the sloping expanse of the veldt
+and the interior lines of its western defences lie before one. It can
+be said that Cannon Kopje to the south-west and Fort Miller to the
+north-west are the two most outlying extremities of the outposts on
+this front. Between them there is an almost unbroken chain of
+earthworks, manned by detachments from squadrons of the Protectorate
+Regiment, from the British South Africa Police, from the Cape Police,
+and even from the Native stadt. These men live the lives of soldiers
+whose every moment is engaged in watching a foe that might at any
+opportunity which is given them charge down upon our lines. Unlike the
+Boers, we do not despise the native interests, and much of the
+weakness of our position emanates from the fact that we have
+incorporated within the mystic circle of our armed defence the most
+outlying areas of the native reserve. These, indeed, can very properly
+be considered the exterior lines of the western outposts. It would
+have been a very simple thing for Colonel Baden-Powell to have
+ordered the destruction of the Native stadt, compelling its
+inhabitants to seek what protection they could from the inclemency of
+the elements, from a benign Providence, and the rapacious Boer.
+Mafeking, without the Native stadt, could have been much more easily
+defended, since the base of the slopes, across which our advanced
+trenches now extend, would have been defended from the ridges of the
+acclivities which rise from them. This would have given to the
+advanced outposts some commanding heights from which the western
+plains could have been more easily swept. As it is, however, the
+policy which Colonel Baden-Powell is adopting towards the native
+tribe, whose huts were here many generations before white men ever set
+their feet in this part of the country, is one which extends to them
+the same Imperial protection as he has extended to the colonists in
+Mafeking. Where the Native stadt had been included in any portion of
+the defences, the Baralongs have been assisted to defend, and have
+been instructed in the means by which they might secure immunity for
+themselves and for their stadt.
+
+The entrenchments of the Boers rise like mole-hills from the surface
+of the plain, although there is a curious regard for what has been
+humorously termed "three mile limit." The valley of the Molopo River
+sets a background to the Boer position, the placid waters of the
+stream wind through their lines, while their chief laagers have been
+constructed upon the ridges of its watershed. From Cannon Kopje a
+commanding view of the whole country on all sides of Mafeking may be
+obtained, the Boer laagers giving to the expanses of the valley the
+aspect of a mining camp. From different points of observation the
+daily life of the enemy can be noted. In the early morning the smoke
+of many fires swings in thin spirals to the sky, and the silence of
+the plain is broken by the echoes which echo back the noises of the
+camp. It would seem that they are as regular in the ordering of their
+camp life as we are. When the sun has warmed the air, and evaporated
+the morning dew from the grass, we can see them out-pinning their
+horses, driving their cattle to fresh pastures, and endeavouring by
+the establishment of sentries and Cossack posts to take the siege of
+Mafeking as a very serious element in their lives. Everywhere there is
+the green of early summer covering the plain with the sheen of
+Nature's youth. Between the lines of the two camps graze herds of
+cattle, in themselves affording tempting bait to the predatory
+instincts of the Boers, who, if they did not lack the courage of their
+desires, would have already attempted to raid the browsing oxen. So
+far as our own outposts are concerned, along this line there are many
+days in which nothing whatever happens, just as there are others in
+which the dawn of day is made hideous by the scream of shells, the
+singing of the Mauser, the angry rustle of the Nordenfeldt and Maxim.
+The Boers have many guns along this side, and from time to time they
+treat us to bombardments, lacking both purpose and any definite
+result, beyond the expenditure of much ammunition. When the shells are
+falling every one who can seeks cover, watching with some impatience
+their passing, and could we in these moments but give existence to our
+wishes, it would be that opportunity might come at once to turn the
+tables upon our enemy. It is neither very honourable nor very pleasing
+to have to preserve discretion as the better part of valour, but,
+while we remain the objective of their fire, our pent-up energies are
+developing a fine hatred against the foe. Colonel Baden-Powell has
+some hope of giving indulgence to the spirit which animates his men,
+and, even if the moment be somewhat uncertain, no small contentment is
+derived from such belief. Morning and night we gird our loins for the
+attack, but night and morning we awaken to a sense of infinite
+disappointment, yet when it comes they may expect an avalanche, and,
+in result, an overthrow.
+
+Day is dreary, sun-swept, dusty, teased with insects, and infinitely
+wearisome, but with the coming of night, the fragrant coolness of the
+air, the soft lisping of the evening breeze bringeth contentment. Each
+evening, when the peace of the camp be settled and the men resting,
+there is always an outpost standing within a few hundred yards of the
+Boer camp. If the night be fine, he lies behind the stones of a
+neighbouring kopje; but whether it be fine or wet, the guard is
+posted; the safety of the camp depending upon his vigilance. Sometimes
+he is relieved hourly, sometimes his watch is of four hours' duration.
+It depends upon the proximity of his post to the enemy's lines, but,
+lying there within earshot of the Boers, it is just possible to
+realise the full gravity of our situation. The element of danger is
+greater in these nocturnal hours, and men go to rest, their spirits
+buoyed up with the infinite zest which comes from anticipating a night
+attack. They sleep beside their arms, their posts are doubled, and the
+officers of the watch make hourly rounds. In the distance, across the
+plain and enveloped with the darkness of the veldt, the difficulty of
+seeing intensified by shadows, the outline of the Boer laagers can be
+demarcated. Their camp fires die down one by one, and presently,
+beyond the restless moving of their cattle, no sign of life animates
+their position. It is in such moments that those who lead us deplore
+the paucity of the numbers under their command, since, were it
+possible to spare the men, there have been several occasions, when a
+midnight dash, after the fashion of Captain Fitzclarence, or the
+repetition of the reconnaissance at daybreak such as Major Godley so
+gallantly led, could have been organised with equally satisfactory
+results.
+
+[Illustration: Major A. J. Godley of the Western Outposts on the
+Look-out.]
+
+However, within the last few days, Colonel Baden-Powell has taken
+advantage of the enemy's position upon this front to order the western
+outposts to spend some few hours in worrying the enemy. It was a very
+pleasant little outing for us, and eminently beneficial, since the
+excitement attendant upon such a manoeuvre was as wholesome as a
+bumper of champagne. Word had already reached me of this contemplated
+move upon the enemy, and Lieutenant Paton, of C Squadron, was good
+enough to offer the hospitality of his hut for the night in question.
+We dined, not with the guilty splendour of the Trocadero or amid the
+sombre magnificence of Prince's, but in the rough-and-ready fashion
+which falls to those who, carrying their lives in their hands, have at
+most but a moment to spare for such unimportant incidents as breakfast
+and dinner. As a humble offering to the board I had drawn from the
+Army Service Stores a tin of canned mutton, and procured
+somewhere--which may or may not have been a private garden--a luscious
+marrow, and with these I hied myself to Lieutenant Paton's quarters.
+Along this western front there are many delightful and very genial
+officers. There is Major Godley, who is in command of the whole line;
+Colonel Walford, who commands Cannon Kopje; there are Captain
+Vernon and Captain Marsh, who, with Major Godley, are Imperial special
+service men; Lieutenant Holden and my host. The distances between
+their quarters are but slight, and perhaps the most entertaining
+moment in the siege is that which enables us to foregather at Major
+Godley's, chatting with eagerness and charming frankness upon the
+possibilities of the war as they are suggested by our immediate
+environment. By the time that I had arrived Lieutenant Paton's boy had
+prepared a savoury stew, and such was the scarcity of fresh meat that
+we had no hesitation in dedicating the canned mutton to some other
+meal. We ate, and pleasantly indulged in lime juice and water, smoking
+with contented elegance some choice cigarettes. After we had dined a
+short conference was held at Major Godley's, and then to rest,
+perchance to spend the night in sleeping, or perchance, to scratch;
+for fleas and flies, the parasitic mosquito and the insidious ant,
+make both day and night a source of irritation.
+
+The men of C Squadron under Captain Vernon, the Bechuanaland Rifles
+under Captain Cowan, and three guns under Major Panzera and Lieutenant
+Daniels, of the British South Africa Police, were engaged in the
+movement, and distinguished themselves in what they did as well as can
+be expected. At a quarter to two we turned out. Greatcoats had been
+left behind, men slinging their waterbottles and bandoliers upon their
+shoulders. We were to meet at the base of a hill rising a few hundred
+yards across the veldt from Major Godley's. Night hung heavily upon
+us, the sky was dark, and everything seemed to point to the wisdom of
+choosing such a night. We stepped out briskly, although to our
+strained nerves the soft tread of the men sounded as the rumble of a
+juggernaut. However, we proceeded very quietly, and the sheen of sand,
+the white lustre of the road, the rustle of the thorn bushes were
+presently left behind as we took our stand in the rear of Major
+Godley's troop. In the valley at the base of the hill we halted.
+Before us, a scarcely perceptible rise silhouetted against the sky,
+the bushes lining the summit throwing themselves into prominence
+against the grey, black, background, while here and there trees tossed
+their arms silently and warningly in the breeze. All around us there
+was the hum of insect life, that monotonous dead level buzz of
+countless insects and the baying of the bull frogs. And we waited,
+when out of the darkness came Major Godley, a tall, thin figure
+impressed with energy and determination, inspecting the lines.
+
+The squadron was dismounted, and had fallen in by troops, the dull
+khaki of the Protectorate Regiment scarcely showing up against the
+grey-blackness of the night; and at either end of the line there was a
+squad of Bechuanaland Rifles and a contingent of natives. As they
+stood there, there were nearly one hundred men, and, though the order
+had been given to be in this position at 2.30, and the hour had come,
+we were waiting for the guns. Presently, as we waited, barely a mile
+from the Boer laager, there was the rumble of artillery in the
+distance. As we heard it officers and men believed that at any moment
+the Boer camp would sound the alarm. We could hear the guns rising
+over hillocks, falling heavily upon stones, or crushing back upon some
+boulder. Indeed there was noise enough to wake the dead themselves.
+The rattle of the limber was only a little more acute than the tension
+on our nerves. Men swore silently at the guns and showed their
+restlessness as the noise grew louder. In a little the Major bustled
+up all eagerness and fluff and worry, and then as the guns trailed
+behind us and the little column moved on, it seemed that every step we
+advanced further would have brought the Boers tumbling about our ears.
+Much as one creeps about a house at night treading on every board
+which creaks in preference to those which do not creak, so was the
+march of the column. As the guns came on they seemed to find stones
+everywhere. Wheels fell into snug hollows, jammed in ragged holes, and
+bumped with such heaviness that the night was made hideous by the echo
+of their rumble. Occasionally we stopped, as though to allow the peace
+of night to settle. Then we moved forward once again and in a little
+we halted for the final stage. The guns took up their position to the
+left of the column, the hundred men lying in extended order across the
+veldt. Before us there was the ridge of rising veldt and scrub, and so
+we rested, fretting with curious impatience at the signs of life which
+began to animate the enemy's camp. When we stood up we could see the
+dull white of their waggons bent in position for their laager; we
+could see the fires within, we could hear in the still silence of
+early dawn the chopping of wood as the axe fell upon the logs. The
+sides of the valley threw back the noise until, echoes echoing back,
+the sound caught our ears, and so we watched and waited until
+gradually dawn came.
+
+The dull-black beauty of the night passed, slipping into grey and
+leaving the uncertain mystery of an early morning sky. A red streak
+across the east threw glimpses of light into the canopy of heaven,
+when, as a signal of its birth, there came the words to fire; then
+the line of creeping figures which had gained the ridge pressed their
+rifles through the scrub and bush which hedged the top, and, crouching
+to the ground, opened the reconnaissance. The objective of the night
+attack which Major Godley was commanding had been to effect a
+reconnaissance in force against the western laagers of the Boers. In
+respect to the constant increase of the force that surrounds Mafeking,
+almost the one means of temporarily checking their advance which
+remains to us is through the medium of these attacks. Information had
+been brought into headquarters that the Boers were massing upon the
+east side of the town, the small laager on the west being temporarily
+evacuated. The night dash would both surprise and annoy the enemy, and
+anything which combined such benign ends was very welcome. The guns
+were to throw a few shells, the men were to fire a few volleys; when
+the squadron would fall back by troops their reconnaissance completed.
+We opened by volleys poured incontinently into their camp, but so soon
+as the guns had discharged the first shells into the laager, the
+little signs of order which had animated the natives disappeared, and
+although they maintained their line they began an independent
+practice. It was the first time that native arms had been incorporated
+with our men, and it is to be hoped, before the next experiment is
+repeated, they will have been got more under control. Excellent as
+they may be on their own account, they are almost altogether useless
+when removed from the immediate spheres of utility. Our fire at first
+was high, and many rounds of bullet and shell fire were absolutely
+wasted. Presently Daniels secured the range for the guns, and shells,
+prettily planted, ruined many waggons. The sortie, so far as we were
+concerned, proceeded merrily, doing no material damage, but making a
+hell of a lot of noise. The glories of the early morning were soon
+enveloped in the heavy smoke from the rifles of the natives, who still
+continued blazing independently and indifferently at the enemy's
+position and who also generally struck the earth a few yards short of
+their own front of fire. The opportunity which was thus afforded of
+both surprising and annoying the enemy was very welcome, and the night
+dash was entered into with infinite zest. So soon as the guns had
+discharged their first shell our men began to fire by volleys, but the
+sortie had not progressed very far when the activity in the Boer lines
+showed that they were preparing to repel a force much larger than the
+mere reconnoitering party which was actually before them. In the
+uncertain light of rising morn a body of 600 Boers could be seen
+riding from the main laager upon the western front to the support of
+the minor camp. We have hitherto thought the Boers timid at close
+quarters, but in this case there was every sign of haste and eagerness
+on the part of the reinforcements to arrive upon the scene of action.
+We could see them dismounting as they came up and run to the laager,
+some of them firing as they ran, others of them forming into detached
+parties and firing from isolated positions. After volleying for some
+minutes our men fulfilled the object of their morning excursion and
+were preparing to retire by troops, when, owing to the presence of the
+reinforcements, firing became general. Our rifles replied to their
+rifles, our two seven-pounders replied to their guns, but beyond this
+nothing was permitted to interfere with the successful completion of
+our work. It mattered very little to us how fiercely the enemy's
+Nordenfeldts spat out defiance or what their rifles said, for we fell
+back steadily, the different troops doubling fifty, one hundred, and
+one hundred and fifty yards each time. The fire as the various troops
+took up the retirement became very hot, the enemy cheerfully Mausering
+into space. For some hours after our men had gained the security of
+their own trenches the enemy maintained a heavy fire upon the several
+outposts along the western front. During the retirement of C Squadron
+Major Godley had ordered Captain Cowan to occupy Fort Eyre, a rifle
+trench, with a detachment of Bechuanaland Mounted Rifles, so that he
+might check any signs of advance which the enemy might display. In
+consequence of this, Major Godley, Captain Cowan, Lieutenant Feltham,
+and their men experienced as severe a fire as any which has, at
+present, been received from the Boers. The enemy made a determined
+rifle attack upon the work, but lacking the courage to charge, after
+some few hours' rifle firing, they withdrew.
+
+These little encounters are all that the outposts have with which to
+pass their time, and the success with which they have been conducted
+has been sufficient to check the enemy, and to cause him to reflect
+upon the relative value of the means at our command. The defence of
+the western front lies wholly in the hands of men from the
+Protectorate Regiment and a few native contingents. The Town Guard is
+not _en evidence_ upon the west side, the area of their exertions
+being confined to the more immediate precincts of the town. And by
+this it does not seem that the Town Guard will have much opportunity
+to distinguish itself, since, unless its members volunteer to take
+part in any sniping expedition, those manning the interior line of our
+trenches, which are those occupied by the Town Guard, have received
+positive orders to withhold their fire until the enemy is upon the
+point of rushing the town. Several times it has been thought that this
+was going to happen, and the local defensive force had hopes of
+justifying its existence, but hitherto the valour which underlies the
+good intentions of the Boers is not sufficient to inspire them to
+convert an excellent suggestion into a practical experiment. Thus
+despite the Boer telegrams to Europe there has been no battle round
+Mafeking; a few slight skirmishes upon our part, much proud boasting
+upon the part of the Boers is the limit of mutual operations which
+have centred around Mafeking. We are waiting, and in the interval,
+preparing. That is all which can be said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE TOWN GUARD
+
+
+                            MAFEKING, _November 15th, 1899_.
+
+The straits of a beleaguered city are only just beginning to come to
+Mafeking. A retrospect of the history of the Franco-Prussian war
+reveals how very great were the sufferings of those unfortunate people
+who were unlucky enough to be besieged by the Prussian armies. Their
+difficulties, the dangers to which they were constantly subjected,
+their constant struggle against the extortionate demands of the few
+who had been able to "corner" the provisions can perhaps be taken as
+conveying a general impression of the hardships of a siege. Yet,
+however, when we come to consider the siege of Mafeking in its more
+elemental details, the picture is not unlike those presented by the
+farcical melodrama. It is now nearly six weeks since Mafeking was
+proclaimed as being in a state of siege, and, although there has been
+no single opportunity of any commercial reciprocity between ourselves
+and the outside world, the ruling prices are at present but very
+little above normal, distress is wholly absent, danger is purely
+incidental, and, indeed, it would seem, as Colonel Baden-Powell said
+in a recent order, that "everything in the garden was lovely." This
+somewhat happy state of things is, of course, to be attributed to the
+extraordinary foresight and sagacity which characterises the
+arrangements that the well-known firm of contractors in South Africa,
+Julius Weil, concluded for provisioning the town. Immense stocks of
+foodstuffs had been stored in the town before the war, and it is the
+knowledge of the valuable stores which are lying here which has
+inspired the Boers to court us so assiduously. The tale might have
+been different had the Colonial Government been permitted to arrange
+for any such emergency as a siege. In this respect, so completely
+opposed to any preparation were Mr. Schreiner and his Cabinet, that it
+was not even possible to procure through such an agency any adequate
+means of defence, much less to obtain the essential food supplies.
+When Kimberley appealed to Mr. Schreiner for permission to send up
+from Port Elizabeth some Maxims which had been ordered by the De Beers
+Company, the licence was refused on the ground that there was no cause
+to strengthen the defences of that town, nor any reason to believe
+that the situation demanded such precautions. The Colonial Government
+repeated their policy in relation to Mafeking, and when urgent appeals
+were sent to Mr. Schreiner, to the Castle authorities, and to Sir
+Alfred Milner, the influence of the Cabinet was such that no notice
+was taken of their request.
+
+Nothing perhaps can excuse such an obstructive policy as that which
+was followed by the Colonial Government upon the very eve of
+hostilities. It is only when we come to deal with the situation which
+their neglect has created that we can adequately measure the full
+extent of their culpability. The claim of so important a centre as
+Mafeking upon their attention was wilfully ignored with a persistence
+which is positively criminal, and when taken into consideration with
+the repeated warnings which were sent to them by leading members of
+the community of Mafeking it is difficult to believe that the Colonial
+Cabinet, by so flatly contravening the spirit of their loyalty to the
+Imperial Crown, were not directly conniving with a hostile oligarchy
+for the downfall of this colonial town. Had Mafeking been anything but
+Anglo-Saxon at heart, had it possessed that proportion of debased
+Dutch and renegade British colonists which is to be found in Vryburg
+and those other hostile areas in our own colony, the story of Mafeking
+would have been a story of treachery and deceit, of broken allegiance,
+and of palsied faith. As it was, when the petition for extra armaments
+was ignored, the town, disdaining the danger which confronted them,
+proceeded to stand their ground, and to show, at any rate, a firm
+front to any enemy that might assail them. While Colonel Baden-Powell
+organised the defences of the Western Border, the men of Mafeking,
+under the supervision of Colonel Vyvyen, base commandant, strongly
+entrenched the position of their town, which hitherto had been open to
+every corner of the earth. In times of peace Mafeking is a collection
+of buildings placed upon the veldt, lacking both natural and
+artificial protection, the centre into which all roads come and from
+which all classes of people go. It is a thriving mid-African township
+which, more by good management than by good luck, has become at the
+present time an important outpost of our Empire. In these days, when
+the boom of cannon destroys the silences of our splendid isolation,
+and the scream of shell disturbs the harmony of night, Mafeking rests
+with patient steadfastness behind its hastily improvised earthworks,
+seeking shelter when the shells of the enemy press too hotly upon one
+another, yet always ready for work at the outposts, prepared for the
+fitful turbulence of our invading foe. Possibly from the Boer trenches
+Mafeking may look an armoured citadel. Possibly it is the sturdy
+appearance of our ramparts which have caused the Boers to bring their
+heavy artillery to bear upon our mud brick walls. Yet there is humour
+in this situation, since the gravity of our position accentuates the
+grim travesty of our defences. We have not so much as appears, and it
+would be unfair to give such a moment as the present the correct
+estimate of dummy camps which have been built, dummy earthworks which
+have been thrown up, of dummy guns which are in position. The
+situation between the Boers and ourselves may be likened to a game of
+poker, Mafeking possessing no hand, yet retains the privilege of
+bluffing. In the end it will be seen that the dignity of our impudence
+has swept the board, although we may be excused from wishing to renew
+the game. But there is perhaps a finer spirit in the tribute which
+this place has paid to Queen and country than mere courage. We have
+the faith of our affections, the steadfastness of a duty which, if
+inspired, is equally impressed with reverence. Such strain as the
+siege has put upon the loyalty of the colonists of Mafeking has been
+welcomed by reason of the opportunity which it has given for the many
+who have never seen the Queen to show, their honourable allegiance to
+her Majesty.
+
+From time to time Colonel Baden-Powell has issued orders
+congratulating the townspeople upon their spirit, and commiserating
+with them upon their unfortunate predicament. They are indeed
+deserving of great sympathy, since the manly way in which they have
+come forward in support of the situation has very materially aided the
+successful resistance given by Mafeking. The forts upon the eastern
+facing of the town are manned altogether by the Town Guard; these are
+particularly warlike when beneath the protection of their bomb-proof
+shelters, and it would be almost a pity should the siege close without
+any opportunity arising of testing their efficiency. Throughout day
+and night they are compelled to remain idle in their trenches, and
+from 9 till 6, and again from 6 till 9, they are not permitted upon
+any pretence whatever to leave their posts. The life they are leading
+is of the roughest description, and it certainly appears that by far
+the greatest proportion of the hardships of the siege has fallen to
+the share of the Town Guard. At the beginning of the siege, when,
+according to official reports, there was no ground to believe that it
+would be of long duration, few people were animated by anything but
+the plain determination to enjoy any actual hostilities which might
+eventuate. Now, however, as the fifth week of the siege draws to an
+end the rigours of the confinement to which the townspeople have been
+subjected are beginning to tell. The work, the most laborious, the
+least interesting, and totally without compensation, is that performed
+by the Town Guard, and as a body this defence force presents strangely
+contrasting features as the siege progresses. Their hours are early
+and late, they stand to arms at 4.30 in the early morning, and at
+intervals during the day the full strength of the fort is mustered.
+There is nothing with which these men can occupy their minds, and if
+their inactivity is beginning to irritate them, if the poorness of
+their food is affecting them, it is to be hoped that the work which
+they are doing now will receive full and satisfactory acknowledgment,
+both at the hands of the staff, and of the Government. As a body, the
+Town Guard is a medley of local salamanders, and if it be possible, by
+the force of their surroundings, they should become inspired with
+soldierly instincts, and although after their fashion they may be
+expected to fight, their greatest wish at the present moment is to
+obtain from the Government, imperial, colonial, and military, some
+adequate explanation of the causes determining their present
+situation. They feel that they have been neglected by Mr. Schreiner
+and I am quite certain that if that political chameleon were here now,
+he would suffer as much by reason of his own sins, as for the trouble
+and worry he has caused the industrious, if benighted, citizens of
+Mafeking. For the most part the Town Guard is a collection of
+civilians, who are accustomed to the full enjoyment of comparative
+affluence, and who, through the exigencies of the siege, are at
+present living under conditions which would test the endurance of the
+most experienced soldier. They are penned up within the limits of
+Mafeking, unable to move with any degree of safety, and condemned to
+an inactivity which is very irksome to those who have been pressed as
+volunteers into the defences of the town. They did not expect, in the
+early days of the crisis, to be actively engaged in defending their
+town, since, with some hope of having their views adopted, they
+repeatedly urged upon the general staff the fallacies which
+distinguished the official forecast of the situation, but the staff
+was incredulous and Colonel Baden-Powell was impressed with an
+optimism which now seems strangely at fault. If one is to believe
+important respected members of the community here, it would seem that
+they made special and very urgent overtures to the colonel commanding
+upon the defenceless condition of Mafeking, and now, as they stand to
+their posts, throughout the heat of an African summer, beneath the
+deluges of the rainy season, they cull but little satisfaction from
+the Ministerial refusal adequately to protect their town by sending
+troops and armaments to it. They say that they were derided, that no
+notice was taken of their request, that their petition was overruled,
+leaving to them the work of warding off from the town such a day of
+bitterness, of exceeding danger, of very genuine disaster, as might
+have been expected to result from the unprotected condition of the
+place. The irregular soldiers of the Protectorate Regiment do not,
+perhaps, deserve so much commiseration, since in all probability their
+present circumstances are little worse than those which they
+anticipated when they were enlisting. But there is some force in the
+case which the inhabitants of Mafeking can bring against the Colonial
+Government, and it is to be hoped that the work which they are now
+doing will receive full and satisfactory compensation at the final
+adjustment. But there exists little possibility that they will be
+given any compensation which will be in any way commensurate, since to
+those who have followed the history of such Ministerial compensation
+as comes within the region of political economy it will be known that
+the accidents of war put a somewhat close limit upon the accidence of
+compensation. Their businesses have in many cases been absolutely
+ruined, those who were farmers upon the outskirts of the town have had
+the melancholy satisfaction of seeing their homesteads set fire to by
+the enemy and their cattle raided. These facts are the simple home
+truths that do not tend to make them appreciative of the honour and
+glory which falls to them by playing so prominent a _role_ in the
+defence of their town. They expect, however, to receive medals. Those
+who were local merchants, men of peace for the most part, with no very
+keen enthusiasm for martial glory, have seen the industry of a
+lifetime completely wrecked by the diffidence of the general staff and
+the unwillingness of the Government to take such precautions as would
+have placed the town beyond the probability of attack; but, although
+every one recognises the worthlessness of the material which was
+placed at the disposal of Colonel Baden-Powell, there exists no reason
+which can defend the absence of efficient military stores in the town.
+Upon the termination of the war let us hope that Colonel Baden-Powell
+will be asked to explain, but for the present the townspeople of
+Mafeking are singularly unanimous in their desire to co-operate with
+the military authorities.
+
+Under their direction the Boers have been repulsed for seven weeks,
+just as without the walls of Mafeking an almost impregnable defence
+has been constructed. It is perhaps a detail if our defenders be armed
+with Sniders, Enfields, a few Martinis, and a still less number of
+Lee-Metfords. Moreover, we have none too much ammunition, our
+seven-pounders are incapable of sustaining the brunt of an action
+without being sent to the repairing shop upon its termination, and if
+our Maxims be beyond reproach, our Hotchkiss and Nordenfeldt are both
+obsolete and unreliable. These are the more material elements of our
+defences, and to them may be added the strength of the Protectorate
+Regiment, Cape Police, British South Africa Police, Railway Division,
+the Bechuanaland Rifles, and the numerous native contingents
+numbering, with the Town Guard, some fifteen hundred men. Against this
+we must place an enemy whose tactics are surprising everybody, whose
+artillery fire is admirable, whose guns are numerous and first class.
+They stand off five miles and shell the town with perfect safety,
+while under cover of their fire they project their advanced trenches
+daily a few feet nearer the town. We have endeavoured with our
+artillery and by night sorties to check their progress, but the
+sapping of Mafeking continues, and is, at once, a very serious, if not
+our sole, danger. Should their trenches advance much further it will
+be impossible to move about during daytime at all, and, although we
+have thrown up bales of compressed hay and sacks of oats to act as
+shields against the enemy's bullets, and the flying splinters of
+passing shells, there is no hour in the day in which the streets of
+the town are not sprayed by Mauser bullets. It is not possible for us
+to advance very far from our own lines, since, as eagles swoop down
+upon their carrion, so would the Boers from other quarters attempt to
+rush the town. Yet there is no doubt that such movement would be very
+welcome, affording as much keen pleasure to the volunteers of the town
+as to the newly-raised units of the garrison. We nurture a wild desire
+to attempt to spike "Big Ben," and it may be that before long
+Providence will turn from the side of the enemy by presenting us with
+some such golden opportunity. The big gun is hedged around by barbed
+wire, guarded in front by mines, flanked upon the one side by a
+Nordenfeldt-Maxim and upon the other by a high-velocity Krupp. Truly,
+they could deal out a very warm reception to those who chanced their
+luck, but a little novelty these days atones for many hours of tiring
+inactivity, and if the Colonel chose to put a price upon the task
+there would be no trouble in enlisting for the venture some five
+hundred volunteers. The siege, as it progresses, seems to give fewer
+opportunities for coming into positive contact with the enemy; such
+occasions as there have been are few and far between, and, although
+Colonel Baden-Powell holds out the promise of such a venture, it has
+been so constantly deferred that we are for the most part becoming
+incredulous.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+WASTED ENERGIES
+
+
+                            MAFEKING, _November 22nd, 1899_.
+
+Within a few weeks of Major Godley's daybreak attack upon the western
+laager, it was decided to repeat the experiment against the main
+position of the Boers upon the east side. Had this but come off, from
+the estimate of the men and guns engaged, the movement would have been
+as important as any which have taken place. It had been arranged to
+open a general fire upon the emplacement of the hundred-pound gun and
+the advanced trenches of the Boer position a short time before sunset,
+since the closing of day would make it impossible for the enemy, in
+the absence of aiming-posts and clinometers, to train their artillery
+upon the town. Now that the enemy have begun to sap Mafeking by a
+system of advanced galleries, the military authorities here have been
+waiting for them to come within a certain radius of the town so that
+we might counter-gallery their position and enfilade their trenches.
+From their entrenchment at the brickfields, rather more than fifteen
+hundred yards from the town, Boer sharpshooters have been sniping the
+town with comparative impunity. When this plan was first projected,
+natives, under Corporal Currie, Cape Police, were sent up the
+river-bed, which runs at this particular point within three hundred
+yards of the Boer flank, to build a trench as near as possible to the
+position of the snipers in the brickfields. With the successful
+execution of this piece of work the first steps towards the
+contemplated reconnaissance had been taken, since this new post, which
+was constructed under cover of night, completely outflanked the
+advance trenches of the Boers. When they began to fire upon the town
+in the morning they were somewhat surprised at receiving a volley from
+what appeared to be little more than a mud heap. Corporal Currie and
+his natives drove back the Boers from their advanced post in the
+brickfields to the first line of trenches in their position, and so
+long as we retained the river-bed post the brickfields ceased to give
+shelter to the Boer sharpshooters; moreover, when the Boers had been
+effectually quieted in the brickfields a little more of the original
+conception was carried out. Captain Lord Charles Bentinck and A
+squadron and Captain Fitzclarence with the Hotchkiss detachment were
+sent to support the native outposts, while a seven-pound gun under
+Lieutenant Daniels moved into an emplacement in the river-bed. Major
+Panzera took command of the gun which was to support the Maxim under
+Major Goold Adams in the north-east corner of the town. In conjunction
+with this, the extreme eastern flank of the town was defended by a
+detachment of the Cape Police with a Maxim, and a supplementary force
+of the same police, under Inspector Marsh, were entrenched across the
+eastern front of the native location. Thus upon Monday night were the
+plans arranged. Shortly before midnight Major Panzera, who has charge
+of the artillery, gave me a courteous permission to accompany
+Lieutenant Daniels to his emplacement in the river-bed, from which
+point it was possible to move to our advanced trenches further up the
+stream. Mafeking had gone to rest when the gun started, and although
+the wheels were padded and every precaution taken to muffle the noise,
+it seemed that at any moment, the town would have been aroused. In a
+little the immediate precincts of Mafeking had been left behind, and
+the challenge of the last sentry answered. As we moved down to the
+river-bed the gun detachment hung upon the rear of the gun straining
+to prevent the shake and rumble of its descent. Silently we crept on;
+no murmur of human voices, no steel rang a "care-creating" clatter, no
+rumble of tumbril or gun broke through the darkness to the sentries of
+the enemy; in about an hour the gentle lapping of the river told us
+that the journey was at an end, and as we crossed the stream and
+reached the party working upon the emplacement there was much feeling
+of relief that the enemy had not sounded the alarm. While Lieutenant
+Daniels arranged the emplacement of the gun, he permitted me to try my
+hand at superintending native labour. There were thirty of them, who,
+commencing about midnight, were to have completed by daybreak, the
+task upon which they were engaged. It reminded me of the days at
+college when the house whips stood over the team urging them and
+coaching them in their game. There was every necessity for speed, and
+as the night was cold one made the most of the opportunity. The
+working party was divided into those with picks and those with
+shovels--the one breaking up the ground, the others heaping up the
+earthwork. In addition to the natives who were digging there was a
+small party filling sacks with sand which, when they had been filled,
+were piled up around the rapidly-rising parapet of the gun. As they
+worked they sang, droning a war-song which seemed to give zest to
+their labours. As an experience it was rather fine to feel that even
+in this perfunctory fashion one was attempting work of some
+importance. About the scene there was the usual feature of the veldt
+by night: there was the subdued murmur of the waters tumbling gently
+over stones or causing stray groups of bullrushes to shiver; then from
+the bank there spread the veldt, rising in soft-clad hillocks, or
+falling in snug hollows, the green expanse tinted with the silvery
+light of the moon. Beyond ourselves and our cordon of sentries there
+should have been no one, although occasionally we thought that, just
+above the skyline, lights played about the shadowy outline of the Boer
+gun. But if they heard us they took no notice, and as dawn broke
+across the east the finishing touches to the gun were quickly given.
+Brown earth was strewn upon the whitened patches of the bags which had
+not been properly covered, the humidity of the fresh-turned soil
+mingling with the fumes of working natives. For the night's work, as
+we gathered our tools together, the best evidence of our labours was
+the grim muzzle of the gun which leered through its embrasure. It
+spoke defiance, and as the day which then was breaking, drew to its
+close we should know whether its sense of might had been effectually
+established. And so we returned to town talking upon the strength of
+the emplacement and upon its strategic value. As we left the gun we
+were alone, when suddenly, without a sound, the figure of the Colonel
+was seen coming across the veldt. He passed us quickly, and as we
+followed him we wondered what he knew, but before noon those who had
+been informed of the contemplated attack had learned the news. As he
+had crept up the lines he had passed detached parties of Boers
+withdrawing from the extreme rear of their position. The explanation
+was obvious, but he stayed until daybreak to make certain of his
+ground, and by the light of early dawn the trenches which we were so
+shortly to fire upon were found deserted. Thus do the spies work
+within our camp, taking to the enemy news of everything which
+happened, and thus does the Colonel circumvent them. However, if we
+did not attack them with our guns, for the remainder of the day the
+advanced squadrons in the river-bed justified their position by
+keeping down the crew from the big gun. They poured in volleys at
+1,400 yards, and, for the first time in the siege, no shells were
+thrown. As they retired from their trenches, so they withdrew their
+gun, and we had a day of peace.
+
+But how wearily the time passes; moreover we are still enduring the
+straits of a siege and the torments of a bombardment. For almost seven
+weeks we have defied an enemy who encircle us upon every side, and who
+has summoned to its aid, for the purposes of breaching our trivial
+earthworks, the finest guns from their arsenal in Pretoria. The Boers
+outnumber us in men and in artillery, and not a day has passed since
+the siege began that they have not thrown shrapnel and common shell,
+omitting minor projectiles, into the town. And still we live, with
+just sufficient spirit to jeer across our ramparts at the enemy. They
+Mauser us, and shell us; they cut our water off, and raid our cattle;
+they make life hell, and they can do so, so long as it may please
+them; but no one was ever so deluded if they think that by such means
+Mafeking surrenders. From time to time we have given them a taste of
+our quality, and if on occasion we have lost some few, it is a source
+of melancholy satisfaction to know that their loss has been the
+greater. It is not long since the Boers attempted to blow the town to
+atoms through the agency of dynamite, though, _similia similibus
+curantur_, they went to heaven prematurely by an undesirable
+explosion. It was night, and the town was just about to rest, when it
+was shaken to its foundations by a most deafening roar; sand and
+stones, fragments of trees came down as hail from the skies, the whole
+place being lighted with the lurid glow of blood-red flame. To the
+north of Mafeking, and so close to the cemetery that it might have
+been a pillar of fire coming to earth to claim its own, an immense arc
+of fire and smoke was ejected out of the ground. After it there came
+silence, broken here and there by the rattle of the _debris_ upon the
+roofs of the houses, and by the shouts and shrieks of a town in the
+confusion of a panic. That night those who slept had dreams of the day
+of judgment, while those who lay awake were restless, quaking with an
+insidious terror. In the morning the cause explained itself, since
+barely half a mile up the line was an enormous rent in the ground, the
+line itself being strewn and scattered with the rubbish of an
+earthquake. The Boers, with much ingenuous enterprise, had despatched
+upon a purely friendly mission a trolly load of dynamite;
+unfortunately, where they had started their infernal machine the
+declivity of the line had precipitated the truck backwards toward
+their own camp, and having very foolishly lighted their time-fuse
+before they had surmounted the crest of the rise, they had not the
+courage to stop the progress of the somewhat novel engine of
+destruction. Apparently it had rolled slowly downwards, tracking the
+instigators of such a deed with very fatal persistence, until the
+time-fuse met the charge, and powder and dynamite went off together.
+Upon the morrow there was much sadness in the Boer camp, and much
+silence.
+
+Dynamite has played a not unimportant _role_ in the history of our
+siege. Cronje has heard from native spies, and from his friends in our
+camp, that Mafeking is set within a circle of dynamite mines, and he
+has protested against its use in civilised warfare. Since then,
+however, he has not only discharged dynamite by trolly loads into the
+town, but he has threatened, in his vague and shadowy fashion, to send
+to his capital for some dynamite guns. It would seem, then, that a
+warm time is coming to Mafeking; the pity of it being that we are kept
+so long and in such unnecessary suspense. If Cronje were the gallant
+warrior whose dignity he assumes in addressing the garrison, he would
+have either taken or abandoned Mafeking some weeks ago. As it is,
+however, with occasional letters of regret for such untimely
+procedure, he still elects to bombard an inoffensive and unoffending
+township. The other morning, after the usual series of dull days, the
+activity in the Boer camp suggested to us that the town was about to
+be attacked. From the south-west the big Creusot opened fire at
+intervals of twenty minutes, the intervening periods being pleasantly
+filled in with Mauser and Martini fire and shells from two nine-pound
+high-velocity Krupps. In a very short space of time the list of
+fatalities included a native dog, a commissariat mule, and many
+buildings. After such a bloodless bombardment the Boer legions
+gallantly rode round to the east with the apparent intention of
+attacking the town. Then we thought that, in that moment, our defence
+would be justified, but he is wisest who determines what is to be the
+nature of the Boer movement when that movement has taken place. Down
+the serried lines of armed Dutchmen old Piet Cronje, as his friends
+call him, or General Cronje, as a sycophantian Boer press describe
+him, rode. He was a gallant sight--albeit we could only just see him
+some two thousand yards distant. After a temporary and casual
+inspection of his force, General Cronje turned his head towards
+Mafeking, and waving violently one arm in the air, cantered with much
+solemn apprehension towards our trenches. He had covered in this
+desperate effort some thirty yards, when perhaps a natural
+superstition caused him to turn his head. Was there a man dismayed in
+the Boer lines? Not one; but nevertheless, they were not taking any
+such manoeuvre just then. Cronje stopped and cantered back again,
+seeming to hold an indaba with his petty officers. They gathered round
+him, they talked to him, pointing towards their lines, and shouting at
+one another; but there it ended. In a little while we saw a silent
+figure, moody and taciturn, guarded by two orderlies, ride slowly
+around from the east front to the headquarters of the executive on the
+south-west. Thus Cronje failed, not through any fault of his, but
+because the idle braggarts who form his army have not the spirit of
+whipped curs. Since then Cronje has made no effort to storm Mafeking,
+and it is very much to be doubted whether until the siege be raised
+the attempt will be renewed.
+
+One must sympathise a little with Cronje since he has not been able to
+sustain in his attack upon Mafeking the high reputation which he
+enjoys among his countrymen. Now that he has been recalled to Natal,
+we here hope that he may be able to find some opportunity to
+distinguish himself. His force without Mafeking is a raw, lawless body
+of Western Boers, the majority of whom have followed him on his march.
+We say Natal, but there is no very positive ground for believing that
+it is in that direction that the new field of his activity lies. It
+may be that he has gone South, and if such should happen to be the
+case, it will not be long before he will come in contact with men who
+will test his mettle to the utmost. There have been many rumours of
+reinforcements: some people, addicted with a greater faculty of
+imagination than power of veracity, have even seen the advanced
+outposts of the relief, which, of course, is ridiculous. They mistake
+some scattered party of Boers for advanced scouts. We do not think
+that there is much real chance of the siege of Mafeking being raised
+before the New Year, since such would be opposed to the stately and
+insular procedure of the Imperial and Colonial War Offices. Hitherto
+it has apparently ignored the claims of Mafeking. All conditions of
+people here united in their efforts to secure some more or less
+reliable armament from the Government, but the reason, above all
+others, which made this impossible was that the Imperial authorities
+at home, in their fatuity, could not bring themselves to believe that
+the war, which South Africa knew to be imminent, would come to pass.
+Nevertheless, in face of their neglect, we are snug in Mafeking,
+although our artillery be hopeless; and since the war began we have
+gradually added to our defences. After many days' bombardment a
+breach was effected in one only of the town's earthworks. That was
+very quickly repaired, so quickly indeed that before nightfall it had
+already been restored.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+SHELLS AND SLAUGHTER
+
+
+                                      _November 30th, 1899._
+
+The Boers continue to shell Mafeking daily, and to concentrate upon
+the streets of the town their customary rifle fire. At first we
+experienced a terror of the dangers of shell fire, but the daily and
+constant presence of exploding shells has brought about an unusual
+degree of familiarity with its attendant feeling of contempt; people
+now are too careless, seeming to rest under the delusion that, one and
+all, enjoy an absolute immunity. The folly of it is that occasionally
+the error of their way is illustrated by a longer list of fatalities
+through one shell claiming half a dozen victims. Europeans perhaps,
+are less careless of the consequences of shell fire than is the native
+population, and it is a pity that it has not been found possible to
+impress into the mind of the Kaffir a better appreciation of the
+possible result of their intrepidity. We have had many more natives
+killed than whites, and the element of tragedy in this becomes the
+greater and more acute since, as a rule, the native, employed in
+building bomb-proof shelters for the whites, lacks the energy to turn
+to his own profit his knowledge of the manner in which shell cover
+should be constructed. They lie about under tarpaulins, behind zinc
+palings, wooden boxes, and flimsy sheds of that description, and
+perhaps for days their shelter may escape the line of fire; but there
+comes a moment made hideous by the scream of shell as it bursts in
+some little gathering of dozing, half listless natives. At such a
+moment their bravery is extraordinary--is indeed the most fearful
+thing in the world. The native with his arm blown off, with his thigh
+shot away, or with his body disembowelled, is endowed with extreme
+fortitude and most stoical resolution. Unless he is seen, he lies
+where he is struck, not caring to take the trouble to make his wounds
+known to some one who could sympathise and assist him. When the gaze
+of the curious is turned upon his mangled and wounded form he attempts
+to laugh, makes every effort to assist himself, and even if he knows
+that his injuries be fatal, he makes no sign. There is thus much to
+admire in these natives, but for the most part, people are quite
+indifferent to their sufferings.
+
+A few moments ago, indeed as I was writing the concluding words of the
+last sentence, a terrific explosion, a shower of gravel and leaden
+bullets upon my roof, foretold the fact that somewhere near at hand
+one of these untimely instruments of destruction had burst. As I went
+to the door a crowd of people could be seen running towards the Market
+Square, the air was filled with the strong perfume of the bursting
+charge. I ran with the throng to where the shell had first struck in
+Market Square before delivering its full effect upon the windows of
+the local chemist. Amid the splintered glass and the consequent
+disorder of the chemist's shop lay the writhing figure of an unhappy
+native. As an illustration of the appalling wounds which these shells
+inflict, I am purposely dilating upon this very pitiful scene. As the
+shell rebounded from the ground leaving a hole many feet long, narrow,
+and arrow-headed, it had come in contact with a native before it
+wrecked the apothecary's store. Mingled with the fragments of glass
+and the contents of the shop were shreds of cloth and infinitesimal
+strips of flesh, while the entire environment of the scene was
+splashed with blood. The poor native had lost an arm, a foot lay a few
+yards from him, and his other leg was hanging by a few shreds of skin.
+In an angle of the wall formed by the junction of the shop-front of
+the chemist and the tin protrusion of his neighbour's building,
+something was sticking. For the moment it had escaped the gaze of the
+sordid few, who, drawn by idle curiosity, were standing about without
+the inclination to help, or even a smattering of the first aid to the
+injured. When the bleeding body was put upon a stretcher, and the
+mangled extremities gathered together, the Hospital Orderly caught
+sight of the bunch which was clinging to the recess in the wall. As he
+went forward to seize it, the trickling streams of fluid which escaped
+from it revealed only too plainly its true character. So great was the
+force of the shell, and so near had its unfortunate victim been to the
+galvanised iron wall, that as body and shell met, the terrible
+violence of the impact had wrenched away the lump to hurl it, in the
+same moment, through the exterior wall of the adjacent premises.
+Despite his fearful injuries, which were beyond the scope of human
+power to aid, he was not dead, feebly exclaiming as they put him in
+the stretcher, "Boss, Boss, me hurt." The ruin of the building had
+scarcely been realised, and the vapour of chemicals from the shell,
+mingling with the scattered perfumes of the shop, with the scent of
+the ploughed-up earth, and with that curious, insidious scent of a
+wounded body dissipated--when a second shell screaming its passage
+through the air hurled itself with a terrible velocity against the
+other window of the same building. In effect it added a little more to
+the ruin of the premises, escaping by a miracle five men who had been
+standing in the interior of the premises, but killing an unfortunate
+corporal, who had gone from the scene of the death of the native to
+get a "pick-me-up" from the adjoining bar in Riesle's Hotel. In such a
+manner does the death roll pile itself up--with the impending slowness
+of a juggernaut and the haunting persistency of fate. If these were
+the actual numbers of the killed upon this date, there were also two
+who were wounded, one of whom has since died, thus giving to one day a
+terrible trio. With such a sad lesson before one it would seem that,
+beyond those who were compelled to be out and about, no one would
+venture in the streets under shell fire, much less employ their
+leisure in endeavouring to unload those of the enemy's shells that
+might have fallen into the town, yet, but two days ago a local
+wheelwright blew himself and two other men to an untimely end by the
+explosion of a shell from which, with a _steel_ drill, he was
+endeavouring to extract the charge. One of these men was killed almost
+instantaneously, another had his leg blown off, while the third
+sustained terrible wounds upon his body. There is not a day now
+without fresh victims being claimed in different parts of the town.
+Almost the first question asked as the shell bursts is for the name of
+the unfortunate owner of the wrecked house, and the number of the
+killed and wounded. In the early part of the siege when people were
+thoroughly scared by the introduction of this new element of
+destruction, bomb-proof shelters became quite popular, but lately with
+the good luck which the people in town have enjoyed, the shelters have
+been rather abandoned, but there is no doubt now, that the number who
+have been killed in this past week has somewhat unnerved the town. If
+it induces people to stay beneath their shelters, from out of the
+fearful misfortunes which have fallen upon the few, may be derived
+almost universal salvation.
+
+[Illustration: Effects of Shell Fire. 1. Before.]
+
+The hospital in these times, is the centre of melancholy interest to
+the town. It is perhaps a quarter of a mile beyond the outskirts of
+the town, but so situated that apart from the flag under whose
+protection it should lie, it would be impossible for the enemy not to
+be unaware that it was a natural shelter for the sick and wounded.
+Much as the town in general, the Convent which adjoins the hospital,
+and the hospital itself show the stress of the bombardment. The walls
+of the hospital have been riddled with Martini and Mauser bullets,
+while shells have perforated the galvanised iron roofing, torn holes
+in the walls of the ward, wrecked outstanding buildings, and in brief,
+played such direful havoc as would be considered impossible in a war
+with any nation that has subscribed to the articles of the Geneva
+Convention. Only the most strenuous opposition from Colonel
+Baden-Powell, who threatened the severest pains, penalties, and
+reprisals upon Commandant Cronje and Commandant Snyman, for their
+neglect of the Red Cross flag, has saved the building in its entirety.
+Nevertheless that degree of consideration, which we secured from the
+Boers for our hospital was denied by these infamous barbarians to the
+Convent and its gentle inmates. Their home has tumbled about its
+foundations, the wall which faces the enemy's fire has been hit in
+numerous places. Shells have ruined the children's dormitory, burst
+with a magnificent effect in the interior of what would have been the
+operating room, shattered a corner stone to pieces, and rendered
+rotten and wholly impossible for any further habitation our subsidiary
+hospital. The sisters, however, still stick to their posts and
+minister the comforts of religion, though seeking their share in the
+task of nursing, and setting, by their subdued heroism, an example to
+the entire community. Never has any hospital been saddled with such a
+work as the local one in Mafeking. War had taken every one so suddenly
+that like everything else in Mafeking at the crucial moment, it was
+wanting in much which was cardinal to its existence. The corps of
+nurses was made up of those ladies from the town who were willing to
+volunteer, and if there was an absence of the professional nursing
+service, there were equally a dearth of dressers, of surgical
+appliances, of medical comforts. The Victoria Hospital in times like
+these possesses no Rontgen Rays, and many times indeed have the
+medical staff regretted that so important an instrument should not
+have been sent in good time. Indeed all that the Director-General of
+Hospitals has done for Mafeking was to send Surgeon-Major Anderson out
+from England, and had it not been that this gallant officer supplied,
+at his own expense, a large quantity of medical stores which he
+believed to be necessary, with the best intentions in the world, it
+would have been impossible to cope with the requirements of the
+wounded.
+
+It has been interesting, however, to observe from the point of view of
+the medical profession the nature of the wounds caused by the Mauser
+and Martini rifles and shell-fire. The Mauser perforates, the Martini
+splinters, the shell pulverises. The point of entry of the Mauser
+bullet is somewhat smaller than the circumference of a threepenny
+piece, and if it passes through the bone it does not appear to set up
+any undue amount of splintering. The hole through which it emerges is
+usually, except where the path of the bullet has been deflected, as
+small as the point of penetration. The Mauser does not, as a rule, set
+up in the body, and in the greater number of cases passes clean
+through. It is a humane wound, and infinitely less injurious than the
+Martini and Dum-dum. A Martini destroys a large internal surface
+making beneath the point of contact a wound between two and three
+inches in diameter, with an even greater area of exit. It sweeps
+everything before it, shredding arteries, shattering the bones, while
+its process of recovery is, in consequence, the more protracted. I
+have already described the wounds from shell-fire, adding to that
+account, however, the fact that the merest fragment of a shell is as
+capable as the shell itself, of making most terrible injuries.
+
+[Illustration: Effects of Shell Fire. 2. After.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+A SOFT-WATER BATH
+
+
+                             MAFEKING, _December 6th, 1899_.
+
+As compensation to the inhabitants of beleaguered Mafeking for the
+many dull days we have had lately, yesterday was replete with
+incidents and crowded with a constant succession of events of more
+than ordinary interest. We have had our days of activity, when the
+boom of artillery and the rattle of musketry have impressed into a few
+brief hours the full measure of martial excitement, we have endured
+our days of lonesome and tiring idleness when the hot winds of the
+Kalahari Desert have swept eddies of whirring, biting sand across the
+trenches, when the pitiless sun has spent its energies upon the
+heat-stricken garrison. But yesterday we experienced the effect of a
+combination between that Providence which the Boers claim as their
+special and benign guardian and the elements themselves. It was a
+reconnaissance in force by nature. A union of extreme subtlety and one
+against which it was impossible to contend. It came, it swept
+everything before it, and it left us drenched with rain, surrounded by
+small lakes of mud, streams of water, and without dry garments to our
+names. When the mischief was complete the deluge ceased. The general
+physiognomy of the scene can be described at once. When dawn broke in
+the morning across the sky there glowered the haze of heat, which in
+Africa, as elsewhere, denotes a more than usually tropical day. To
+those, however, who knew the signs of the sky, the fleeting masses of
+black cloud, low down upon the horizon, foretold a day of evil
+tempest. Slowly the rising wind drove them together until, shortly
+before noon, clouds were bunched high up across the sky and over the
+Boer laager. From where we were in the town it was quite apparent that
+the temporary centre of the storm was almost above the emplacements of
+the enemy's artillery. Before the breeze had increased the Boers had
+thrown a few shells into the town, but presently, as the force of the
+gale struck us, it was evident that the rain-filled clouds were
+discharging their contents upon the extreme limits of the veldt. For
+an hour or two the Boers received the full effect of the storm, and
+but few drops of rain fell into the town, as the wind swept before its
+path the _debris_ of the veldt, portions of broken trees, of scrub,
+and bushes. The deluge quickly left the south-east, concentrating a
+little beyond and over the town, and so soon as it began to trouble us
+it seemed to have deserted the Boers. Possibly the wind carried with
+it a rainspout, since the effect of the streaming water was as though
+from somewhere in the sky buckets were being emptied on to the place
+beneath. The veldt was quickly flooded, the dried-up spruits were soon
+charged with foaming cataracts, Mafeking itself lay under water, the
+earthworks around the town were swept away, trenches and bomb-proof
+shelters were choked with eddying streams, everywhere was
+ruin--destruction and complete chaos reigned until the storm had spent
+itself. Down the acclivity upon which Cannon Kopje is placed there
+rolled the surging tide, carrying in its might the stores of the fort,
+the blankets of the men, the bodies of struggling animals, who, if
+they succeeded in coping with the force of the stream, were dashed to
+pieces upon the rocky facing of the hill. The women's laager, which
+has hitherto rested in snug seclusion at the base of the hills forming
+the western outposts, was, in a few minutes, flooded with the
+off-pourings from the sluits of the veldt, while the trenches were
+quickly submerged or silted with the refuse of the torrent. A cart
+which went to the assistance of the inmates of the laager found itself
+water-bound through the tremendous force of the tortuous cataracts. In
+the town, bomb-proof cellars were vacated, and the people, discarding
+their shoes and stockings, made their way from point to point by
+paddling and fording the footpaths across the streets. To the north of
+the town, below the exterior outposts, the men stripped to the skin,
+allowing the full strength of the streaming downpour to beat upon
+them. The Market Square was a sheet of running water, rising with such
+rapidity that it seemed that the houses bordering the square would be
+inundated.
+
+From Market Square, upon two sides, the roads make something of a
+descent, and down these slight inclines volumes of water, yards in
+width and some feet in depth precipitated themselves to the river-bed.
+As the storm increased it was seen that it would be impossible to
+retain any longer our advanced positions in the river-bed. The first
+to go was the trench occupied by Corporal Currie and his native
+sharpshooters. As the water swept from bank to bank through this post,
+which we, but a few days before, had won so gallantly from the enemy,
+the men clambered up the banks to the veldt and made their way as best
+they could to the base. With the flooding of this position, so rapidly
+did the river rise, that those occupied by Captain Fitzclarence and
+his squadron were equally untenable. As they were abandoned the stream
+rushed by them with the roar of a river in flood, while the crash of
+boulder upon boulder turned masses of rock into shattered fragments.
+Within an hour the river had risen eight feet, and so unexpected was
+the flood that for the time being it was not possible to rescue from
+the rising stream the 7-pounder gun, which was in position some way
+down the river. As the rain continued the wind died down, until in the
+height of this storm it scarcely possessed the strength to dissipate
+the white mists which were rising from the veldt. They hung low upon
+the ground, prevented from rising by the strength of the downpour, and
+making it difficult to see the progress of events in the enemy's
+lines. From time to time above the hissing of the rain and the roar of
+the rivers we heard the angry cough of the Nordenfeldt, the shrieks of
+their quick-firing guns, and the heavy and more stately boom of "Big
+Ben." Ofttimes there was the echo of the Mauser, the grating rustle of
+the Martini, and it soon became evident that the enemy did not propose
+to let us endure the misery of the storm altogether undisturbed. From
+these omens, as some slight diminution in the downpour allowed the
+mists to rise from the ground, we expected to hear the sound of
+exploding volleys coming through the fog, and to find that the fight
+had become suddenly desperate; but the Boers lacked the individual
+courage, and the charge which they might have made under cover of the
+tangle of the brushwood and the bewilderment of the fog never took
+place. They were satisfied with cannonading our position; and across
+the ground, heavy with rain, upon which the mist laid dense, the red
+flashes of the gun and the sparkle of the rifles had a weird effect as
+they flared and vanished through the eddying masses of vapour and
+fantastic columns of smoke. The tumbling volumes of mist and the
+grey-black masses of smoke mingled and curled in distorted pillars,
+forming at a moment when the sun shone briefly, as the tears of heaven
+dried off into space, an evanescent and iridescent canopy of colour.
+The respite was momentary, and as the sun withdrew, the groups of men
+that had been seen about the Boer lines were quickly obscured in
+clouds of grosser vapour. Their fire, however, continued, while about
+them tossed the thick white fog, as above us occasionally rolled the
+thunder of their guns. The area of the storm included the most
+advanced trenches of the Boers, and as the wind shifted the gloomy
+masses of vapour we saw through the whirling mist and smoke-charged
+air, the Boers, rain-soaked as ourselves, standing disconsolately upon
+their muddy parapets. They did not seem to understand what they should
+do. They could hear their own guns firing on our positions, happily
+beyond the later centre of the storm, but these men themselves stood
+still, shaking the water from their limbs, attempting to dry their
+weapons. At night, with the darkness to cover our misfortunes, the
+town was busily constructing fresh earthworks, draining those shelters
+from which any further use could be obtained, and making such amends
+as were possible for an occurrence, almost unprecedented in the annals
+of war.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE ECONOMY OF THE SITUATION
+
+
+                                      _December 12th, 1899._
+
+The importance of the resistance which Mafeking has made to the
+attacks of the Boers should be viewed in the light of its relationship
+to the two Protectorates, Bechuanaland and Matabeleland, since had
+this place fallen, its position as a _depot_ for the Northern trade
+would have made it a comparatively easy task for the victorious Boers
+to have secured the control of the intermediate areas. They would have
+at once seized the rolling stock of the railway whose headquarters are
+temporarily invested in Mafeking, and could, by that means, have
+mobilised their forces in a fashion and with a degree of acceleration
+which would have brought them in a completely equipped and efficient
+condition to the borders of Rhodesia. Indeed, from what one can learn
+now, it is not at all improbable that the plan of the northern
+operations of the Boer forces from their base at Mafeking provided for
+the seizure of Mafeking with its stores and rolling stock, with their
+subsequent enlistment of this material in the work of occupying
+Bechuanaland and assisting our enemy in the concentration of their
+forces upon Rhodesia. With the railway in their hands small forces
+would have been stationed at the important points such as are afforded
+by the natural drifts, and while they maintained by this system of
+custodianship an open line of communication, they would, at the same
+time, have been free to utilise, in a combined and united mass, all of
+these scattered parties of Boers who were engaged upon marauding
+expeditions between here and Middle Drift. The history of Mafeking
+then would have been but the story of Vryburg, where, once its
+sympathy to the Boer cause was proclaimed and the place effectually
+occupied, the Boer commandant withdrew the greater portion of his men
+to fresh spheres of activity. With Mafeking in the hands of the enemy,
+our chief stand would have been around Buluwayo, where Colonel
+Baden-Powell and Colonel Plumer would have united their commands,
+thereby presenting to the enemy greater resistance than would have
+been possible had the forces been engaged upon their own initiative.
+In a way, therefore, Mafeking has forged an important link in the
+chain of outposts, by which the safety of the Protectorates has been
+guaranteed and the independence of the country still preserved to
+Imperial rule. It must not be forgotten, however, that the success
+which Plumer's column has enjoyed at Rhodes' Drift and at Middle Drift
+gave to Southern Rhodesia a certain immunity from hostile invasion,
+while in any estimate of the economy of the victories which Colonel
+Plumer's men and our own here have scored against the Boers, it should
+be borne in mind that had they vanquished our forces at Middle Drift
+or Rhodes' Drift, further Imperial territory would have been invaded,
+and the road upon which they might have marched to besiege Buluwayo
+would have been open to them. Colonel Baden-Powell has, of course,
+been chiefly instrumental in preventing the investment of Buluwayo,
+since the determined stand which he made caused General Cronje to hold
+an aggregate number of Boers, amounting to 8,000 men, and by far the
+larger portion of the Western Division of the S.A.R. forces, under his
+control for Mafeking; but without in any way disparaging this work, so
+important in its achievements, so vital in its issues, nothing perhaps
+has proved so integral a factor in the work of maintaining our
+occupation and dominion over these important adjuncts of our Empire in
+Africa, as the defence which Colonel Plumer so successfully and
+gallantly accomplished. However we here may have assisted in the
+preservation of those Protectorates as Imperial dominions, there can
+be no doubt we should have lost, for the time being, all claim to
+their moral and practical possession had Colonel Plumer's force
+retired. With 8,000 men investing Mafeking, and various minor bodies
+scattered up and down the border between here and Fort Tuli, the enemy
+could have spared 6,000 men for co-operation with these subsidiary
+bodies, and still have maintained the siege and bombardment of this
+town. It did not need, then, its downfall to give the Boers important
+belligerent rights throughout the Protectorate and Southern Rhodesia,
+and although our surrender might have materially facilitated their
+progress, our successful opposition did not necessarily, nor
+altogether, impede it. The strategical value of the drifts made their
+safe custody a matter of momentous importance, since through them, as
+much as from Mafeking, might entry have been made and territorial
+supremacy for the moment acquired. Indeed, it is very much to be
+doubted whether the chief value of the stand by which Mafeking has
+distinguished itself is not found in the lesson which it has read to
+the Colony itself. Had we gone the way of Vryburg, or had we
+surrendered after some slight stand, it is almost certain that our
+fall would have been the signal for the general uprising of the Dutch
+in the northern areas of the Colony as well as in British
+Bechuanaland. How near we are to a mare's nest in Mafeking is
+uncertain, but after much inquiry amongst the chief people (business)
+in the town, there is no doubt that had the inhabitants of Mafeking
+been able to conceive the difficulties and trials which were about to
+beset them, the losses in business at the moment, and the temporary
+stagnation which will follow the war, they would have preferred to
+have worshipped the Golden Calf, and to see Colonel Baden-Powell and
+Colonel Hore remove their headquarters to some spot in the
+Protectorate, while the sleek and prosperous merchants of Mafeking
+were thus enabled to follow their occupation and to turn over their
+money while they lived amid the baneful protection of a temporary and
+purely commercial allegiance to the Transvaal Republic. It is not, it
+would seem, that individually Mafeking is disloyal, but that it is
+essentially a commercial centre, governed, impressed, and inherited by
+commercial instinct, and reflecting, in its inhabitants, a gathering
+of the peoples of the world in more or less confused proportion. There
+is a small German community, there is an American colony, there are
+French, and Jews of every nation. They have made money in Mafeking;
+they own much property; they are even friendly to the Transvaal since
+they have large trade interests among Dutch towns which are near the
+border. They came here in the days when this part of Africa was
+unknown to white man; they trekked from Kimberley, from the Transvaal,
+even across the African desert from the coast, and if they have lived
+beneath the protection of our standard, they have amassed their wealth
+by trading with the flags of all nations. They care very little indeed
+for the Uitlander in the Transvaal, for his wrongs or for his rights,
+but they would respect him much if he came with his cattle and his
+sheep, with his waggons and his chattels, and some superfluity of
+money, for then they could add still further to their hoard of shekels
+and trade with him for his cattle. It is a weird and motley crowd that
+constitutes Mafeking: disgusted with Imperial government, wishing to
+have vengeance upon the Colonial Government, and boasting to Heaven at
+one moment about their gallant resistance, crying out against the
+ill-wind that has brought them the siege. They move with the current
+of the Colony, and can be as easily disturbed to patriotism as they
+can rouse themselves to a passionate criticism of the follies of the
+Imperial protection under which they exist. When they are moved to
+sympathy with the Dutch, it is difficult to believe that they are the
+self-same loyal inhabitants of Mafeking who are now beleaguered, since
+by daily contact, by union of marriage, by personal friendship, they
+have consciously or unconsciously assimilated the cause of the Boer,
+and reveal the profundity of their sympathies in these times of
+distress.
+
+An interesting side issue to the siege of Mafeking has been the chain
+of events relating to the departure of Lady Sarah Wilson from Mafeking
+upon the night of the day during which war was declared, her
+temporary sojourn at Setlagoli, from where she supplied the garrison
+with news, and acted as the chief medium by which Baden-Powell managed
+to get his dispatches through to the Government in Cape Town; her
+retirement from Setlagoli, when her work was discovered, to General
+Snyman's laager before Mafeking to request from that gentleman a safe
+permit into Mafeking; her eventual arrival in the town in exchange for
+the prisoner Viljoen. Lady Sarah Wilson experienced no very
+extraordinary adventures and was treated with that consideration which
+is due to her sex by the Boers, despite the fact that they might have
+made her position somewhat unpleasant, since she had quite voluntarily
+taken up active participation in the siege by endeavouring to keep the
+garrison supplied with news.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+A VISIT TO THE HOSPITAL
+
+
+                                      _December 12th, 1899._
+
+The week has been a dull one, which in relation to the siege implies
+that the passing days have not borne what we have now come to regard
+as their full quota of shells and bullets. We here are somewhat
+sceptical of the lapses of the bombardment since tactics which the
+Boers have already adopted have led us to believe that intervals of
+some hours' duration be planned deliberately so that when shelling
+should be renewed, it may please Providence, ever on the side of the
+Boers, to have the streets thronged with people. Upon one or two
+occasions we have been lulled into a fancied security by the cessation
+of shell fire; but with the lamentable occurrences of last week, we
+are disinclined to be again caught napping. Accordingly, although
+there has been a week of extraordinary desistence upon the part of the
+enemy, those who were about were careful enough to take their airing
+within a short distance of their bomb-proof shelters. In a fashion,
+this gave to the environments of the town and the town itself, the
+appearance of a rabbit warren, where at sunset the little animals may
+be seen bunched about the entrance to their retreats. A few ladies
+enjoyed the novelty of tea _al fresco_, with possibly, a keener
+appreciation for their propinquity to some bomb-proof, than for the
+light refreshment in which they were indulging.
+
+Thus it came that I was visiting the hospital, chatting with the
+physicians upon the stoep of the building. Beneath the shelter of the
+verandah lay the forms of many who had been wounded, and who now were
+sufficiently recovered to sit outside; here and there a man limped
+painfully with the aid of crutches, to talk to a comrade who, with his
+arm in a sling, was not altogether inappreciative of the fact that he
+had been wounded in a recent sniping affray against the enemy's
+position in the brickfields. As we sat upon the stoep with our legs
+dangling to the ground, behind us in the building there was the
+complement of battle: the wounded, the nurses, and the doctors; but in
+front of us there was the expansion of the veldt, green and peaceful.
+The heat haze lay upon it, simmering in an endless stretch of floating
+vapour. There was every appearance of the provincial and rural
+simplicity which goes to make up the daily life of those who live upon
+the veldt. There were homesteads which, but a few months ago, had been
+the centre of some small and flourishing agrestic community, but were
+now charred and blackened, epitomising the destruction which the Boers
+deal out to unoffending people; in the place of the herds which
+formerly had grazed upon the scene, there were the white covers of the
+Boer laagers; there were the lines of the Boer horses, there were the
+mobs of cattle, of sheep, of goats, which, raided from the
+countryside, had been collected in the rear of the enemy's
+encampments. Upon the skyline, from the steps of the hospital, the
+emplacement of "Big Ben" could be seen outlined quite distinctly in
+the bright sunlight. The position of the gun was known by the glint of
+the sun as it played upon the burnished metal.
+
+Presently, as we talked, there came the boom of cannon, and the enemy
+had turned upon the stadt their quick-firing Krupps. Instinctively,
+since the habits which rule the enemy are well known to us, a wounded
+man called out to us that was the five o'clock gun, and for the moment
+we were uncertain as to whether the peace of the afternoon would be
+further disturbed. But in a little a column of smoke, white and heavy,
+hung over the position of "Big Ben," and we at once settled down for
+further shelling during the remainder of the time that daylight
+lasted. In the distance, out on the furthest limits of the Stadt,
+there came echoes, echoing back the noise of the explosion when the
+hundred-pound shell burst amid a collection of native huts. It is so
+seldom that these greater projectiles miss their victims, that
+preparations were at once made for any casualties that might have been
+sent to the hospital. With these measures taken, we waited while the
+firing grew heavier. It was just one of those moments which we had
+been anticipating from the fashion which our friend the Boer had
+already set, and in a little it was proved that whatever had been our
+expectations they would be fully realised. When the firing began, the
+scene upon the stoep of the hospital gradually changed; the wounded
+were carried back to their wards, Surgeon-Major Anderson, the Imperial
+officer who has been sent out here; Dr. Hayes, who in the virtue of
+the rank of P.M.O. conferred by Colonel Baden-Powell, has charge of
+the hospital, and his brother, both local practitioners, waited the
+course of events upon the steps of the building. For the time firing
+seemed confined to the artillery and rifles from the Boer trenches in
+the brickfields, the south-eastern front of the town and the eastern
+facing of the native location receiving the brunt. By degrees the
+entire position of the enemy upon that side dropped into line, giving
+cause and effect to the wisps of smoke which broke into the air about
+the advanced trenches of the foe. In about half an hour from the time
+the first shell exploded over the stadt, a stretcher-party appeared
+coming from the town and began to descend into the trench which led to
+the hospital. As they crossed the recreation ground, a large white
+flag which was carried in advance of the party, heralding to the Boers
+the passing of wounded, attracted the attention of the enemy and was
+promptly fired upon. It is these wilful acts which make it difficult
+to consider the Boer in any way removed from a savage combatant, and
+although the flag-bearer waved repeatedly to the enemy's trenches, the
+fire from that direction did not diminish. With no little heroism the
+stretcher-party, which was under Sergeant-Major Dowling, a resident
+physician in Cape Town, who volunteered his services for the campaign,
+and who has charge of the subsidiary hospital in the native location,
+made their way across the zone of fire to the doors of the hospital.
+Then in a moment all that had been peaceful and serene before, became
+impressed with the horrible effects and the fearful injuries which are
+derived from war.
+
+The stretcher was taken to the operating-room, where nurses had
+already begun to arrange the table, to prepare the carbolic lotion, to
+lay out the lint and bandages, the dressing dishes, sponges, and a
+fine array of instruments; then when the stretcher had been placed
+beside the table, willing and gentle hands lifted the inanimate form
+by the corners of the brown and blood-stained mackintosh sheet in
+which the body had been enshrouded. Dr. Hayes snicked the strings
+which had caught the ends of the sheet about the injured, and as he
+threw back the flaps Surgeon-Major Anderson gently separated the
+clothing where, matted with blood, it had congealed into a sticky mass
+about the injuries. The doctors and the surgeon, bending with callous
+diffidence about the inert and prostrate form, then proceeded rapidly
+with their examination. Through the western windows of the room there
+came the ruddy rays of the sun as it sank to its rest. The light
+caught the bottles on the shelves, flickered for a moment upon the
+silvery brightness of the instruments, and played about the hair of
+the nurses, who, passing to and fro across the window, were as much
+interested in their work as in the nature of the patient's injuries.
+In a corner of the room Sergeant-Major Dr. Dowling explained to
+Surgeon-Major Anderson that the patient, who was a native woman of
+some repute, had been washing clothes upon the banks of the Molopo,
+when a flight of one-pound steel-pointed Maxim shells burst about her.
+The pelvis and the femur had been shattered completely, besides
+internal wounds of a most fatal character in the abdominal regions.
+The left foot was also pulverised, the extraordinary part being that
+any one, after suffering such severe injuries and sustaining so great
+a shock to the system, should yet be living. The examination
+completed, Dr. Hayes, turning to the head nurse, said that it was
+impossible to do anything which would save the woman's life,
+inquiring, as Surgeon-Major Anderson dissolved a grain of morphia in a
+wine-glass, if any one knew the name of the native. As the nurse was
+about to reply, the patient, moaning feebly, expressed in excellent
+English, that her name was Martha. Then it appeared that she was
+recognised as being the wife of a Fingo in the location, one who
+before marriage had been a member of the oldest profession which the
+world has ever known, but since lawful wedlock had consummated her
+union, she had passed, after the manner of her tribe, a life of great
+austerity. The air of the operating-room was becoming oppressive, the
+moaning of the patient merging with the heavy scent of the iodoform
+and the lighter evaporation of the carbolic liniment began gradually
+to dominate the nerves. To the casual observer such as myself, the
+scene was striking. The insensitiveness of those assembled in the
+operating-room, in reality the outcome of great experience in a
+particular profession, enforced a calmness of feature and of feeling
+with which I was far from being actually animated. The mechanical
+industry of the surgeons, the automatic regularity with which the
+hospital orderly waved his fly whisk above the head of the dying
+woman, imparted a coldness to the scene which one could not help
+observing. In a fashion, all that human skill could do had been
+accomplished, since had the foot been amputated at the ankle, or the
+thigh removed at the hip, the labour would have been unnecessary, the
+extra shock to the system serving only to accelerate the end. Very
+gently they sponged the mouth and nose of the woman and cooled her
+brow, very gently they administered morphia and sips of brandy, but
+one by one the doctors, rinsing their hands and lowering their
+shirt-sleeves, put on their jackets. At the door of the operating-room
+Dr. Hayes and Surgeon-Major Anderson paused to impart a few brief
+instructions to the nurses. They were not to forget, said the P.M.O.,
+to remove the tourniquet from the pelvis when the end had come;
+Surgeon-Major Anderson adding to this an order to continue waving the
+fly whisk so long as there existed the necessity.
+
+And the incident had closed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+A LITTLE GUN PRACTICE
+
+
+                                      _December 23rd, 1899._
+
+We take a keen interest in our artillery, although we never cease to
+deplore the fact that the War Office did not think it necessary to
+send to Mafeking anything better than old muzzle-loading
+seven-pounders of the Crimean period. Their range is restricted, and
+their mobility is greatly inferior to more modern types; but if they
+have not enabled us to do very much, we have at least been able to
+return their fire. In this way quite a little flutter of enthusiasm
+has been aroused through having unearthed an antiquated
+sixteen-pounder gun. It would seem to have been made about 1770, and
+is identical with those which up till very recently adorned the quay
+at Portsmouth. Its weight is 8 cwt. 2 qr. 10 lb., and it was made by
+B. P. and Co. It is a naval gun, and is stamped "No. 6 port." How it
+came here is uncertain, and its origin unknown; but one gathers that
+it must have been intended more for privateering than for use in any
+Government ship of war, since it is wanting in all official
+superscription. This weapon, which we have now christened "B.-P." out
+of compliment to the Colonel, has been lying upon the farm of an
+Englishman whose interests are very closely united with the native
+tribe whose headquarters are in Mafeking Stadt. Mr. Rowlands can
+recall the gun passing this way in charge of two Germans nearly forty
+years ago. He remembers to have seen it in the possession of Linchwe's
+tribe, and upon his return to the Baralongs, after one of his trading
+journeys, he urged the old chief to secure it for use in defence of
+the Stadt against the attacks of Dutch freebooters. The chief then
+visited Linchwe and bought the gun for twenty-two oxen, bringing it
+down to Mafeking upon his waggon. In those days it had three hundred
+rounds of ammunition, which were utilised in tribal fights. With the
+exception of visits which the gun made to local tribes, it has
+remained here and is now in the possession of Mr. Rowlands. It has
+recently been mounted, and is in active operation against our enemies.
+We have made balls for it, and are intending to manufacture shells, in
+the hope that we shall at least be able to reach the emplacement of
+"Big Ben." The first trial of "B.-P." in its new career gave very
+satisfactory results. With two pounds of powder it threw a ball of ten
+pounds more than two thousand yards. The power of the charge was
+increased by half pounds until a charge of three pounds threw a ball
+of the same weight as the first rather more than two miles. We,
+therefore, have pinned our hopes upon it, and commend to the
+responsible authorities the reflections which may be derived from the
+fact that our chief and most efficient means of defence, lie in such a
+weapon.
+
+After many weeks of inactivity upon our part, we have lately taken the
+initiative against the foe, whose present mode of war, so far as this
+place is concerned, would seem to give preference to the chastened
+security of laagers already beyond the three-mile limit from the town.
+Upon two occasions during the last week we have celebrated dawn with
+many salvoes of artillery, securing sufficient noise and effect from
+our shell fire display, to excite the town to no little enthusiasm.
+Moreover, up to the present, reaction has not set in, and we are even
+more cheerful to-day than we were at the beginning of the siege.
+Dingdaan's Day, the earlier of the two events, was distinguished by
+the Boers, as by ourselves, with a bombardment, which opened with a
+hundred-pound shell from "Big Ben," landing in the Headquarters Office
+at half-past two in the morning. Fortunately no one sustained any
+injury from this untimely marauder of our rest, the corner of the
+building alone being shattered, and the town itself sprinkled with
+fragments of masonry and shell. A few hours later the enemy again
+started firing, while our guns upon the east front proceeded to give a
+good account of themselves. About seven o'clock firing for the day
+ceased from the Boer lines, since they devoted themselves to psalm
+singing and prayer gathering in their laagers in commemoration of
+their day of independence; but we, upon our part, threw four rounds at
+noon into their camp, and then we, too, enjoyed the comparative peace
+of the siege. For the next few days our guns remained quiet, and "Big
+Ben" kept its nose pointed upon the furthest limits of the Stadt or
+Cannon Kopje, until the impression gained ground that the Boers had
+shifted the gun round to a position upon which they were very busily
+engaged on the western side of the Stadt. There were those even who
+were willing to lay odds that, when the gun fired again, it would be
+found to have taken up a new site. And so universal was this idea that
+it was not altogether discarded by members of the Staff. With a view
+to disproving this illusion Colonel Baden-Powell arranged that all our
+available artillery, under Major Panzera, should effect a
+reconnaissance of the Boer lines upon the east of the town, from which
+it could easily be learnt whether the fire of the big gun still
+dominated that front.
+
+There had been some little talk of a movement against the five-pound
+gun, which the enemy had located at Game Tree, and upon Sunday night I
+camped with Captain Vernon, from whose fort upon the western outposts,
+the sortie would have taken place. However, nothing happened, and
+although a few shells fell about us at daybreak, there was nought to
+interest one beyond the usual routine of daily life upon the western
+outposts. Upon returning to town I learnt that the following morning
+might reveal something more important than a mere artillery exchange.
+Towards nightfall, to those who knew about the contemplated move,
+Mafeking appeared to present much unusual animation. Artillery
+officers, whose duty detained them at points distant from the town,
+gathered at Headquarters to receive Major Panzera's final instructions
+before setting out for their emplacements, as at the same time small
+detachments of men moved to reinforce the entrenchments along the
+eastern front. For the most part the town went to its rest in
+ignorance of the surprise which was being laid for the enemy at
+daybreak upon the following morning, and by nine o'clock the nocturnal
+aspect of the town was eminently peaceful. The transformation from the
+harsh and biting sunlight of the day to the soothing and eerie light
+of night impressed the hour with grandeur and solemnity, which was in
+striking contrast to the labour upon which we were engaged. From the
+town, those guns which were not already in position moved to their
+stations--one, the Hotchkiss, being despatched to an emplacement which
+had only been completed the preceding night. It was a pleasant
+scramble to this position across the veldt, and so near to the enemy's
+lines that we could hear the murmur of their voices as they called to
+one another in the trenches and discerned their gloomy figures
+silhouetted against the skyline. The Hotchkiss, which was our extreme
+piece upon the north-east of the town, was to direct its fire upon the
+enemy at the waterworks and the opposing corner of their advanced
+trenches. Its precise utility was uncertain, since it was not possible
+to see the object at which its fire would be directed, but, as the gun
+party moved to the emplacement, the officer in charge arranged with
+the nearest entrenchment in the rear to signal the accuracy of his
+range. Then we set out to visit the outposts and the different
+emplacements. Time and distance passed rapidly in the starlight
+expanse of the night, and few things could have been more impressive
+than the calm which had come upon the town. From the veldt, as we cut
+directly across from the Hotchkiss to the nearest post, it seemed as
+though we were passing some walled-in city of the ancient days. At
+short distances the outlines of the forts showed out against the
+buildings, and it became almost difficult to suppress the cry to the
+sentry, "Watchman, what of the night?" As we made our rounds it was
+interesting to note how some points had received heavier fire than at
+others. The ground round the Dutch Church was ploughed and furrowed
+by shell, and at Ellis's Corner and across the front of the location
+to Cannon Kopje there were numerous traces of the enemy's bombardment.
+Presently the rounds were concluded, and Major Panzera went to snatch
+a few hours' rest before he opened fire in the morning. As upon
+Dingdaan's morning, so this time did I attach myself to the
+emplacement under the direct control of Major Panzera, at the Dutch
+Church, and around this, as he arrived there, the hour of midnight
+chiming from the church towers, there were the sleeping figures of the
+gunners. For the time we slept together, and when Major Panzera
+aroused us in the morning the rawness of the morning air foretold the
+earliness of the hour.
+
+The mists of night were still rising from the veldt about the Boer
+lines, and as we looked through our field-glasses, figures here and
+there, were busily engaged in gathering brushwood for the matutinal
+fire. Then, as it was yet early, and they were about to prepare their
+coffee, we boiled up ours, and, passing round the billy, filled our
+pannikins to the health of the enemy. It was but a grim jest, and one
+perhaps which shows the indifference of the men to the accidents of
+fate, but as we drank, he who was number one said, raising his tin to
+the air, "We will drink with you in hell." But the hour of jesting was
+soon over and the gun party prepared for their morning's work by
+running up the gun into the embrasure. Number one laid the gun, and
+number two stood with his lanyard in his hand ready to connect the
+friction tube. Number three hung upon the trail piece, and he, with
+the sponge and ramrod, was prepared for immediate service. Within a
+few feet of them were two who were actively adjusting the time fuses.
+At their side there was a pile of common shell and shrapnel, and with
+this, the local colour of the picture is completed. Of a sudden
+Panzera gave the order to the man who fed the gun--"Common shell,
+percussion fuse, prepare to load," and as it passed from the hands of
+the man to the muzzle of the gun, one found oneself muttering a prayer
+for the souls of the Boers who were so speedily to be sent into
+perdition. "Load," said Panzera rapidly, and the gun was loaded. Then,
+as I focussed my glasses upon the scene, the Major took one last
+squint down the sights of the gun. It was well and truly laid, and as
+he straightened himself to the precision of the parade ground the end
+came rapidly. "Prepare to fire," said he, and number two stepped
+forward, dropping the friction tube into the vent. "Fire," said
+Panzera, and one raised the glasses to fix them upon a party of Boers
+whom we could see drinking their coffee, as they sat upon the parapet
+of the trench. There was a roar, a cloud of smoke, and a red fierce
+tongue of flame leapt from the muzzle of the gun. Dust and smoke and
+sand enveloped the place where those Boers had been sitting, and I
+found myself wondering and endeavouring to believe that the breach in
+the parapet foreboded no great harm to anybody. The battle, if battle
+it were to be, had been started by a well-directed shell. Quickly the
+gun was trained and loaded again, and I felt the excitement entering
+into my soul. The feelings of humanity left me, and I began to hope
+that we should kill them every time. Again our gun fired, falling
+short, but giving the signal to the others along the front to join in
+the comparative splendour of the cannonade. Away down in the river-bed
+our guns boomed; beyond it and between that emplacement and Cannon
+Kopje there were the jets of smoke from the Nordenfeldt like the
+spurts of steam from a geyser. Above us there was the Hotchkiss and
+the merry rattle of the Maxim. So far as noise, and numbers of the
+pieces engaged, went the press of battle was about us. All down our
+front there broke the whistling rush of Lee-Metford rifles, as the
+eastern line of the defence dropped into action. For the moment the
+Boers were surprised at the manner and method of our onslaught, and
+beyond a few desultory rifle shots our guns fired some few rounds
+before any shells came back in answer. As Major Panzera had opened the
+fight so they threw their first shells upon his emplacement, and a
+well-directed flight of one-pound steel-topped base fuse Maxim broke
+in a cloud of dust about us, flinging their sharp-edged fragments in
+all directions. Then we fired again, raking the parapet of the Boers'
+trench, and wondering whether the big gun would reply to us, or
+whether those who had speculated upon its removal would win. The music
+of the fight grew louder and louder, the quick-firing guns of the
+enemy paying their tribute. From where we were we could see the gun in
+the river-bed emplacement doing remarkable execution. The smoke of our
+own hung heavy upon us, mingling with the dust from the Maxim shell,
+as the enemy continued to pepper our emplacement. We were beginning to
+find it difficult to see, while the roar of the guns made it almost
+impossible to catch the officer's orders. Suddenly, as our gun again
+broke forth, the bell clanged in the distance six times. It was the
+signal that the big gun had fired, the six strokes indicating that it
+was pointed upon us. We heard it and crouched in the dust, and as we
+crouched we wondered. There was a screaming tumult in the air, a
+deafening explosion at our feet shook the ground; earth and dust,
+stones and bits of grass fell all about us, and the roofs of buildings
+upon either side of us rattled with the fragments of the shell as it
+burst within a circle of twenty-five yards from the gun. It was a
+moment rather fine than frightful, with just sufficient danger in it
+to make it interesting, but, if anything, somewhat quickly over. We
+wiped the dust from our faces, shook the grass from our shirts, and
+laid again: once more fired, and chuckled to see, through rifts in the
+battle smoke, that it had landed in the very centre of the trench.
+Again the bell clanged sonorously, and a building not fifteen yards
+from us was blown to pieces. They were getting nearer, and making
+magnificent shooting, when the Nordenfeldt turned its fire upon "Big
+Ben" itself. From where we were we could see the thin columns of smoke
+rising, as the bullets burst before and behind the emplacement. If
+anything were calculated to check its fire it was the irritating and
+penetrating possibility of the armour-piercing Nordenfeldt. With the
+introduction of "Big Ben" into the morning's festivities, the Boers
+opened from their trenches, with their Mauser and Martini rifles. In
+the intervals between the shells from "Big Ben," the Maxim, and
+quick-firing nine-pounders, the enemy swept our emplacements with
+their rifle fire. They came through the embrasure with quite fatal
+accuracy, dropping at our feet and raising dust all around us, but the
+tale of the one is the tale of the many, and the same scene was
+occurring throughout the entire eastern front. For a moment it became
+impossible to serve the gun, and we desisted with apologies to the
+enemy, but anon rifle fire was deflected, and we again trained the
+gun upon those very advanced trenches of the enemy; but, as we fired,
+the bell rang, and for the third time their shell, passing ours in its
+flight, tore up the ground in front of us. And then the Nordenfeldt
+spoke again, shooting into the very smoke of the gun as though they
+were anxious to drop projectiles into the breach itself. And to the
+north of us the Hotchkiss spitted, as though resenting the intrusion
+of this big bully. But there unfortunately it ended, and no more big
+shells came our way, and we contented ourselves with a parting sally.
+
+Then the gun was sponged and laid to rest in the trench, and the spare
+shell put back into the box as the engagement closed. Then Panzera
+called his men together and thanked them, expressing his admiration
+for their courage and their coolness. Then we cheered him, and
+returning thanks for thanks, we went to breakfast, but in the distance
+we could see the Red Cross upon the white background, floating in
+tragic isolation, above a waggon, which was stopping ever and anon at
+places where we knew our shells had broken. That was in the Boer
+lines, but in our own the bugle sounded us to breakfast.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE ATTACK UPON GAME TREE
+
+
+                            MAFEKING, _December 27th, 1899_.
+
+Barely had the celebration of Christmas Day passed in Mafeking when
+the order to prepare for immediate action was sent out from
+Headquarters, and in the early hours of Boxing Day two dismounted
+squadrons began to move to the front. We had spent a pleasant holiday
+that day, which of all days brings glad tidings and goodwill
+throughout the civilised and Christian world; but when, hereafter, we
+come to speak of the Christmas season of 1899, our stories will be
+impressed with the sinister memories of the tragic events which have
+for us marked the time as one of lamentation. Nothing could have been
+in more complete contrast to the happiness of Christmas Day, imbued
+with much real meaning to beleaguered Mafeking, than those early
+morning preparations which were made as the day closed. For some
+little time we have been desirous to attack the enemy's position at
+Game Tree, and in my last letter I mentioned the fact that, in
+anticipation of such an event, I had camped one night recently with
+Captain Vernon at his western outpost. That attack, however, did not
+take place, and, although the town and garrison were disappointed,
+there was a very strong feeling that it would not be long before they
+were compensated for their disappointment.
+
+Game Tree, against which our force moved, is a strongly fortified
+position of the enemy, about two miles from the town, and it has been
+from this spot that our front to the north-west has been subjected to
+a persistent rifle and artillery fire during many weeks. The attack
+was ordered for the purpose of breaking the cordon around Mafeking,
+with a view to ultimately reopening our communications to the north. D
+and C Squadrons of the Protectorate Regiment, under the Imperial
+Service officers, Captain Vernon, of the King's Royal Rifles, and
+Captain Fitzclarence, of the Royal Fusiliers, were detailed to carry
+out the attack from the east, under the protection of the armoured
+train, and Captain Williams and twenty men of the British South Africa
+Police, with a one-pounder Hotchkiss and Maxim. This right flank was
+further supported by Captain Cowan and seventy men of the Bechuanaland
+Rifles, the whole of the wing being under the command of Major Godley.
+The left wing comprised three seven-pounders, one cavalry Maxim, and a
+troop of the Protectorate Regiment under Major Panzera; Captain Lord
+Charles Bentinck with two troops of A Squadron holding the reserve.
+The entire operations from this side were conducted by Colonel Hore.
+Colonel Baden-Powell and his staff--Major Lord Edward Cecil, Chief
+Staff Officer, Captain Wilson, A.D.C., and Lieutenant the Hon. A. H.
+C. Hanbury-Tracy--watched the progress of the fight from Dummie Fort.
+
+Our guns moved into position during the night, throwing up
+emplacements for the attack, and as soon as they could see, Major
+Panzera opened fire. It was yet dark, although there came a faint
+glimmer of light from the east, but not sufficient to prevent the
+flashes from the muzzles of the guns and the glow of the bursting
+shells from being plainly visible. Until that moment there had been no
+sign of any living thing about the veldt between us and the Boer
+lines, and there was no sound. We had seen C and D Squadrons creeping
+to their positions under the guidance of the scout Cooke. Captain Lord
+Charles Bentinck had deployed across the front of the Boer position,
+taking up his place upon the left of the line. Close to him and but
+little in advance, the gunners had ensconced themselves behind a few
+sods of earth and sacks of sand. These operations marked the
+preliminary of the fight, from which, as the armoured train steamed to
+its post, completing the units in our attack, nothing had been omitted
+which might increase our chances of success.
+
+At 4.15 a.m. our first shells were thrown upon the enemy's position,
+the shells bursting short and beyond Game Tree with no very striking
+effect. Upon the left of Game Tree and extending to the receding wall
+of the fort, some sixty yards distant, there was a heavy overgrowth of
+bushes, upon which, as the enemy seemed to be firing from concealed
+pits in their midst, the cavalry Maxim concentrated its fire. Away to
+the right there was the automatic rattle of the Maxim in the armoured
+train, and the sharp crack of the Hotchkiss. For the first
+three-quarters of an hour the attack was left to Major Panzera, who,
+it was hoped, would effect a breach in the parapet through the agency
+of his guns. But, unfortunately, the damage inflicted upon the fort
+did not materially aid the charge which our men were so soon and so
+very gallantly to make, and which, when completed, revealed the fact
+that Colonel Baden-Powell had also organised a frontal attack upon an
+entrenched and impregnable position, with most lamentable results. A
+few of the enemy were put out of action by our shrapnel shells
+bursting in such a manner as to search out the interior of the fort
+with their sharp-edged segments, but the strength of the fort was so
+great and had been so increased during the night, that the artillery
+which was available was not sufficiently heavy for our purpose, while
+the wisdom of using the guns at all is eminently questionable. The
+character of our attack needed a movement which was quietly delivered,
+and which was in the nature of a surprise. So far as the fact is of
+value, in appreciating the appalling disaster which upon that morning
+befell our arms, our gunfire simply warned the garrison in the fort to
+stand to their arms. There is no doubt that the employment of the guns
+was a blunder in keeping with the conception of the attack. Colonel
+Baden-Powell, one has to say regretfully, upon this occasion was
+instrumental in bringing about quite needless loss of life. Presently,
+as we watched, we could see the signal being given to the armoured
+train "to cease fire," and a moment afterwards the base notes of the
+steam whistle boomed forth, when, as though waiting for this signal,
+"Big Ben," whose emplacement was some 6,000 yards to the south-east in
+the rear, began to shell the armoured train. As the echoes of the big
+gun died away, a roll of musketry from our own line and from the fort
+swept across the veldt, and for a few brief moments the hail of
+bullets was like the opening shower of a tropical deluge. Upon the
+east Captain Vernon with C and D Squadrons had begun the charge. Their
+position at this moment was in echelon--Captain Sandford with a troop
+of C Squadron was upon the right extremity, with Captain Vernon in the
+centre, and Captain Fitzclarence upon his left. As Captain Vernon gave
+the word to charge they opened out into skirmishing order, maintaining
+the while successive volleys with perfect accuracy. The advance was
+well carried out; indeed, its order and style were worthy of the best
+traditions of our army, and received tributes of admiration from all
+the commanding officers present. As they advanced the fire of the
+enemy was principally delivered from the front of the fort and the
+rifle intrenchments in the scrub. For a moment it seemed as though the
+face opposed to the rush of Captain Vernon and Captain Sandford was a
+mere wall requiring only to be scaled for the fort to be captured.
+But, when the men approached within three hundred yards of the fort,
+rifles rang out from every possible point, and the ground was swept by
+Mauser and Martini bullets. The men who charged through this zone of
+fire suffered terribly, and the conclusion must have forced itself
+upon their minds that they were going to their death. As each face of
+the fort became engaged the fire of the enemy began to have a telling
+effect upon our charging line. Captain Sandford was the first to fall,
+mortally wounded with a bullet in the spine. He fell down, calling to
+his men to continue the charge; but where he had fallen, he died. Our
+men now began to drop rather rapidly, and Captain Fitzclarence was
+disabled with a bullet in the thigh. His place was taken by Lieutenant
+Swinburne, who at once continued the charge, that officer and
+Lieutenant Bridges, of the same squadron, being among the nine who,
+upon the termination of the fight, were unwounded. The ground around
+the fort was becoming dotted with the figures of our wounded men,
+who, although they were but an irregular soldiery, followed their
+officers with the pluck and dogged determination of veterans. The
+brunt of the fight now fell upon the companies under the immediate
+command of Captain Vernon, who, undaunted by the impossibility of his
+task, steadily fought his way forward. As they approached still
+nearer, his men, undisturbed by the shower of bullets which fell about
+them, cheered repeatedly, the echo of those cheers, giving rise to the
+impression that the capture of the position was imminent. The steady
+rush of our men, undeflected by the worst that the enemy could do, was
+rapidly demoralising those who were firing from behind the loopholes
+in the fort, and it may have been that, had we not had our responsible
+officers shot or killed before we reached the walls of the fort, a
+different story might have to be told. As it happened, when Captain
+Vernon, with whom was Lieutenant Paton, steadied his men for the wild
+impetuosity of the last charge, a bullet struck him in the body. For a
+brief interval he stopped, but, refusing the entreaty of Lieutenant
+Paton that he should fall out, he joined that officer once more in
+taking the lead. From the point which they had gained the character of
+the fort was seen, and the heavy fire under which it was defended
+showed it to be impregnable. It rose some seven feet from the ground,
+from the edges of a ditch with sides that it was almost impossible to
+climb. It was certain death which stared them in the face within
+twenty-five yards, but not a man was dismayed. They continued. The
+ditch was before them, the fort above them, and through double tiers
+of loopholes came the enemy's fire. Our men from one side of the ditch
+fired point-blank at an enemy who, from behind his loophole, fired
+point-blank at him. Here those who had survived until now were either
+killed or wounded, and it was here that Captain Vernon was hit again,
+as he, with Lieutenant Paton and the scout Cooke, whose tunic at the
+end of the engagement was found to be riddled with bullets,
+endeavoured to clamber into the fort. Captain Vernon and Lieutenant
+Paton managed by superhuman efforts to reach the loopholes, into which
+they emptied their revolvers. Their example was eagerly followed by
+the few who remained, and who were shot down as they plied their
+bayonets through the apertures. Here Captain Vernon, Lieutenant Paton,
+Corporal Pickard, Sergeant Ross, and many others were killed. Captain
+Vernon was shot in the head, the third wound which he had received
+within two hundred yards. Lieutenant Paton was shot in the region of
+the heart. Bugler Morgan, who was the first to ply his bayonet, was
+shot in three places, but it is believed that he will live. Then a
+mighty roar rose up, and we who had not taken part in the charge,
+again thought that the position had been carried. But it was the
+triumphant shout of the Boers, who, from the quick manner in which
+they followed us in hoisting up the Red Cross flag, would seem to have
+been partially demoralised by the keenness of our attack. With the
+dead and dying about them, and the area of the wounded encircling the
+fort, those of our men who were left fell back savagely and sullenly,
+with a contempt of the enemy's fire and the desire to renew the
+attack. Further assault was impossible, and, though we continued to
+fire upon the position until stretcher-parties were sent out, the
+fight was practically over upon our retirement. When they fell in
+again, out of the sixty men that had been engaged in the charge only
+nine were unwounded. Our killed were twenty-one; our wounded thirty,
+of whom four have since died. There were also three who were prisoners
+in the hands of the enemy.
+
+Soon after the commencement of operations the chief staff officer gave
+me permission to move forward from Dummie Fort, and I therefore rode
+over to the position occupied by Captain Lord Charles Bentinck, and
+afterwards to Game Tree, joining Surgeon-Major Anderson, when the Red
+Cross flag was hoisted on the scene of the engagement. The heavy
+vapour from the shells still impregnated the air, and hanging loosely
+over the veldt were masses of grey-black and brown-yellow smoke
+clouds. Boers on horseback and on foot were moving quickly in all
+directions, and mounted detachments were seen advancing at a gallop
+from the big laager upon the eastern front, with their rifles swung
+loosely across their knees. They had been proceeding to reinforce Game
+Tree Fort, upon an order from Field Cornet Steinekamp, when the
+cessation of hostilities had taken place under the provisions of the
+Red Cross. Game Tree Fort presented an animated picture. The enemy
+thronged its walls, held noisy conversation in scattered groups, that,
+breaking up in one spot, congregated the next moment in some other.
+The bushes about the fort were alive with men who, with their rifles
+in their hands and a few loose cartridges at their side, were prepared
+at any moment to resume hostilities. The fort itself showed no traces
+of the shelling, although it were impossible, from the seventy-five
+yards limit, up to which we were permitted to approach, to examine it
+very thoroughly. It has been claimed that the fort was strengthened
+during the night, but signs were absent by which one could detect
+traces of the new work, and, in view of this fact, one is disinclined
+to impugn the statement of Commandant Botha, who told me that he had
+been expecting the attack for the past two weeks. From where we were
+the strength of the fort was very apparent, seeming altogether
+unnecessary for the requirements of such a post, unless definite
+information had been carried to the enemy about our plans. It may be
+that the night attack which Captain Fitzclarence had led against the
+Boer trenches upon the east of the town earlier in the siege had
+prompted the enemy to strengthen all their positions. The fort itself
+had been given a head covering of wooden beams, earth, and corrugated
+iron; the entrance in the rear was blocked, and in every other way it
+appeared impregnable. When the order came for our men to retire, Dr.
+Hamilton proceeded from the armoured train with the Red Cross flag,
+making his way to the wounded in the face of a heavy fire. But as soon
+as it was recognised by the enemy that he was desirous of helping the
+sufferers the firing was at once stopped, and Commandant Botha himself
+apologised. The field around the Boer position at once became dotted
+with similar emblems, for the character of the charge and the severity
+of the fire had confined our losses within a very small radius of the
+position. The scene here was intensely pathetic, and everywhere there
+were dead or dying men. The Boers moved out from their trenches and
+swarmed around with idle curiosity to inspect the injuries which they
+had inflicted upon their foe, while a constant procession came from
+the immediate precincts of the fort, bearing those of our men who had
+fallen within its actual circumference. In their way they assisted us,
+although for some time they would not permit the waggons of the
+ambulance to approach nearer than half a mile, nor at first would
+they entertain our proposal that the services of the armoured train
+should be employed to facilitate the conveyance of casualties to the
+base.
+
+[Illustration: Boers Inspecting the British Killed at Game Tree Hill.]
+
+As Surgeon-Major Anderson proceeded with his work, assisted by Dr. T.
+Hayes, Dr. Hamilton and a staff of dressers, the character of the
+wounds which our men had suffered gave rise to the impression that the
+enemy had used explosive bullets, although it is perhaps possible that
+Martini rifles fired at close range would account for the wide area of
+injury on those who had been wounded. In one case a bullet in the head
+had blown off rather more than half the skull; in another a small
+puncture in the thigh had completely pulverised the limb; while in a
+third, in which the bullet had struck just above the knee-cap, it had
+raised a mass of shattered flesh and bone into a pulpy mound. With
+these fearful injuries before one it was scarcely possible to believe
+that the wounds inflicted had originated through the impact of Mauser
+or Martini bullets. The Field Cornet, with whom I conversed at some
+length, upon being shown the dreadful condition of the wounds,
+admitted that at one time explosive bullets had been served out, but
+that it was not possible that they could have been used that morning,
+since he was convinced that that particular ammunition had already
+been expended. He then produced a bandolier filled with Dum-dum
+bullets, and suggested that since so much of the Mark IV. ammunition
+had been taken by them from us, our men had been hit by bullets which
+we ourselves had manufactured. I pointed out that this particular
+ammunition had been recalled, so far as Mafeking was concerned, since
+it had been found to strip in the barrel of the rifle. The Field
+Cornet then said that he and his men were already aware of the
+uselessness of this particular pattern of bullet, since upon many
+occasions they had been hit by some curious missile from which it was
+evident that the casing had stripped, and from which no injury had
+been sustained. It was a strange conversation to have with a man
+against whom the moment before we had been fighting, but from time to
+time, as we were waiting for the wounded to be brought up, the
+conversation was reopened between us.
+
+The attitude of the Boers around us was one of stolid composure, not
+altogether unmixed with sympathy. At one time almost one hundred had
+assembled around those who were dressing the wounded. With their
+rifles upon their backs and two bandoliers crossing each other upon
+their chests, they appeared a stalwart body of men; for the most part
+they were big and burly, broad in their shoulders, ponderous in their
+gait, and uncouth in their appearance, combining a somewhat soiled and
+tattered appearance with an air of triumph. Their clothing was an
+ill-assorted array of patterns and materials, altogether incongruous
+and out of keeping with the campaign upon which they were then
+engaged. Some of them, with quite unnecessary brutality, had doffed
+their own rifles and bandoliers, in order that they might show and
+swing somewhat aggressively before our notice, the spoils of the
+battlefield. In this manner they sported Lee-Metford rifles and
+bandoliers containing Mark II. and Mark IV. ammunition. But for the
+most part they behaved with a certain decorum, and it may be that the
+weapon which they bore was the silent confirmation of the Field
+Cornet's words. Here and there they made some attempt to rob the
+wounded and despoil the dead, but when I remonstrated with the Field
+Cornet he expressed, with every appearance of sincerity, his very keen
+regret, ordering the transgressors from the field, and explaining that
+he was unable to accept the responsibility for such acts, since,
+although they had instructions to respect the dead, the younger men
+were so unruly as to be beyond his control. The Field Cornet proceeded
+to assert that the acts of his men were neither so barbarous nor so
+inhuman as those which our own soldiers had committed after the battle
+of Elandslaagte, where, he said, Imperial troops had stripped the body
+of General de Koch, leaving him to lie upon the field wounded and
+naked, and adding that we were morally responsible, and held as such
+by every right-minded person in the Transvaal and Orange Free State,
+for the subsequent death of the Boer general. This opinion was loudly
+endorsed by a number of the enemy, who had collected around us, one of
+whom stated that he had received orders from Commandant Botha to take
+possession of any effects which were found upon the bodies of the
+wounded or dead. I referred this man's statement to the Field Cornet,
+when quite a lively altercation in Dutch ensued. The Field Cornet
+denied that any such order had been given by Commandant Botha, and
+that, had any orders at all been given, they referred merely to papers
+and to the removal of side arms and ammunition. I pointed out to him
+the bodies of five of our men whose pockets had been turned inside
+out, and who were at that moment being brought up under an escort of
+the enemy. He was also confronted with three wounded who declared that
+they had had their personal effects stolen as they lay about the Boer
+trenches, their rings taken from their fingers, and their money taken
+from their pockets. The Field Cornet then promised that if any man who
+had done such a thing could be identified he would be immediately
+punished, while the more reputable of those who gathered round us
+guaranteed, if not the restitution of the property, summary conviction
+for the offenders. And in this connection it must be said that during
+the course of the afternoon a Boer orderly came in, under a flag of
+truce, to our lines to restore to Bugler Morgan his silver watch and
+_L_3, which had been taken from him as he lay, shot through each
+thigh, in the trenches of the enemy.
+
+Very striking was the tone of harmony which characterised this
+temporary intercourse upon the field of battle between Boer and
+Briton. People who had been pitted against each other in mortal combat
+the moment before were now fraternising with every outward sign of
+decency and amity. This is doubtless due in some measure to the
+strange composition of the two contending forces, since so many upon
+the one side have friends and even relatives fighting against them
+that it seems the most natural thing in the world for any mutual
+acquaintance of one particular individual to make inquiries about his
+welfare. These greetings impressed the scene with a note of
+pleasantness and good feeling which was in most happy contrast to the
+surroundings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE ADVENT OF THE NEW YEAR
+
+
+                              MAFEKING, _January 3rd, 1900_.
+
+New Year's Eve drew to itself much of the sentiment which is usually
+associated with that event. We perhaps did not ring the old year out
+and the new year in, because the sonorous clang of bells presages in
+these times the advent of shells. When the enemy lay their gun upon
+the town the bell at the outlook rings once; when its precise
+direction has been located it peals according to the number which has
+been given to that direction. Then there comes the firing-bell, by
+which time all good people should have taken cover. It will be seen,
+therefore, that the ringing of bells has a particular significance,
+and one from which it is inappropriate and inadvisable to depart. But
+our celebration of New Year's Eve was a quiet gathering of men drawn
+from the various points of the town, who assembled within the shadows
+of the English Church to sing a hymn and give voice to our National
+Anthem. It had been raining during the evening; the air was fresh and
+fragrant, and the ground was very damp. They came in their cloaks;
+they carried their rifles and wore their bandoliers, since it was not
+a time to chance the possibilities of an attack. There were perhaps
+one hundred of them, and had it been convenient to allow a general
+muster, the whole garrison would have very willingly attended. When
+everything was ready the great stillness of the night was broken
+gently by a prelude from the harmonium, which, dropping to a low tone,
+became a mere accompaniment to the human voices. Then the volume of
+music grew somewhat fuller until it carried in its depths the voices
+of the singers merged into one torrent of stirring melody; then there
+was a fresh pause, and as the echoes of the hymn died away, lingering
+in the rafters of the building until countless spirits seemed to be
+taking up the refrain, the voice of the preacher broke out in words
+which manfully endeavoured to cheer the congregation. We stood and
+listened, rapt with an attention which gave more to the scene than to
+the exhortations of the man, and waiting for the time to sing the
+National Anthem. In these moments, when one is so far from the Queen
+and the capital of her great Empire, the singing of the National
+Anthem has a weight and meaning much finer and much greater than that
+imparted to the hymn when the words are sung at home. Presently the
+voices took up the hymn, throwing into the darkness of the church some
+whiteness of the dawn which will usher in the days of peace upon the
+termination of the war. The National Anthem, sang amid these
+surroundings, was incomparably beautiful, seeming to strengthen the
+irresolute, even cheering those who were already strong, and imparting
+to every one a happier frame of mind and a greater spirit of
+contentment. Scenes on a smaller scale, but identical in purpose, were
+enacted at almost every one of our posts, and the hour of midnight
+must have borne to the watchful sentries of the enemy some slight
+knowledge of the pleasing duty upon which the garrison was engaged. It
+was only for a moment--just so long, indeed, as it took to sing the
+verses of the anthem. Then, when this was over, the harmony of night
+fell once more upon the garrison.
+
+The New Year has brought to Mafeking and the garrison that is
+beleaguered within its walls, no signs of the fulfilment of the
+prophecy that relief would come by the end of December. Indeed, the
+closing year of the nineteenth century was ushered in with the boom of
+cannon and the fire of small arms, and in a style generally which does
+not differ from any one of the many days during which the siege and
+bombardment have lasted. There was no cessation of hostilities similar
+to that which characterised Christmas Day; firing began at an early
+hour in the morning from the enemy's artillery, and did not terminate
+until the evening gun gave a few hours' peace to the town. For quite a
+fortnight there has been no such heavy fire, and it would seem that,
+for our especial edification, the authorities in Pretoria had sent to
+the commandant of the Boer forces that are investing us, a New Year's
+gift of three waggon-loads of ammunition. A new gun was also
+despatched to them, and, its position being constantly shifted, its
+fire has since played upon every quarter of the town. For the moment
+we had attached no great importance to this new weapon, but after the
+first few rounds it was discovered to be employing what are called
+combustible bombs. These new shells do not usually explode, seeming to
+discharge a chemical liquid which ignites upon contact with the air.
+They are also filled with lumps of sulphur, and so severe might be the
+damage from this new agency of destruction which the Boers have
+turned against Mafeking that the most stringent orders have been
+issued for any one finding these shells to see that they are
+immediately buried. At present, beyond a few unimportant blazes in the
+gardens of the town, no damage has been caused, while, in the
+meantime, our situation here has in no way altered.
+
+It would appear that our resistance is beginning to exasperate the
+enemy, driving him to a pitch in which he is determined to respect
+neither the Convention of Geneva nor the promptings of humanity.
+Again, despite the innumerable warnings which he has received, for two
+days in succession has he made the hospital and the women's laager the
+sole object of his attentions. Yesterday the shells fell sufficiently
+wide of these two places to justify the broad-minded in giving to his
+artillery officers the benefit of the doubt; but to-day it is
+impossible to find any extenuating circumstances whatever in his
+favour, and I very much regret to have to state that through the
+shelling of the women's laager many children's lives have been
+imperilled, many women wounded. From time to time every effort has
+been made to give to the gentler sex the most perfect immunity, but it
+would seem as though we can no longer consider as safe these poor
+innocent and helpless non-combatants. The children of some of the most
+respected and most loyal townspeople have been killed in this manner,
+just as they were romping within the trenches which encircle their
+retreat. For two hours this morning the Creusot and quick-firing guns
+of the enemy fired into the laager, creating scenes of panic and
+consternation which it is not fitting to describe. Nine
+one-hundred-pound shells burst within the precincts of that place in
+the space of an hour, and in palliation of this there is nothing
+whatever which can be said, since the enemy had posted a heliograph
+station upon a kopje a few thousand yards distant from the point of
+attack. As the big shells sped across the town to drop within the
+laager beyond, the enemy's signallers heliographed their direction to
+the emplacement of Big Ben. Our own signalling corps intercepted the
+messages from the enemy, reading out, from time to time, the purport
+of the flashes. The first shell was short, and the enemy's signallers
+worked vigorously. The second was too wide. The third fell within the
+laager itself, the pieces piercing, when it burst, a number of tents.
+To this shot the heliograph flashed a cordial expression of approval.
+These actions upon the part of the Boers, as repeatedly pointed out to
+them, make it almost impossible for us to regard our foe as other than
+one which is inspired with the emotions of a degraded people and the
+crude cruelty and vindictive animosity of savages. Just now, when the
+press of our feelings is beyond confinement, there is nothing but a
+universal wish that we may speedily be relieved and so enabled to
+enjoy the initiative against the Boers. When that moment comes it must
+not be forgotten that we have suffered bitterly, and in a way which
+must be taken as excusing any excesses which may occur.
+
+[Illustration: The Colonel on the Look-out at Headquarters.]
+
+As I returned from a visit to the women's laager Colonel Baden-Powell
+was lying in his easy-chair beneath the roof of the verandah of the
+Headquarters Office. Colonel Baden-Powell is young, as men go in the
+army, with a keen appreciation of the possibilities of his career,
+swayed by ambition, indifferent to sentimental emotion. In stature he
+is short, while his features are sharp and smooth. He is eminently a
+man of determination, of great physical endurance and capacity, and
+of extraordinary reticence. His reserve is unbending, and one would
+say, quoting a phrase of Mr. Pinero's, that fever would be the only
+heat which would permeate his body. He does not go about freely, since
+he is tied to his office through the multitudinous cares of his
+command, and he is chiefly happy when he can snatch the time to escape
+upon one of those nocturnal, silent expeditions, which alone calm and
+assuage the perpetual excitement of his present existence. Outwardly,
+he maintains an impenetrable screen of self-control, observing with a
+cynical smile the foibles and caprices of those around him. He seems
+ever bracing himself to be on guard against a moment in which he
+should be swept by some unnatural and spontaneous enthusiasm, in which
+by a word, by an expression of face, by a movement, or in the turn of
+a phrase, he should betray the rigours of the self-control under which
+he lives. Every passing townsman regards him with curiosity not
+unmixed with awe. Every servant in the hotel watches him, and he, as a
+consequence, seldom speaks without a preternatural deliberation and an
+air of decisive finality. He seems to close every argument with a
+snap, as though the steel manacles of his ambition had checkmated the
+emotions of the man in the instincts of the officer. He weighs each
+remark before he utters it, and suggests by his manner, as by his
+words, that he has considered the different effects it might
+conceivably have on any mind as the expression of his own mind. As an
+officer, he has given to Mafeking a complete and assured security, to
+the construction of which he has brought a very practical knowledge of
+the conditions of Boer warfare, of the Boers themselves, and of the
+strategic worth of the adjacent areas. His espionagic excursions to
+the Boer lines have gained him an intimate and accurate idea of the
+value of the opposing forces and a mass of _data_ by which he can
+immediately counteract the enemy's attack. He loves the night, and
+after his return from the hollows in the veldt, where he has kept so
+many anxious vigils, he lies awake hour after hour upon his camp
+mattress in the verandah, tracing out, in his mind, the various means
+and agencies by which he can forestall their move, which, unknown to
+them, he had personally watched. He is a silent man, and it would seem
+that silence has become in his heart a curious religion. In the noisy
+day he yearns for the noiseless night, in which he can slip into the
+vistas of the veldt, an unobtrusive spectator of the mystic communion
+of tree with tree, of twilight with darkness, of land with water, of
+early morn with fading night, with the music of the journeying winds
+to speak to him and to lull his thoughts. As he makes his way across
+our lines the watchful sentry strains his eyes a little more to keep
+the figure of the colonel before him, until the undulations of the
+veldt conceal his progress. He goes in the privacy of the night, when
+it be no longer a season of moonlight, when, although the stars were
+full, the night be dim. The breezes of the veldt are warm and gentle,
+impregnated with the fresh fragrances of the Molopo, although, as he
+walks with rapid, almost running, footsteps, leaving the black blur of
+the town for the arid and stony areas to the west, a new wind meets
+him--a wind that is clear and keen and dry, the wind of the wastes
+that wanders for ever over the monotonous sands of the desert. It
+accompanies him as he walks as though to show and to whisper with
+gentle gusts that it knew of his intention. It sighs amid the sentinel
+trees that stand straight and isolated about the Boer lines. He goes
+on, never faltering, bending for a moment behind a clump of rocks,
+screening himself next behind some bushes, crawling upon his hands and
+knees, until his movements, stirring a few loose stones, create a
+thin, grating noise in the vast silence about him. His head is low,
+his eyes gaze straight upon the camp of the enemy; in a little he
+moves again, his inspection is over, and he either changes to a fresh
+point or startles some dozing sentry as he slips back into town.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+NATIVE LIFE
+
+
+                             MAFEKING, _January 10th, 1900_.
+
+During the time which has elapsed since Christmas an interesting event
+has been the deposition of Wessels, the chief of the Baralongs. At a
+_kotla_ of the tribe, to which the councillors and petty chiefs were
+bidden by the Civil Commissioner, Mr. Bell notified the tribe of his
+decision. The deposed chief, a man of no parts whatever, but one who
+unfortunately reveals all the vices of civilisation, has been put upon
+sick-leave, the reins of government being placed in the hands of his
+two chief councillors. Wessels had been instigating his tribe to
+refuse to work for the military authorities here, and through his
+instrumentality it has become difficult to obtain native labour and
+native runners. He told them in his amiable fashion that the English
+wished to make slaves of them, and that they would not be paid for any
+services which they rendered; nor would they, added he, taking
+advantage of an unfortunate turn in the situation, be given any food,
+but left to starve when the critical moment came. With the change
+which had been adopted and which has been given the sanction of the
+_kotla_, it is hoped that matters may progress more smoothly and the
+tribe itself increase in prosperity. It was an interesting meeting,
+and one which recalled the early days of Africa, when the authority of
+the great White Queen was not a power paramount in the council
+chambers of the tribes. Wessels, unwilling and assuming an air of
+injured dignity, filled his place in the _kotla_ for the last time;
+around him there were the chiefs of the tribe, his blood relatives,
+and his councillors. Their attire was a weird mixture of effete
+savagery and of the civilisation of the sort which is picked up from
+living in touch with white Africa and missionary societies. Many black
+legs were clothed in trousers, many black shoulders wore coats. Here
+and there, as relics of the past, there was the ostrich feather in the
+hat, the fly whisk, composed of the hairs from the tail of an animal,
+the iron or bone skin-scraper with which to remove the perspiration of
+the body. A few wore shoes upon naked feet, a few others sported
+watch-chains and spoke English. At the back of the enclosure there was
+a native guard who shouldered Martini-Henri rifles, elephant guns,
+Sniders, or sporting rifles. A few of these were garmented with skins
+of animals upon the naked body. After a stately and not altogether
+friendly greeting to the man who had ordered the assembly to meet, the
+reasons which had brought about the contemplated change in the head of
+the tribe were stated in English and then translated by the
+interpreter. The old chief snorted with disgust and endeavoured to
+coerce his people to reject the demands made upon them. But they had
+been made before a body of men who were capable of realising the
+worthlessness of their chief, and who, under the protection of the
+Imperial delegate, did not mind endorsing the suggestions and
+expressing their opinions. The younger and more turbulent, who
+recognised, in the failings of the chief, follies dear to their own
+hearts, were inclined to express sympathy for the man who was so soon
+to be compelled to relinquish the sweets of office. They spoke at once
+in an angry chatter and confused chortle of sounds, which, if
+eloquent, were wholly insufficient. The chief then threw himself back
+upon his chair, spat somewhat contemptuously, and finally acquiesced
+in the decision, obtaining some small consolation from the fact that
+his official allowance would not be discontinued. Then the _kotla_
+ended, and the indunas rose up and left, standing together in animated
+groups around the palisades, for the discussion of the scene in which
+they had just taken part. Then, as the decision spread throughout the
+tribe, children and women, young and old, banded together to watch
+these final indabas.
+
+The scene had been solemn enough beneath the _kotla_ tree, but outside
+the natural instinct of these children of the veldt soon asserted
+itself, and they began to dance. They formed into small groups of
+about forty, to the sound of hand-clapping, a not unmusical intoning,
+and much jumping and stamping of feet. It would seem that they were
+dancing an old war-dance which had degenerated into one symbolical of
+love and happiness. Around the joyous groups the old crones
+circulated, clapping their withered hands, shrieking delight in
+cracked voices, and generally encouraging the festivity. The dance was
+curious, and appeared to catch echoes of many lands. There was the
+diffident maiden, anxious to be loved, but bashful, modest in her
+manner and in her gestures, until she saw the man that could thrill
+her; then she glowed, and her steps were animated, buoyant, and
+caressing. A smile irradiated her face, while a slight, almost
+imperceptible, movement pulsed through her body. Behind her were her
+companions, the same age as herself, who imitated her with feverish
+sympathy, instinctively reproducing her moods of body and of mind. The
+vibration that stole through the bodies of the dancers increased
+gradually until, from statues with wicked eyes, full of sensuous
+expression and amorous allurement, they wavered like thin flames of
+love in a gust of passion. As the potency of their feelings grew
+steadily stronger, they swayed in languorous movements, throwing out
+sinuous arms, their feeble faces smiling, their graceful bodies
+bending in eager attitudes of expectation. The air became heavy with
+noise, thick with a veritable tumult, as the dancers jumped more
+wildly; now they threw themselves into postures in the circle,
+shifting rapidly with tiny screams of delight and a gliding, clinging
+motion of their arms and legs as though, coy and eager, they would
+escape the cherished caresses of their lovers. As they glided, their
+actions seemed always to be marked with the same regularity, with the
+same regard to rhythm, and with an innate conception of grace. When
+they shook their bodies it was with an abandonment that was, at least,
+graceful; if they stood, rocking in a sea of easy emotion, as though
+victorious, they would hug their capture with an air of conquest which
+was delightful to behold. As they rose to the pinnacle of their
+happiness, when their countenances were suffused with love and
+tenderness, they infused into their emotions an appearance of sadness.
+It was as though a cloud had suddenly fallen upon them, revealing to
+them that their endearments had been abortive, that their ambitions
+were not to be realised and that they themselves had been flouted.
+Then there stole upon them the incarnation of sorrow, in which,
+finding themselves alone, uncared for, unconsidered, they resolved, in
+a burst of artificial tears, to have done with giddiness, and to take
+up with the delights of placid domesticity. Then the dance terminated,
+she, who had by her graceful contortions and sympathetic bearing moved
+her audience to laughter and tears first, being considered the
+victorious. Thus did these simple natives celebrate the new era.
+
+If dancing be one form of amusement here, the siege has also brought
+the means and opportunity of indulging in a pastime of quite a
+different character. If sniping be the rule by day, cattle raiding by
+night gives to the natives some profitable employment. During last
+night the Baralongs secured, by a successful raid, some twenty-four
+head of cattle, and in the course of last week another raiding
+detachment looted some eighteen oxen. The native enjoys himself when
+he is able to participate in some cattle-raiding excursion to the
+enemy's lines, and, although the local tribe may not have proved of
+much value as a unit of defence, their success at lifting the Boer
+cattle confers upon them a unique value in the garrison. We were
+deploring the poorness of the cattle which remained at our disposal
+only a few days ago, but the rich capture which these natives have
+made has given us a welcome change from bone and skin to juicy beef.
+These night excursions are eagerly anticipated by the tribe, and
+almost daily is the consent of the Colonel sought in relation to such
+an object. During the day the natives who have been authorised by
+Colonel Baden-Powell to take part in the raid approach as near to the
+grazing cattle as discretion permits, marking down when twilight
+appears the position of those beasts that can be most readily detached
+from the mob. Then, when darkness is complete, they creep up, divested
+of their clothes, crawling upon hands and knees, until they have
+completely surrounded their prey. Then quietly, and as rapidly as
+circumstances will allow them, each man "gets a move on" his
+particular beast, so that in a very short space of time some ten or
+twenty cattle are unconsciously leaving the main herd. When the
+raiders have drawn out of earshot of the Boer lines they urge on their
+captures, running behind them and on either side of them, but without
+making any noise whatsoever. As they reach their stadt, their approach
+having been watched by detached bodies of natives, who, lying
+concealed in the veldt, had taken up positions by which to secure the
+safe return of their friends, the tribes go forth to welcome them, and
+when the prizes have been inspected and report duly made to
+Headquarters they celebrate the event with no little feasting and
+dancing. Upon the following day merriment reigns supreme, and for the
+time the siege is forgotten.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+BOMBAST AND BOMB-PROOFS
+
+
+                             MAFEKING, _January 20th, 1900_.
+
+Yesterday we completed the first hundred days of our siege, and when
+we look back beyond the weeks of our investment into those earlier
+days it is difficult to realise the trials and difficulties which we
+have undergone, and to believe that the period which has elapsed has
+witnessed the inauguration of a new era for South Africa. In those
+early days when we first came here Mafeking was a flourishing
+commercial centre, contented with its position, proud of its supremacy
+over other towns, and now, perhaps, if outwardly it be much the same,
+its future is impressed with only the faint echo of its former
+greatness. The town itself has not suffered very much; here and there
+its area has been more confined for purposes of defence, while the
+streets and buildings bear witness to the effects of the bombardment.
+Houses are shattered, gaping holes in the walls of buildings, furrows
+in the roads, broken trees, wrecked telegraph poles, and that general
+appearance of destruction which marks the path of a cyclone are the
+outward and visible signs of the enemy's fire. We shall leave in
+Mafeking a population somewhat subdued and harassed with anxiety for
+their future, since the public and private losses will require the
+work of many anxious years before any restoration of the fallen
+fortunes can be effected. The pity of it is that all this distress
+might have been so easily avoided, and would have been, had the
+authorities in Cape Town and at home taken any heed of the very
+pressing messages which were despatched daily to them; but it was
+decreed that Mafeking should shift for itself for so long as it was
+able, and then--surrender. This, however, did not meet with the
+approval of Colonel Baden-Powell, with the result that we are still
+fighting and still holding our own. We have even achieved some little
+place in the sieges of the world, and our present record has already
+surpassed many of the more prominent sieges. But there is not much
+consolation to be gained from contemplating the position which we may
+eventually take up in the records of famous sieges, and, truth to
+tell, there is such glorious uncertainty about the date of our relief
+that it is perhaps possible that we may surpass the longest of
+historic sieges. At one time we confidently anticipated that the siege
+would be over in ten days. This, however, was in the days of our
+youth; since then we have learned wisdom, and eagerly seize
+opportunities of snapping up any unconsidered trifles in the way of
+bets which lay odds upon our being "out of the wood" in another month.
+Events are moving so slowly below that it does not seem as though we
+shall be relieved by the end of February. The relief column, which a
+month ago appeared almost daily in "Orders," is now no longer
+mentioned in polite society, although there be little reason to doubt
+that, at some very remote date, the troops may make their appearance
+here.
+
+The early part of November witnessed the first attempt of the
+Commissariat to control the stocks of provisions in the town. All
+persons holding stocks of Kaffir corn, meal, crushed meal, yellow
+mealies, and flour, were ordered to declare the quantities and price
+at which they would be willing to dispose of them to the authorities.
+Captain Ryan, the Commissariat officer, was an energetic and
+painstaking individual, whose aim was to prove his department a
+financial success, and so rigidly did he adhere to this resolve that
+the questions involved by the Commissariat became amongst the most
+important of the siege. Traders claimed that the economy of the
+situation gave them a siege profit, since, as the Government had not
+been shrewd enough to lay down stores, those who had done this at
+their own risk, and upon their own initiative, should be permitted, at
+least, to make a margin of profit in proportion to the prices which
+they could obtain for their goods. This contention, however, was not
+upheld by the Commissariat officer, who at once became the best hated
+man in Mafeking. Oddly enough, although the Government would not allow
+the merchants to reap the profit, they themselves, in virtue of the
+expense in connection with the issue of rations, were not above
+charging these expenses to prime cost, and so exorbitantly increasing
+themselves the retail price of the articles which they had taken over.
+What was perhaps the most objectionable feature in the findings of the
+Commissariat Department was that the merchant himself who disposed of
+his goods to the Government at a ruling which allowed but the profit
+incidental to the transaction of business in times of peace, was
+compelled to buy back, when he required goods of that particular
+variety, at the price which the Government had placed upon them.
+This, of course, seemed to the people unfair, and they were quite
+unable to obtain any satisfactory explanation of such procedure;
+satisfactory because the reasons vouchsafed assumed the right of the
+Government to a certain profit, denying, however, that rate in the
+same ratio of proportion to the individual. Among the chief obstacles
+against which Captain Ryan had to contend was the maintenance of the
+daily bread ration, since the supply of flour, of mealie meal, of
+oats, was not particularly great. There were many experiments made
+with the bread, but those which were most unsatisfactory failed
+because it had been found difficult to sift the husks from the oats
+once the oats had been crushed. While the issue of this particular
+bread lasted symptoms of acute dysentery prevailed, and in order to
+prevent an epidemic of dysentery from breaking out the Commissariat
+were compelled to adopt other methods of treatment. The bread
+eventually developed into a weighty circular brown biscuit, weighing
+anything under six ounces, about nine inches in circumference. These
+particular biscuits were less spiky, and less liable to create acute
+inflammation. They were issued to the entire garrison, excepting those
+who had been permitted to draw an invalid ration of white bread, and
+were preserved in many cases as mementoes of the siege. Although we
+have food enough to last several months this precaution is necessary,
+as when the siege is raised many weeks must elapse before supplies can
+come in. The garrison has been put upon a scale of reduced
+rations--1/2 lb. of bread, 1/2 lb. of meat per day. The reductions in
+bread took place in the early part of the year, while the orders in
+relation to the meat supply were issued during this week. Matches and
+milk are prohibited from public sale, and the latest order prevents
+the shops from opening. All supplies of biscuits, tea, and
+sugar--preserves also--have been commandeered. The shop-keepers and
+the hotel proprietors, and indeed anybody who can find any possible
+excuse for doing so, have trebled the price of their goods, pleading
+that the inflation is due to the siege. Accordingly, meal and flour
+have jumped from 27s. per bag to 50s.; potatoes, where they exist at
+all, are L2 per cwt.; fowls are 7s. 6d. each; and eggs 12s. per dozen.
+Milk and vegetables can no longer be obtained, and rice has taken the
+place of the latter among the menus. These figures mark the rise in
+the more important foodstuffs as sold across the counter, but the
+hotels have, in sympathy, followed the example, they, upon their part,
+attributing it to the increase which the wholesale merchants have
+decreed. A peg of whisky is 1s. 6d., dop brandy 1s., gin 1s., large
+stout is 4s., small beer 2s. In ordinary times whisky retails at 5s.
+per bottle. This rate has now advanced to 18s. per bottle and 80s. per
+case. Dop, which is usually 1s. 4d., is now 12s. per bottle; the
+difference upon beer is almost 200 per cent., and inferior cigarettes
+are now 18s. per hundred. Upon an inquiry among the publicans here, I
+was informed that the chief reason for the increase in their prices
+was to hinder the local soldiery from becoming intoxicated; this
+sudden regard for the moral welfare of the garrison on the part of the
+saloon keepers is however, oddly at variance with their earlier
+practices, and is in reality the flimsy pretext by which they seek to
+condone an almost unwarrantable act. Hitherto the constantly recurring
+evils arising from the sale of drink to soldiers and others performing
+military duties, have been openly encouraged by the hotel
+proprietors, who, although they now profess a fine appreciation for
+the moral obligations attached to their trade when prices are high and
+profits great, took no very serious steps at the outset to allay what
+was becoming a very serious menace to the community. Moreover, the
+hotels have demanded from such people as war correspondents and others
+brought here through business connected with the siege, rates which
+are far in advance of the ordinary tariffs, with equally preposterous
+demands for native servants and horse-feed. Indeed, whatever Mafeking
+may lose through the absence of business with the Transvaal, many will
+receive ample compensation from the high prices by which those who are
+able, are endeavouring to recoup themselves, and in a way which it is
+not possible to consider other than extortionate. Stores of all kinds
+are, however, rapidly giving out, and it would not have been possible
+for Mafeking to have sustained the siege so long had not the
+Government contractor, upon his own initiative, laid in far greater
+stocks of provisions than were provided for by his contract, and in
+this respect every credit should be given to the commercial foresight
+and sagacity by which these arrangements were inspired. For everything
+which is in daily want, in fact for the bare necessities of life upon
+the existing scale of reduced rations, Mafeking now depends upon the
+stores and bonded warehouse which represent the local branch of the
+contracting firm, Messrs. Julius Weil & Co. In their hands lies the
+issuing of the daily allowances of bread and meat to the garrison, of
+the forage for the horses, of the feeding of the natives. Indeed,
+there seemed no end to the resources of this house. When the siege
+began, had there been no Weil, the Government stocks would not have
+lasted two months, and, moreover, they did not know that the Weils had
+laid in these stores--a fact which again establishes how very meagre
+were the preparations made for the siege. Therefore, when the time
+comes to give honour to whom honour is due, notice should be taken of
+the important _role_ which this firm has fulfilled during the siege of
+Mafeking.
+
+The siege drags on, however, the days seeming to be an endless
+monotony in which there is absolutely nothing to sustain one's
+interest. Week by week we make a united and laborious attempt to whip
+our flagging energies into some activity. It is a hideous spectacle,
+but this Sunday celebration reveals how very trying has become the
+situation. The military authorities have been at their wits' end to
+find amusement for the garrison, and this effort has developed into a
+Sabbatarian charade in which we all assume an active co-operation, and
+try to think that we are having a very giddy and even gushing time.
+Colonel Baden-Powell, in this respect, makes an admirable
+stage-manager. Authors, scenic artists, stage hands, scene shifters,
+there are, of course, none; but in the middle of the week the Chief
+Staff Officer becomes the town crier, crying lustily, by means of
+proclamation, that, by the grace of God, upon the coming Sunday there
+will be a golf match or baby show, a concert or polo match, even some
+attempt at amateur theatricals. The Sunday respite is, however,
+immensely appreciated, and, indeed, it is a very welcome panacea to
+our siege-strung nerves. Where in England you people are saying, "Oh,
+bother Sunday," "How like a Sunday," we say, "Thank God it is Sunday,"
+implying, for that day in seven, a period of absolute rest and no
+little contentment. We are warriors on Sunday: bold, bad, and brave.
+We have our horses out on Sunday and take a toss as elegantly as we
+take our neighbour's money at cards in the evening, when fortune
+favours. We drink, we accept one another's invitations to meals of
+unsurpassing heaviness; we even invite ourselves to one another's
+houses. We drink, we eat, we flirt, we live in every second of the
+hours which constitute the Sunday, and upon the passing of the day it
+is as though we had entered into another world. As midnight arrives,
+we hasten back to our trenches filled with the good things of the day,
+even with the zest to penetrate the mysteries of another week of
+siege. In the morning we stand-to-arms at four o'clock, not because
+there is any special purpose for doing so, but rather that we may
+satisfy ourselves that we are soldiers; and then the labour of the day
+begins, and for six more days we stand-to-arms and wonder when the
+devil the enemy are coming on. We are very brave then, and at times we
+take ourselves so seriously that into each breast there comes the
+spirit of the Commander-in-Chief. Then we criticise the war, talk
+fatuously of what we would do, struggle somewhat ingloriously with the
+archaic jargon of the army, until, if our speech betrays our
+ignorance, we, nevertheless, make a mighty lot of noise. Then we are
+satisfied, though doubtless each thinks the other somewhat of a fool.
+
+To the man who looks on at all this, the gradual change which has come
+over the garrison is plainly discernible. In the beginning, when the
+Boers made war upon us, there was a contempt for bomb-proofs; there
+was a contempt for many other things besides, since each individual
+knew better than his Post Commander, and did not hesitate to tell him
+so, or rather to imply that he had told him so; but the scorn of
+bomb-proofs was mightier than the sword. In those days we feared
+nothing beyond mosquitoes and the creeping things of earth, but the
+change came silently, and although few people commented upon it, the
+transformation was completed within the first month of the siege. It
+grew, as it were, in a single night, from a village of mud-walled
+houses into one in which every other man owned something of a dug-out.
+For the first few days, while scorn of dug-outs was rife, he who built
+himself a haven kept it to his inner conscience, recalling it, when
+its existence was forced upon him, with something of an apologetic
+air. Thus we existed; then the staff built an underground room, and
+upon the Sunday that followed this momentous event many there were who
+visited it, and who, gathering wrinkles, went quietly to their gardens
+and did likewise. Thus insidiously came the transformation, and
+although there are still a few who talk disparagingly of these
+bomb-proof shelters, their faces wear an anxious look when the enemy
+are shelling, and strangely enough, as the fire waxes hotter, they
+easily find excuses to visit friends, lingering, the while, in the
+congenial gloom of their host's dug-out.
+
+So greatly have ideas expanded upon this subject that at one of the
+hotels an underground dining-room is in course of construction. This
+is at Riesle's, whose proprietor, at last, has been induced to build
+his boarders--mostly war correspondents--a dug-out, since he had given
+places of shelter to the servants, to his native boys, and to his
+family, seemingly thinking that since the boarders kept the hotel
+going they could very easily shift for themselves. But then that is
+always the creed of the publican. These dug-outs are large
+excavations some ten by fourteen feet and seven feet deep, upon which
+there is placed a layer of iron rails which are procured from the
+railway yard; over these there is usually a layer of thick wooden
+sleepers, which again are covered over with sheets of corrugated iron.
+The earth from the hole is then piled up on this, and, after the
+dug-out has been inspected by the Town Commandant it is considered
+safe for habitation; a few cases and chairs equip it with certain
+accommodation, although there are a few into which trestle beds have
+been placed. It is not very healthy passing days and nights in these
+inverted earthworks, but it is eminently safe, and has been the sole
+means afforded us for escaping the enemy's fire. Fortunately the Boers
+have made no attempt to advance upon the town under cover of their
+guns, for if they did so we should have to stand-to-arms and face the
+music of the flying splinters. Every post has been supplied with one
+of these underground retreats, and quite the larger proportion of the
+townspeople have constructed private shelters for themselves.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+SOME SNIPING AND AN EXECUTION
+
+
+                             MAFEKING, _January 31st, 1900_.
+
+In itself the situation has not developed over much, but in relation
+to the siege there are two tragedies to chronicle. The Boers are still
+investing us, in more or less the same numbers, and with but little
+difference in the strength of their artillery. Sometimes we miss an
+individual piece, judging from its absence that it has been sent north
+to reinforce the Dutch who are endeavouring to circumvent the
+movements of Colonel Plumer's column. However, these periodical
+journeys of the five-pounder Krupp, the one-pounder Maxim, or the
+nine-pounder quick-firing Creusot do not last for any great time, and,
+as a matter of fact, Commandant Snyman has not permitted himself to be
+deprived of any one piece of artillery for much longer than a week.
+The garrison here, jumping at conclusions in the absence of any
+definite news, finds in these disappearances some slight consolation,
+since we at once affirm that Colonel Plumer must have arrived at some
+point in which the presence of the enemy's artillery is urgent and
+necessary.
+
+[Illustration: War Correspondents and their Bomb-proof Shelters.]
+
+The gun which we would very gladly spare is the one hundred-pounder
+Creusot, whose occasional removal from one emplacement to another is a
+source of much anxiety to every one in the garrison. In the beginning
+of the siege--a date which is now very remote--"Big Ben" hurled its
+shells into this unfortunate town from an emplacement at Jackal Tree.
+In those days it was almost four miles distant, and we took but little
+notice of a gun which flung its projectiles from such a distant range.
+Those were the days in which we dug holes by night, and speculated
+rather feebly during the day upon the resisting power of the
+protection which we had thus thrown up. But the gun moved then to the
+south-eastern heights, a matter of barely 4,000 yards from the town,
+and of sufficient eminence to dominate every little corner. Those were
+the days in which we dug a little deeper and went round trying to
+borrow--from people who would not lend--any spare sacks, iron
+sleepers, or deals, so that our bomb-proofs might be still further
+strengthened. However, as time passed, we even got accustomed to the
+gun in its new position, and, much as ever, there were many who felt
+inclined to promenade during lapses in the enemy's shell fire. Now,
+however, this wretched gun has again been moved, and, according to
+those who know the country, is within two miles of the town--a little
+matter under 3,000 yards.
+
+In accordance with the fresh position of the Creusot gun we have been
+compelled to extend our eastern defences in order that we may, at
+least, direct an artillery fire upon their advanced trenches. To the
+north-east and south-east we have put forward our guns and to the
+south-east have increased a detachment of sharpshooters, who, from a
+very early date in the siege, have occupied a position in the
+river-bed. These men are only two hundred yards from the sniping posts
+of the Boers, and through the cessation of hostilities upon Sundays,
+they have grown to recognise one another. Sunday has thus also brought
+to the snipers an opportunity of discovering what result their mutual
+fire has achieved during the week, and, when from time to time a
+figure is missing, either side recognise that to their marksmanship,
+at least, that much credit is due. Among the Boers who occupied the
+posts in the brickfields were many old men, one of whom, from his
+venerable mien, his bent and tottering figure, his long white beard,
+and his grey hair, was called grandfather. He had become so identified
+with these posts in the brickfields that upon Sundays our men would
+shout out to him, some calling him Uncle Paul, others grandfather, and
+when the old fellow heard these remarks he would turn and gaze at our
+trench in the river-bed, wondering possibly, as he stroked his beard,
+brushed his clusters of hair from his forehead, or wiped his brow,
+what manner of men those snipers were. He has been known to wave his
+hat when in a mood more than usually benign; then we would wave our
+hats and cheer, while he, once again perplexed, would, taking his pipe
+from his pocket, slowly retrace his steps to his trench. The old man
+was a remarkably good shot, and from his post has sent many bullets
+through the loopholes in our sandbags. He would go in the early
+morning to his fort and he would return at dusk, but in the going and
+coming he, alone of the men who were opposing us, was given a safe
+passage. One day, however, as the Red Cross flag came out from the
+fort, we, looking through our glasses, saw them lift the body of
+grandfather into the ambulance. That night there was a funeral, and
+upon the following day we learnt that he had been their best marksman.
+For ourselves, we were genuinely sorry.
+
+Yesterday there occurred another of those acts of war which illustrate
+in such a very striking fashion the silent tragedies which are
+enacted, and with which perforce many unwilling people are connected,
+during the progress of a campaign. There are, of course, many issues
+to the career of a soldier, and perhaps not the least important of
+these is the arduous and very dangerous task of collecting
+intelligence. In the ranks of society, men who are known to be spies
+are regarded with silent contempt, and ostracised from the circle of
+their acquaintances, so soon as their calling is ascertained; but the
+duties of a military spy differ in almost every respect from the
+individual who becomes a social reformer. In the field the military
+spy carries his life in his hand, since his capture implies an almost
+immediate execution without any possibility of reprieve. Last night
+such an occurrence took place at sundown, when, as the sun sank to its
+setting, a native, who had been caught within our lines, and who
+confessed to be an emissary of the Boers, was taken out and shot.
+
+The spy was a young man, and a native of the stadt, which is a portion
+of Mafeking, and one who had accepted the work of carrying information
+to the enemy because he did not sufficiently realise the punishment
+which would fall upon him, were he to be captured. His instructions
+from the Boers had been remarkably explicit, and the sphere of his
+activities embraced our entire position. He was to visit the forts,
+counting the number of men, and taking special notice of those to
+which guns had been attached. He was to report upon the strength of
+the garrison, the condition of our horses, the supplies of
+foodstuffs, and he was to stay within Mafeking for about ten days. He
+was captured a fortnight ago, as he was creeping in, snatching cover
+from the bushes and rocks which spread over the south-eastern face of
+the town. When he was caught, as though momentarily realising the
+possibilities of his fate, he at first refused to say who he was,
+whence he came, or what had been his purpose. However, among the
+native patrol that had so successfully surprised him were some who
+knew him, whereupon he stated that he was simply returning to the
+stadt. In the earlier part of the siege almost every native who came
+across the lines gave this same excuse, until the suspicion was forced
+upon us that the Baralongs were acting in conjunction with the enemy.
+However, this was not proved to be the case, the chief repudiating the
+suggestion and disclaiming any authority over those natives who
+happened to be beyond the lines at the outbreak of the war.
+Nevertheless, it had been impossible to prevent the Boers receiving
+information through native sources, and for the future, there remained
+no alternative but that which implied the immediate execution of
+captured spies. An increase in the Cossack posts at night somewhat
+checked the mass of information which was carried to the Boers across
+our lines, and in an earlier instance, when a native came in from the
+Boer camp and said that the big gun had been taken away that morning
+upon a waggon, he was given the benefit of forty-eight hours' grace,
+with the understanding that, should the gun fire during that period,
+he would be at once sentenced to death. For a day this man watched the
+emplacement of the big gun, and twenty-four hours passed without
+Mafeking receiving any shells from it. The day following was half
+over, and it was about noon, when the Boers disproved the story which
+they had instructed their spy to tell, and fired into the town. The
+man then confessed that his errand had been inimical, and that he
+himself was hostile to our interests. At dusk the sentence of the
+Summary Court of Jurisdiction was carried out, and that spy was shot.
+But this other at no time seemed to understand the gravity of his
+offence, and when we captured him he informed his captors and the
+Court that he himself had meant no harm. However, he confessed,
+endeavouring to minimise his offence by showing that at the moment of
+his capture he had gathered no information, yet his pleas were futile,
+and he at last seemed to understand that his doom was sealed. From
+then, as he returned to the prison to await the execution of his
+sentence, he said nothing more.
+
+Last night the shooting party came for him, marching him to a secluded
+point upon the south-eastern face, and there they halted him, a silent
+figure in a wilderness of rock and scrub. Around him there was the
+scene of the veldt at eventide. There was the gorgeous, flaming
+sunset, its ruddy gold turning the azure of the sky to clouds of
+purple, pale orange, and a deeper blue. Here and there the heavens
+were flecked with fleecy clouds, which gambolled gently before the
+breeze. In the distance lay the green-clad veldt, simmering a russet
+brown beneath the glories of the sunset. At our feet it sloped,
+breaking into rocky sluits, banked up with bushes; over all there was
+the zephyr, tempering the heat. It was a moment meant for rejoicing in
+the beauty of earth's loveliness rather than for dimming it with the
+sadness of some crimson act. Presently we arrived, and as we bent
+across the slope the blood-red stream of passing sunlight played
+around the shallow heap of earth, thrown out from this man's final
+resting-place. It was visible, much as were the deeper shadows of the
+excavation some seventy yards away, when, as though wishing to spare
+the prisoner, his eyes were bandaged by the officers of the party.
+With that a sudden silence fell upon us, and each seemed to feel that
+he were walking within the shadows of the valley of death. The
+prisoner, supported on either arm, stumbled in the partial blindness
+of the bandage, seeming, now that his last hour was at hand, to be
+more careless, more light-hearted than any of the party. Then we
+halted, and he was asked whether there were anything further which he
+wished to say, and he was warned for the last time. He shook his head
+somewhat defiantly, but his lips moved, and in his heart one could
+almost hear the muttered curses. Then for a space he stood still, and
+a few yards distant, in fact some ten paces, the firing party formed
+across his front. There were six of them, with a corporal and the
+officer in command of the post, and there was that other, who in a
+little was to pay the penalty of his crime. There was a moment of
+intense silence as we waited for the sun to set, in which the nerves
+seemed to be but little strings of wire, played upon by the emotions.
+Unconsciously, each seemed to stiffen, as we waited for the word of
+the officer, feeling that at every pulsation one would like to shriek
+"Enough, enough!" As we stood the prisoner spoke, unconscious of the
+preparations, and the officer approached him. He wanted, he said, to
+take a final glance at the place that he had known since his
+childhood. His prayer was granted, and as he faced about, the bandage
+across his eyes was, for a few brief minutes, dropped upon his neck.
+In that final look he seemed to realise what he was suffering. The
+stadt lay before him, the place of his childhood, the central pivot
+round which his life had turned, bathed in a sunset which he had often
+seen before, and which he would never see again. There were the cattle
+of his people, there were the noises of the stadt, the children's
+voices, the laughter of the women, and there was the smoke of his camp
+fires. It was all his once--he lived there and he was to die there,
+but to die in a manner which was strange and horrible. Then he looked
+beyond the stadt and scanned the enemy's lines. Tears welled in his
+eyes, and the force of his emotion shook his shoulders. But again he
+was himself: the feeling had passed, and he drew himself erect. Then
+once more the bandage was secured, and he faced about. The sun was
+setting, and as the officer stepped back and gave his orders, a
+fleeting shudder crossed the native's face. Bayonets were fixed, the
+men were ready and the rifles were presented. One gripped one's palms.
+"Fire!" said the officer. Six bullets struck him--four were in the
+brain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+LIFE IN THE BRICKFIELDS
+
+
+                             MAFEKING, _February 3rd, 1900_.
+
+The main occupation of the garrison just now is to speculate upon the
+progress of the work of trench-building, which is being rapidly pushed
+forward in the brickfields upon the south-eastern face of the town. It
+is eminently a safe occupation, since our activity in that quarter is
+absorbing the almost undivided attentions of the enemy in the adjacent
+trenches, and therefore giving to the town an enjoyable and protracted
+respite from rifle fire. This, however, exists throughout the day
+only, since night is made hideous and uncomfortable by the heavy fire
+which the enemy turn upon it, and which is returned, with very
+pleasing promptitude, by the town forts and the occupants of the
+trenches in the brickfields. The area of war, localised thus as it is
+in the brickfields, is an interesting testimony to the progress of our
+arms here in Mafeking. We began the siege by abandoning this position
+and with it the very excellent sniping opportunities it gave to the
+Boers. The 8,000 men that Commandant Cronje had with him in those
+early days, made it impossible for our small garrison to hold, with
+any prospect of success, positions so far outlying from the front of
+the town. It is, however, quite a different thing to occupy those
+trenches to-day, since the veldt intervening in the rear, has now been
+carefully protected, and we advance not at all until the post which is
+in occupation at the moment, has been securely fortified and connected
+with adjacent outposts by well-covered trenches. We are now, after
+almost six months' siege, some 1,700 yards in advance of the town, and
+the south-eastern outposts, as these brickfield forts are called,
+constitute our most outlying positions around beleaguered Mafeking.
+
+Very gradually, and with infinite pains and labour, we have sapped
+from town until the company of Cape Boys that is posted in the
+"Clayhole," under Sergeant Currie, is within two hundred yards of the
+Boers' main trench--a point from which one may hear at times our enemy
+holding animated discussions upon his failure to capture Mafeking.
+When war was first declared Commandant Cronje threw strong detachments
+of sharpshooters into the brick kilns which we ourselves now hold, and
+at this present moment, there is no position in those which we have
+seized, that was not originally in possession of the Boers.
+Innumerable traces exist of their temporary occupation, and where it
+has been possible we have preserved these; so that the town itself may
+at some future date be able to see the remains of the Boer investment.
+These little facts give to our work here a greater significance,
+insomuch that it may be assumed that an enemy who has been fortunate
+enough to secure for himself a strong position, is not so foolish as
+to abandon it voluntarily. This, of course, is quite the case, and
+many have been the occasions when the town has been able to watch
+affairs between outposts being briskly contested in these very
+trenches.
+
+[Illustration: Plan of the Brickfields.]
+
+Nothing is quite so pleasant, so invigorating, nor quite so dangerous
+as life in these brickfield posts. Inspector Marsh, Cape Police, in
+whom the command of the south-eastern outposts has been invested, most
+kindly permitted me to join his quarters. We are aroused in the
+morning as the day breaks by a volley from the Boer trenches, and in
+all probability the derisive shout, "Good morning, Mr. damned
+Englishman!" to which the Cape Boys usually return the salutation of
+"Stinkpots!" which is the euphonious rendering of a Dutch word
+calculated to give, more especially when coming from a nigger, the
+utmost possible offence. The day may then be said to have begun,
+although, between this and any further ceremonies, there is usually a
+mutual cessation of hostilities, in order that each side may enjoy a
+cup of matutinal coffee. The coffee is made in town and brought out,
+since orders are exceedingly strict against the lighting of fires on
+outposts. Sometimes the day proves long, but usually it is one of an
+exciting character, and one in which it behoves the men to move with
+the utmost care. The enemy would seem to have filled their advanced
+trench with a number of picked sharpshooters; for it is quite an
+ordinary occurrence for them to fire, at five hundred yards range,
+through our loopholes; nor are these chance shots, for there is one
+man who seems to put the bullets precisely where he wishes, since, at
+least once during the day, he will test the accuracy of his aim by
+emptying his entire chamber through one porthole. Such sharpshooting
+compels one to move with a large amount of precaution, since if so
+much as a finger be shown above the top of the sandbags there is
+every likelihood of it being perforated by a Mauser bullet. But if
+this be the manner of our existence, the Boers do not take any risks
+either, and move between their portholes with the greatest precaution,
+until this system of watching one another may be said to have
+developed a class of work which consists principally of lying upon
+one's stomach in readiness to fire--if there should occur the
+slightest opportunity.
+
+Sometimes, if the day be quiet, we creep from trench to trench, even
+venturing to the river; but upon the whole, however, there is not much
+of this visiting accomplished, since the Boers have the habit of
+attempting to lull us into security and then spoiling the delusion
+with a well-directed volley. Recently the advanced trenches of the
+Boers were so heavily reinforced that we expected an attack upon the
+brickfields; in fact, one night we were almost positive that the enemy
+were about to make an attempt to wrest this position from us. They did
+not do so, nor have they made any night attack, since the Dutchman
+does not like to meet his enemy by night, unless he himself is
+ensconced safely behind some sacks and his foe in the open. Upon such
+an occasion he will fire until his ammunition is expended. However, we
+expected them, and although they made no advance, they poured in at
+daybreak, at somewhat under four hundred yards range, a most terrific
+fire. They turned upon us a 9-lb. Krupp, a 5-lb. Creusot, a 3-lb.
+Maxim, and about five hundred rifles. It was an amazing morning and a
+most interesting experience, while for some hours afterwards the air
+seemed to ring with the droning notes of the Martinis and the sharp
+crackle of the Mauser. Of course we fired back, since we never allowed
+the Dutchmen to turn their guns upon us without treating the gun
+emplacements and embrasures to several volleys. It is good sometimes
+to impress upon the Boers the uselessness of their efforts. Out here
+in these brickfields we appear to be upon the edge of a new world,
+with the limits of the old one just below. Mafeking itself is only
+1,700 yards distant, but the undulating ground, the rocky ridges, the
+simmering heat, and the mirage give rise to the impression that the
+town, of which the brickfields is the outpost, is many miles away. We
+live a peaceful, almost serene existence, disturbed only by the hum of
+passing bullets. There is no pettiness of spirit, no mutual
+bickerings, no absurd jealousies; one does not hear anything of the
+clash between the civil and military elements. That is all below us in
+the little town which sits upon the rising slopes with that appearance
+of chaos and despair which now mark its daily existence. Black care is
+not here, and thank heaven for it; for indeed a luxury beyond
+comparison is the quiet and peaceful day.
+
+Mafeking at last is siege-weary--and, oh, so hungry! It seems months
+since any one had a meal which satisfied the pangs that gnaw all day.
+We have been on starvation rations for so many weeks that time has
+been forgotten, and now there seems the prospect of no immediate help
+forthcoming! We are so sick of it, so tired of the malaria,
+diphtheria, and typhoid that claim a list as great almost as that
+caused by the enemy's shell and rifle fire! We ask, When will the end
+be? and then we shrug our shoulders and begin to swear; for we have
+such sorrows in our midst, such suffering women and such ailing
+children as would turn a saint to blasphemies!
+
+[Illustration: Cape Boys Hurling Stones at the Boers as They
+Endeavoured to Rush the Sap.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+FROM BAD TO WORSE
+
+
+                             MAFEKING, _February 7th, 1900_.
+
+At a moment when the entire garrison, perhaps, excluding the military
+chiefs, was eagerly anticipating some announcement which would
+determine the date of an immediate relief, intelligence has come to
+hand, in a communication from Field-Marshal Lord Roberts himself,
+informing the inhabitants of Mafeking that he expects them to hold out
+until the middle of May. Since the beginning of the year the town has
+lulled itself into a sense of security by endeavouring to believe that
+at some early date the garrison would be relieved. But now, if it were
+possible to find "a last straw" to break the spirits of the townsmen,
+it is contained in the unfortunate telegram which Colonel Baden-Powell
+received from Lord Roberts. To hold out until the middle of May, it
+can well be longer, is to ask us to endure further privations, and to
+maintain an existence in a condition which is already little removed
+from starvation, and at a moment when the great majority of the
+civilian combatants, if not of all classes, are "full up" of the
+siege. For the past month we have been living upon horseflesh,
+although at first these unfortunate animals were slaughtered only in
+the interests of the foodless natives, and whatever gastronomic
+satisfaction may be culled by us now in eating what in more ordinary
+circumstances has done duty as a horse, it is none the less a hardship
+and a damned and disagreeable dish.
+
+The effect of the announcement has been to increase the gloom and
+depression which for some weeks has been noticeable among those
+civilians whose businesses have been ruined; who are separated from
+and unable to communicate with their families, and who themselves have
+been impressed into the defence of the town. During this state of war
+they are unable to earn anything, and it is quite beyond their power
+to pay even the most perfunctory attention to their businesses; but
+now with this statement buzzing in the brain like an angry bee, can
+they not be excused if they cry out, "Enough, enough," and feel
+depressed and sick of the whole siege? Within a few weeks we shall be
+entering the sixth month of the siege, and already the severity of our
+daily life is beginning to tell, and indeed has already told upon
+many. But now that we have come so far through the wood, when we have
+fought by day and by night, when we have been sick with fever and
+pressed by hunger, when we have been harassed by bad news, and the
+conviction, through the absence of any cheering information, that all
+was not well with us down below, it would be a monstrous misfortune if
+we cannot survive the pangs of hunger and the torments of starvation
+until the long-promised relief arrives in the middle of May. If we do
+succeed, those who come through alive will have a tale to tell, in
+which there will be much which will remain buried, since there are
+experiences which, when they have been lived through, it is impossible
+to talk about.
+
+If we were only just ourselves, merely the defenders of a town against
+an enemy, we could endure our privations, our short rations, and our
+condemned water with even greater fortitude. The men live hard lives
+in Africa, and their constitutions are strong, their nerves firm. But
+they hate, as all men hate, in all parts of the world, that their
+womenfolk should suffer, and here is the misery of our situation, more
+especially that these gentle creatures should suffer before their own
+eyes, when they themselves can do nothing for them. Aye, indeed,
+there's the rub. A hard life is always hardest upon women, and, unlike
+the Australasian colonies, and Canada, or the Western States of
+America, and all places where women who lead colonial life have no
+black labour to rely upon, the women in Africa are curiously
+incapable, delegating a multitudinous variety of domestic duties to
+the natives they employ. Their sphere of daily activity, so far as it
+is in relation to their household, is reduced to a minimum, while
+consciously or through the absence of some active pursuit by which
+they could occupy their mind and exercise their bodies, their view of
+life is petty and impressed with prejudices and absurd jealousies.
+Moreover, they are abnormally lazy; indeed, to one who has lived in
+Australasia, America, Africa, India, and elsewhere, and has experience
+of life in those colonies, the lassitude and indolence of the South
+African woman is one of the most striking aspects of the daily life in
+Africa. In Natal this weariness is called the "Natal sickness," and in
+Mafeking at the present juncture it is responsible for a great deal of
+the discontent, the unwillingness to make the best of an exceedingly
+trying situation.
+
+Without the feminine element in Mafeking, the civil and military
+authorities would be in better accord, but with a pack of women and
+children in an insanitary laager, caring nothing for the exigencies of
+the situation, firmly believing that they are oppressed by design and
+deliberately maltreated, and, rising up in their wrath, smiting the
+Colonel, the Chief Staff Officer, indeed, the entire Headquarters'
+Staff, or any military and official unit that comes unfortunately into
+contact with them, the worry and annoyance caused to the garrison at
+large by their presence here at this juncture is eminently worse than
+the most fearsome thing it is possible to conceive. Of course, one
+sympathises in all sincerity with these unfortunate non-combatants,
+for they live amid conditions which produce and promote typhoid,
+malaria, and diphtheria--diseases that have been peculiarly virulent,
+and from which many women and children have died.
+
+Apart from the fatalities from shell and rifle fire, there is the list
+of those who have died from the hardships which they have had to
+experience. Strong men have dropped off from typhoid, women and
+children contracting the same disease, or one which by its nature is
+similarly fatal, have been unable to bear up. The smiling and happy
+children that one knew in the early days are no longer such; they are
+thin, emaciated, bloodless, and live amid conditions which have
+already wrought sad havoc among their companions. The mortality among
+the women and children must form part of the general conditions of the
+siege, but it is peculiarly disheartening to the townsmen as they
+stand to their posts and their trenches to be compelled to ponder and
+to reflect sadly that the fell diseases which have killed the wives
+and children of so many might, at any moment, attack those members of
+their own family who are confined in the pestilential trenches of the
+laager. The unfortunate condition of these poor people here, as well
+as in Kimberley, has brought the suggestion to my mind that it should
+not be too late for either the Commander-in-Chief, or some one
+identified with his authority, to make overtures to the Boers, so that
+we, and even the garrison in Kimberley, might be permitted to send, in
+the one case our women and children to Bulawayo, and in the other
+case, to Capetown. It could surely be arranged, and if it were
+possible it would ensure a little greater happiness, a little greater
+comfort, falling to the lot of these poor people, who are unable to
+take, through lack of adequate remedies, the simplest precautions
+against the dangers which assail their own health and the lives of
+their children. But if our friends the Boers think that because of
+these straits we are disheartened they make a very grievous mistake.
+We propose to endure and we intend to carry the siege on until the
+end. Nothing so exemplifies the true tone of the garrison and the
+spirit of the men as this determination in which we one and all share
+and for which we mutually agree to co-operate.
+
+Despite the heavy burden of domestic trouble which presses down upon
+the townspeople, there has been a remarkable absence of any open
+friction between the civilian element and military at present gathered
+in Mafeking. The military authorities should be the first to recognise
+this and to appreciate the ready acquiescence and assistance which
+they have received from the inhabitants of the town. That at least
+they do acknowledge the importance of duties fulfilled, and the spirit
+with which they have been carried out, should be a conclusion against
+which it would be absurd to tilt. Nothing can underestimate the
+consideration which the townspeople, under conditions adverse to their
+interests, and for which the military authorities are entirely
+responsible, have shown for the vigours of martial law and the present
+military domination. Compensation would be so materially insufficient
+that it cannot be said that any one individual has stayed here for the
+purpose of receiving such emoluments as would be to him some kind of a
+profit. The economy of Governmental compensation is never known to be
+satisfactory--Government in its impersonal attributes being
+universally recognised as a most niggardly paymaster. They therefore,
+those who have stayed, apart from the delusions under which they
+suffered, can be said to have remained because they wished, as
+colonists, to prove their loyalty; and yet, when one looks back upon
+the siege and considers carefully the manner in which they have been
+imposed upon by their own Government, it is very questionable if ever
+so great a test was applied to the spirit of mind and body which
+constitutes allegiance to a sovereign. Fortunately the town cannot say
+that it has performed more than its share of the defence work. Indeed,
+for the most part the services of the townsmen have been restricted,
+so far as was possible, to a connection with forts which have been
+constructed upon the boundaries of the town, and have not been thrust
+forward in preference to the men of the Protectorate Regiment, who,
+following the profession of arms, can properly be expected to bear the
+brunt of the fighting. It was thought at one time that the strange
+assortment of human nature which had collected in or was drawn to
+Mafeking might be difficult of management; but mixed as is the
+population here at present, the doubtful element, which is one that
+sympathising with the enemy might create dissatisfaction among others,
+has been singularly subdued. There are many instances here in Mafeking
+of men who have taken up arms in defence of the town in which their
+business and their domestic ties are centred, and who, to do this,
+have had to fight against their own blood relatives. We have had
+therefore, in a sense, many men who, while apparently loyal and
+engaged in manning the trenches, were yet under constant supervision,
+lest they should give way to their feelings and too openly proclaim
+their sympathies with the Boer cause; but there have been few
+desertions, and affairs in general between Englishman and Dutchman,
+between the civilian and military, have passed off with greater
+harmony than was altogether anticipated. Mistrust between Englishmen
+of pronounced Imperial sympathies and colonials suspected of Dutch
+leanings has been the cause of a certain amount of jealousy, which
+tended to make the defence of Mafeking a work of, by no means, a
+pleasant nature. However much this feeling of difference, creating and
+causing in itself an acute tension between the pro-Imperial and the
+colonial, has given rise to, or has been the sole cause of, any
+ill-feeling which may have marked the relations between the civil and
+military, it has at no time assumed proportions grave enough to foster
+the opinion that its prevalence might endanger in time the commonweal
+of the inhabitants and threaten with strife the daily intercourse of
+the various units in the garrison.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE FIRST ATTACK UPON THE BRICKFIELDS
+
+
+                            MAFEKING, _February 14th, 1900_.
+
+In the history of the siege of Mafeking there should stand forth an
+event as remarkable to posterity, if, perhaps, not quite so
+historical, as the famous ball which was given by the Duchess of
+Richmond on the eve of Waterloo. It may be, indeed, a trite
+comparison, since its only relationship is contained in the fact that
+the officers were called away to the field of battle; but, with so
+much uncertainty in European circles upon the conditions of the
+garrison, this fact and its issues tend to show the spirit with which
+the town is sustaining its precarious existence. Although we have some
+3,000 Boers around us, with twelve different varieties of artillery,
+and despite the steady increase in fatalities from shot and shell
+which marks each day, we can yet stimulate our flagging spirits to a
+pitch in which a ball is accepted and welcomed as an essential to the
+conditions of the siege. A mere detail, yet one of sufficiently
+striking importance and showing how very sombre and how serious is the
+daily situation, will perhaps be found in the postponement of this
+ball from Saturday night until the succeeding evening--a proceeding
+which was rendered necessary by the death of a popular townsman from
+a 100-pound shell in the course of the previous morning. Recent
+Sundays have revealed a tendency, upon the part of the enemy, to
+ignore that generous and courteous concession to a beleaguered
+garrison which General Cronje granted, by professing his willingness
+to observe the Sabbath, insomuch that the Boers have maintained rifle
+fire until 5 in the morning, commencing again at any moment after 9
+o'clock at night. This Sunday was no exception, and we had the usual
+matutinal volleys.
+
+Towards 8 o'clock in the evening the streets near the Masonic Hall
+presented an animated, even a gay, picture. Officers in uniform and
+ladies in charming toilettes were making their way to the scene of the
+festivity, each with a careless happiness which made it impossible to
+believe that within a thousand yards of the town were the enemy's
+lines. Immense cheering greeted the strains of "Rule Britannia,"
+played by the band of the Bechuanaland Rifles, and then the dance
+commenced. The town danced upon the edge of a volcano, as it were; and
+while it danced the outposts watched with strained eye for any sign of
+movement in the enemy's lines. As dusk closed in the outposts had
+reported to the colonel commanding that the advanced trenches of the
+enemy had been reinforced with some three hundred Boers, and that
+their galloping Maxim had been drawn by four men to a point adjacent
+to our outlying posts in the brickfields, while what appeared to be
+the nine-pounder Krupp had been put into an emplacement upon the
+south-eastern front. This news Colonel Baden-Powell did not permit to
+become known, since he very properly wished to allow the garrison to
+enjoy its dance if occasion offered; and accordingly the dance began.
+It was early when the enemy sent their preliminary volley whistling
+over the town; in an instant the animation of the streets which had
+preceded the dance was apparent once more, as around the doors of the
+Masonic Hall a number of people collected from out of the ball-room.
+Officers raced to their posts as orderlies galloped through the
+streets sounding a general alarm. We were to be attacked, and a man
+can serve his guns, can ply his rifle, can stand to his post in
+evening pumps and dress trousers as efficiently and as thoroughly as
+he can were he clothed in the coarser habiliments of the trenches. For
+a few minutes no one quite knew what would happen, and greater
+mystification prevailed as the noise of firing came from every quarter
+of our front. Urgent orders were issued, to be obeyed as rapidly;
+Maxims were brought up at a gallop, the reserve squadron was held in
+readiness, coming up to Headquarters at the double. The guns were
+loaded and trained, and within a few minutes of the general alarm, the
+ball-room was deserted and every man was at his post.
+
+It was a fine night, and the moon was full. Here and there,
+silhouetted against the skyline, those who were watching could see the
+reinforcements marching to the advanced trenches. There had been
+little time to think of anything, to collect anything, the men who
+were sent forward simply snatching their rifles and ammunition
+reserves. For a brief moment there was exceeding confusion in the
+forts that had been ordered to furnish reinforcements for any
+particular trench; but this duty was performed so quickly, and the
+town was in such readiness to repel attack, that our mobilisation
+would have reflected credit upon the smartest Imperial force.
+Presently there came a lull in the firing, and the ambulance waggon
+made its way to a sheltered point, prepared to move forward should it
+become necessary. I watched for a few minutes the scene in the Market
+Square, paying particular attention to Colonel Baden-Powell and his
+staff officers, who had congregated beyond the stoep of the
+Headquarters office. Now and again Lord Edward Cecil, the Chief Staff
+Officer, would detach himself from the group to send an instruction by
+one of the many orderlies who, with their horses, were in waiting. It
+was a cheering spectacle, the prompt and methodical manner in which
+our final arrangements were perfected. Then the staff group broke up,
+and the C.S.O. explained the possibilities of the situation. The enemy
+contemplated an attack upon our south-eastern front, concentrating
+their advance upon our positions in the brickfields. If such, indeed,
+were the case, we could promise ourselves a smart little fight, and
+one, moreover, at point-blank range. We had so fortified our trenches
+in this particular quarter that, happily, there was no prospect of any
+disaster similar to that which befell our arms at Game Tree. Towards
+midnight heavy firing broke out upon the western outposts, caused, as
+was afterwards proved, by the success of our native cattle raiders,
+who, managing to elude the vigilance of the Boer scouts, had driven
+some few head of cattle through their lines into our own camp. The
+sound of this firing drew the Chief Staff Officer to the telephone in
+the Headquarters bomb-proof, whereupon I made my way to the point
+against which we had assumed that the attack would be directed.
+
+It was to an old post in a somewhat new shape, then, that I made my
+way, a journey which amply compensated for any lack of excitement in
+the events of the last few days. Fitful volleys from the Boers made
+it impossible to walk across the section of the veldt intervening
+between the rear of these advanced posts and the town, while at
+present, these posts form a little colony, connected as they are now
+among themselves, but cut off altogether from communication with the
+town until the pall of night comes to shield the movements of those
+compelled to make their way between the town and the brickfields.
+Soon, those who are posted there hope to see a trench constructed,
+affording passage at any moment with the base; but until this happens
+it is a pleasant scramble, a little dangerous, and somewhat trying.
+The ground is rough and stony, sloping slightly, in open spaces, to
+within a few yards of the Boer lines. It is commanded in many points,
+and upon this particular night it seemed to suit the purpose of the
+enemy to play upon it with their rifles at irregular intervals. To
+reach the river-bed was easy, to scramble up the river-bed with one's
+figure thrown out against the skyline is better appreciated in
+imagination; to put it into practice is to walk without looking where
+one is going, since one is continually sweeping the enemy's positions
+to catch the flash of the enemy's rifles. When the flash is caught, if
+the bullet has not hit one first, it is wiser to throw dignity to the
+wind and oneself upon the ground. In this position, prone and very
+muddy, even a little bruised, I found myself, until the fierce but
+whispered challenge of a sentry told me that my temporary destination
+had been reached. At this fort there was little to betray the
+excitement which consumed its gallant defenders, beyond the fact that
+the entire post was standing to arms. With a laugh and a jest we
+parted; and cut across what would have been the line of fire had a
+fight been raging at that moment. There was a low, elongated wedge a
+few yards distant upon the left, against which the moon threw black
+shadows. It was the Boer position, and as they had been firing
+frequently, warning to proceed cautiously was not altogether
+disobeyed. Inspector Marsh's post was then very shortly gained, and
+with this officer I passed the night.
+
+It was 2 a.m. when Inspector Marsh turned out to make his last round
+before the men in his command stood to arms at daybreak. Whatever else
+was not evident, it was now certain that there would be no attack
+until the break of day, and so, upon returning to our post, we lay
+upon the stony ground and slept. It seemed that Time had scarcely
+scored an hour when we woke up, and, taking our rifles with us,
+buckling on our revolvers, stood to the loopholes. Day broke solemnly
+and with much beauty, night fading into grey-purple and soft, eerie
+shadows. Trees looked as sentinels, and there was no sound about us.
+Indeed, the spectacle of a large number of men expecting each minute
+the opening volley of an attack, was thrilling, and in that cold air
+their martial effect was a sufficient and satisfying tonic against the
+river mists. We had been standing some few minutes when from up the
+stream came the croaking of the bullfrog, so loud and emphatic that
+the older veldtsmen knew it at once to be a signal. This had scarcely
+been passed round when from that black line upon the sky there broke a
+withering sheet of flame; it was a magnificent volley, and swept
+across our intrenchments. We held our fire, crouching still lower and
+peering still more anxiously through the sandbags. Dawn was rapidly
+advancing, and as the light became clearer the enemy heralded its
+advance with a merry flight of three-pounder Maxims. They burst among
+us, hitting nobody, and falling principally upon the trench occupied
+by Sergeant Currie and his Cape Boys. Then we fired, or rather our
+most advanced trench opened, and in that moment the engagement began.
+However, beginning brilliantly as it did, under the snapping of the
+Mausers, the droning hiss of Martinis, and a roaring deluge of shells,
+it was short-lived. Sergeant Currie and his men bore the brunt of the
+rifle fire, replying shot to shot, undaunted and unchecked. The
+reverberating echoes of the firearms, of the exploding shells, to the
+accompaniment of the insulting taunts of the Cape Boys were somewhat
+deafening. When the advanced trenches of the enemy started, volleys
+came also from the ridge of the acclivity leading from the river-bed
+to the emplacement of the nine-pounder Krupp. Between them again,
+there were smaller trenches joining in the rifle practice, which,
+while it lasted, was so hot that it was not possible to creep through
+the connecting trenches, or, indeed, to move in any manner whatever.
+Within three hours the enemy threw some thirty nine-pounder Krupp,
+some twenty-five five-pound incendiary shells, an overwhelming mass of
+three-pound Maxims, and a few rounds from the cavalry Maxim. Bullets
+innumerable had whizzed across us, to be answered by rifle fire as
+brisk again, and so rapidly returned that few of the defenders had
+even time to think.
+
+But we wondered, as the day grew brighter and two hours' firing had
+passed, what would be the end, considering ourselves fortunate that
+the enemy made no attempt to rush any one of the brickfields in his
+command. Occasionally, as we fired, Inspector Brown, in charge of the
+river-bed work, exchanged signals with Inspector Marsh, the post
+commander, through a megaphone, much to the discomfiture of the
+Boers, who, as the stentorian commands rang out in any lull of firing,
+were sadly perplexed. These signals had, of course, been arranged
+beforehand, the men knowing that they were the merest pretext and one
+by which it was hoped to confuse the Boers. Upon the part of the enemy
+it must have been rather alarming to hear between some temporary
+stoppage in the firing a voice in thunderous tones crying out, "Men of
+the advanced trench, fix bayonets," an order which would be invariably
+followed by hearty cheering from the Cape Police and insults of an
+exceedingly personal character from the Cape Boys. However, everything
+draws to an end, and the Boers, abandoning their intention of turning
+us out of the brickfields, ceased fire, giving to ourselves an
+opportunity to prepare breakfast. We ate it where we had previously
+been firing, the men passing the tins of bully and the bread rations
+from one to another. Then just where we had been fighting, with the
+scent of the burst shells and the smoke of the rifles hanging in the
+air, thin spiral columns of smoke arose in the rear of the few
+brick-kilns, and coffee was presently brought to us. Until mid-morning
+we maintained our posts, but with the luncheon hour we took it easy,
+although preserving a watchful attitude towards the Boers. Thus passed
+the day with little further firing, and some sleeping, terminating in
+a merry dinner--under siege conditions--with Inspector Marsh and
+Inspector Brown, in the dug-out of their town post.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE SECOND ATTACK UPON THE BRICKFIELDS
+
+
+                            MAFEKING, _February 28th, 1900_.
+
+In many ways this month has been the most eventful of any during the
+siege. Other months of the siege have secured for themselves a certain
+notoriety, because they have been identified with some particular
+engagement; but this month of February has seen our labour in the
+brickfields brought to a successful consummation, and, at a moment
+when the garrison was congratulating itself upon the triumphant issue
+of such an adventurous and adventitious undertaking, we have been
+brought face to face with the contingency that even yet it may not be
+possible to continue to occupy so advanced a post. If I return to the
+subject of the brickfields after such a short interval, it is because
+there, more than anywhere else in Mafeking, the clash of arms is
+predominant. These many days we have followed out our scheme,
+endeavouring to circumvent the enemy by pushing forward a line of
+entrenched posts until they should embrace an area which would enable
+us to outflank their main lines and enfilade their advanced trenches.
+There was a moment when this was actually completed, a moment in
+which we who were in the advanced forts, knew that if we could but
+hold the position we held the invaders in such a fashion that they
+would be compelled to abandon their posts. But there was the shadow of
+uncertainty, since we were rather reckoning upon the hitherto
+recognised fact, that the Boers belonged to that class of fighting
+peoples who never purposely attack if they could secure their ends by
+entrenchments and delay. For one day we rather gloried in the work,
+until towards dusk we realised with a swift and fearful astonishment
+that the Boers were intending to sap us. We have supposed it to be by
+accident rather than by design that a man, in the uniform of some
+German regiment, appeared of a sudden to arise out of the ground at a
+point some thirty yards distant from what we had considered to be the
+end of the Boer trench. His presence explained much, since the night
+before we had been perplexed at hearing the sound of picking and
+shovelling a little in advance of our position. At that time we had
+concluded that the noises emanated from the natives, who were
+deepening and strengthening the advanced trench of the Boers; but with
+this figure suddenly appearing, we realised that there was quite a
+different story to be told, one which implied that our previous
+opinion of the enemy was in error, and that they intended to make us
+fight for our position or to turn us out. The situation was rapidly
+becoming as interesting as any which has developed from the siege. Sap
+and counter-sap were separated perhaps by eighty yards, and so
+gallantly and vigorously did the enemy work that we could see them
+approaching yard by yard. It was impossible for us in the time at our
+disposal to do very much to stop them; we could simply keep a look-out
+and drench their trenches with volleys upon the slightest
+provocation. It was useless to fire upon the natives working in the
+sap, since it was only possible to see the points of their picks as
+they were swung aloft, catching for a moment the radiance of the sun.
+Still they came on, and one night we knew that before dawn they would
+be into us. That night no one slept in the advanced trenches, and
+Inspector Marsh, who has very generously permitted me to stop with him
+for the past month in his quarters in the brickfields, visited the
+posts hourly. Between two and three we slept, and for a short space
+there was a perfect calm in our lines. At half-past four we stood to
+arms, to hear that the enemy had made contact with our trench. As we
+found this out, news was brought that the big Creusot gun had taken up
+its position upon the south-eastern heights, and so commanded our
+entire area. The inevitable had arrived and perhaps for a brief moment
+we were all a little subdued. As the sun rose Inspector Marsh,
+commanding the south-eastern outposts, under directions from
+Headquarters, warned every man to take such cover as was obtainable.
+
+The situation would have given satisfaction had there been any
+prospect of an equal contest, since man to man we were not unmatched,
+but it would be impossible for the occupants of these advanced posts
+to attempt conclusions with an enemy who could bring to their
+assistance a high-velocity Krupp and a 100 lb. Creusot. There was
+immediate excitement, and Inspector Marsh telephoned the news to
+Headquarters. For the moment that was all which could be done--inform
+Headquarters. Then, with our rifles in our hands, with an extra supply
+of ammunition by our sides, we waited the inevitable, and we waited
+until night; but upon that night nothing happened. As dusk drew down,
+and as the calm of night was broken only by the rumbling echoes and
+tremors of the work in the enemy's sap, we threw out a working party
+of some two hundred natives, starving and ill-conditioned, but the
+best that we could procure, intending to make the effort to check once
+and for all the advance of the Boers. We worked all night, and dawn
+was breaking as we drew off, but we had passed them. In a single night
+we had carried our sap some thirty yards beyond theirs, and at such an
+angle that we enfiladed their sap, while only eighty yards divided the
+pair. The Boer line of advance was deeper than ours by some five feet,
+but all that day white man and Cape Boy strove to deepen our new
+trench, and by night it was perhaps a foot deeper than it had been. It
+was dangerous work; it was exciting. The crackle of bullets was never
+absent; they struck all round one, and there were a few fatalities.
+That night we worked again, and so did they. Indeed, each side
+volleyed heavily all night to protect their working parties. We were
+not extending our trench; it was already a hundred yards sheer into
+the open, but in the morning when we looked, the Boer trench was
+barely thirty yards away from ours. That day we did nothing but await
+the inevitable again. We slept, since it was certain that on the
+morrow a fight would come. Once more there was nothing for it but to
+wait in such readiness as we could be in, for anything that the enemy
+might attempt. They began at dusk by throwing dynamite bombs into our
+sap--some burst, some fell blind; but this work was futile, since they
+had not yet reached sufficiently near to effect any damage. When they
+did obtain such access, we also had a little pile of bombs. Tooth for
+tooth--we were not going to give up without fighting. Then the end
+came suddenly, for Headquarters telephoned that the big gun had taken
+up its original position, which was barely two thousand yards distant
+on our left flank. With this message we began to comprehend what the
+next day would bring forth.
+
+The affair between the outposts began about a quarter to five in the
+morning. The first 100 lb. shell fell between our trenches and those
+of the enemy: it seemed that they had wished to secure the range. They
+had secured it. The three holes which form our advanced position
+contain no cover whatsoever, since there is none to put up, and
+whatever earth had been thrown up was commanded by the enemy's fort
+upon the south-eastern heights. Each hole contained a shelter from the
+sun, a corrugated iron arrangement, supported by props, with a
+sprinkling of earth on top. The shooting was magnificent, and it will
+be difficult to find, when the various comparisons be drawn,
+marksmanship more precise or more accurate. Each was wrecked in turn:
+a shell to a shelter. When this work had been accomplished, the big
+gun directed its attention to the brick-kilns, in which we had posted
+our sharpshooters. In a little time the three were heaps of ruins.
+Between the intervals of shelling the Boers fired volleys from the
+three points: from the fort on the south-eastern heights, from the
+fort in the river-bed, and from their main trench. The company of Cape
+Boys in the advanced hole could not be expected to relish the triple
+fire, which was in turn endorsed by shells from the big gun. The holes
+are not very large, nor very wide, nor high: they are natural
+depressions in the soil, in which water had collected and caused a
+further subsidence. When the enemy volleyed from the advanced trench,
+they had to crouch under the lee of a bank that was facing the
+direction of the fort on the south-eastern heights; when they wished
+to avoid shell and rifle fire from this fort, they had to run the risk
+of finding shelter in the direct line of fire from the main trench. If
+they endeavoured to move to the second hole, they had to do so under
+fire from all three points. It was rather an unpleasant state of
+things for the Cape Boys, who, moreover, could find no point from
+which to return the fire of the enemy. In an hour some twelve shells
+had been thrown into the first hole, and there were five fatalities.
+Whenever we endeavoured to occupy the sap the big gun shelled it,
+until it was no longer possible to maintain a post in a position so
+exposed. We fell back to the second hole, and the enemy began to shell
+other points in the brickfields. They sent two to Currie's post in the
+river-bed; they scattered them plentifully about the first, second,
+and third forts--entrenched posts by which it is hoped to keep back
+the Boers, should they successfully carry the Cape Boy holes. The
+situation was becoming serious, and we had been compelled to abandon
+the sap and evacuate the first hole. At the moment it was a question
+of whether the Boers were coming on, and as we waited in the
+expectation of seeing them advance down our own sap into our original
+position, the shelling ceased, for the Boers had gone to breakfast.
+That was our supreme opportunity, and although they must have seen us
+from the south-eastern heights, we employed ourselves in saving from
+the wreck what was possible. All the shelters had been pounded into
+_debris_: rifles and bayonets lay about broken and twisted, here and
+there were remains of camp utensils, and blood-stained clothing. It
+was a scene of ruin, and as we crept into it upon our hands and knees
+the confusion of the place struck one sadly. Sergeant-Major Taylor had
+been hurt by the second shell, and has since died, while another of
+the wounded has also succumbed. While the firing lasted the position
+was untenable, and we fell back from the sap into the most advanced of
+the holes. Here the situation rapidly became impossible, for the
+character of the outwork prevented any one from taking cover. But
+despite the galling fire, the Cape Boys behaved with admirable courage
+and endurance, and it was only when three men in the advanced hole had
+been seriously wounded, that they fell back behind the bank of the
+second pit. In a little, when the gun had effectually driven us from
+the advanced hole, the enemy began to shell the forts in the rear. At
+that moment there were two things to be done: one was to bank up the
+mouth of the sap, since the enemy had already reached it and were
+firing down it, the other was to throw up a rampart across the mouth
+of the second hole. Under a heavy fire Corporal Rosenfeld, of the
+Bechuanaland Volunteers, and myself undertook and accomplished the
+one, while at night the work upon the rampart was begun. By morning it
+was finished, but in the night the enemy had occupied our sap. The
+length of the first hole then alone divided us. Within the next few
+hours, however, the position of affairs changed as rapidly again. At a
+moment when the enemy were least prepared a strong party rushed the
+hole and sap, expelling the Boers by vigorous use of bayonets and
+dynamite bombs. Since then the Boers have left our advanced works
+severely alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+THE NATIVE QUESTION
+
+
+                                MAFEKING, _March 3rd, 1900_.
+
+It has become altogether impossible to gauge with any degree of
+accuracy, the situation in relation to the fortunes of the Imperial
+arms, or as it might be found in the camp of the enemy without
+Mafeking. We do not lack here men who, from a previous knowledge of
+the Boers, consider themselves capable of estimating the purpose and
+designs of Commandant Snyman; but what seems to be precise and even an
+admirable forecast one week, is proved, by events in the succeeding
+week, to be irrelevant and unreliable. It has been our habit, when for
+any length of time the enemy has rested, to attribute their
+comparative cessation from hostilities to news of ill-omen, and in our
+fatuous presciency we have approximately given the date upon which the
+siege will be raised. But in light of the never-varying contradiction
+in sense which befalls our optimistical assurance, we must perforce,
+recognise the falsity of our deductions and cease from worrying.
+Recently, indeed during the past week, we expected the Boers to
+celebrate Amajuba Day, and to this end, the garrison was held in a
+condition of complete readiness, so as to be able to at once repel the
+anticipated attack. The anniversary of this disastrous fight passed
+off, however, without incident, and as it happened that runners
+arrived from the North upon the same day, conveying to us the
+unconfirmed intelligence that a force under the ever-victorious
+General French had relieved Kimberley, the wise-acres here, both civil
+and military, were of opinion that the investing force, that has now
+surrounded us for six months, could not stomach such unfortunate
+information, and were as a consequence timorous of any renewed
+aggression. But now again our theories are erroneous, and the siege
+progresses to-day merrily and as pugnaciously as ever. With the
+tidings of Kimberley's good-luck, we looked to see the big Creusot gun
+removed across the border in its return to Pretoria, but alas! it
+still confronts us and still flings its daily complement of shells
+into the town. Indeed, without this piece of ordnance, life would
+become so strikingly original that the townspeople would break down
+under the strain. The uncertainty as to what direction it will take,
+as to the number of tolls which have been rung out from the alarm
+bell, as to whose house has been wrecked, or what family put into
+mourning, has buoyed up the townspeople to a pitch from which, when
+the cause is removed, there will be a pretty general collapse. With
+the advent of the news about the South, the Northern runners confirmed
+the fact of the presence of Colonel Plumer's force being near at hand.
+But this has been the irony of our situation since the siege began.
+There has ever been, it would seem, some worthy general or colonel
+within a little trifle of two hundred miles from us, bringing Mafeking
+relief, or if not for us, for the starving natives. This has always
+been so pleasant to reflect upon, just this little detail of two
+hundred miles. Colonel Plumer, we hear, is laying down "immense"
+stocks of food-supplies at Kanya, so that the natives here, who are
+already so reduced that they are dying from sheer inanition, having
+successfully accomplished the journey, which is one of ninety miles,
+may feed to their hearts' content--provided that they are able to pay
+for the rations which are so generously distributed to them. Whatever
+motives of philanthropy direct the policy of the executive in this
+question of distributing food allowances to natives, it cannot be said
+that the Government or its administrators, err in their administration
+upon the side of liberality. Even here in Mafeking we have set a price
+upon the bowl of soup--horseflesh and mealie-meal mixed--which is
+served out to the natives from the soup-kitchen, finding excuses for
+such parsimony in the contention that, by charging the starving
+natives threepence per bowl of soup, when it is exceedingly doubtful
+if they have that amount of money in their possession, we can
+successfully induce them to remove to Kanya, and there live in a state
+of happy flatulency off the stocks which Colonel Plumer has been
+ordered to prepare against their reception. Of course, at a moment
+like this, it is injudicious to cavil at the procedure of the Imperial
+Government, but there can be no doubt that the drastic principles of
+economy which Colonel Baden-Powell has been practising in these later
+days are opposed to and altogether at variance with the dignity of the
+liberalism which we profess and are at such little pains to execute,
+and which enter so much into the pacific settlement of native
+questions in South Africa. The presence of a large alien native
+population gathered in Mafeking at the present juncture has been our
+own fault, since the authorities, in whom the management and control
+of the natives of this district is invested, advised the military
+authorities here to allow some two thousand native refugees from the
+Transvaal to take up their abode upon the eve of war in the Mafeking
+stadt, and it is through the tax which this surplus population put
+upon the commissariat that this particular question has required such
+delicate adjustment. With supplies which are rapidly diminishing, we
+are compelled to force nightly a moderate number to attempt the
+journey to Kanya, and if they have been signally unsuccessful in their
+essay to pass through the Boer lines, it is in part because the enemy,
+having promised them a free passage, maliciously fires upon them as
+they reach the advanced trenches. For the most part, therefore, we are
+no better off than we were, since those natives who escaped invariably
+return to Mafeking.
+
+With the good news which we have received, a slightly better tone of
+feeling would seem to be about the community. We are simple people for
+the present, living as we do under the rigours of Martial Law, but we
+have such genuine faith in the supremacy of our flag, that now that we
+have heard of the general movement of troops, we are infinitely
+happier and inclined to forget for the moment the trials and
+difficulties of our position. There was a time when the townspeople
+were so disgusted with the conduct of the war, with the disgraceful
+and nefarious practices of the Colonial Government, with the
+abominable lethargy of the Imperial authorities, that five men out of
+every six had resolved to abandon a country where such misrule was
+possible, and to remove to some one other of our colonies, where life,
+upon a broader and happier basis, was the order. But with the
+inauguration of brighter things, such as the relief of Kimberley
+portends, this tone has disappeared, while there seems to be an almost
+unanimous desire to wait the arrival of the next intelligence. It is
+perhaps not altogether incorrect to say that the feeling of disgust,
+by which so many people were at one time swayed, existed chiefly among
+those who were connected to and related with families of Dutch origin,
+and who at some period discarded their Dutch allegiance, casting in
+their lot with the British. These people yet retained a certain
+sympathy with the Transvaal, and were as concerned as any Boer about
+the issues of the campaign. Upon the outbreak of war, many of these
+people took up their residence in border towns, and by these means
+Mafeking received a sprinkling of people who were, by protestation,
+Britishers, and by instinct, Dutch. These men were accepted, since as
+a rule they were known to be genuine in their avowal; but when they
+brought their families into Mafeking, their womenfolk, being wholly
+Dutch, were as a rule regarded in quite a different light. It must be
+remembered that inter-marriage is practised in the Transvaal to an
+extraordinary degree, and that the relationship of any one family with
+others can by this means permeate the entire country to such an extent
+that, while the woman might be the wife of an African Imperialist, she
+might be able to claim kinship with men who held high positions in the
+Republican service. These ladies, therefore, were quite open to the
+suspicion of wishing to convey to their relations in the Transvaal
+authentic information regarding Mafeking. As our condition has been
+precarious, and as important information was surreptitiously carried
+to the enemy, it was perhaps natural that we should take steps to
+confine these ladies within their laager, and to place a guard upon
+it--precautions which were neither valued nor appreciated by them, and
+from which they suffered no hardships other than those which might be
+expected to accrue from the enjoyment of the somewhat restricted
+liberty, with which they, together with the entire garrison, must
+perforce rest content.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+POLITICAL ECONOMY
+
+
+                               MAFEKING, _March 15th, 1900_.
+
+Colonel Baden-Powell has recently issued an order to all ranks in his
+command requesting the names of those who are willing to enlist in the
+special corps which are to be raised for purposes of patrolling the
+country when the war is terminated. If this be a sign of the times, a
+token by which we may read the lines of the policy by which Africa
+will be governed during the next few years, it is satisfactory at
+least to understand that we do not propose to take the risk of
+successful risings in the months to come in different Dutch centres.
+This war has shown us the folly of courting "compromise and Exeter
+Hall" in dealing with dissatisfied areas of the Empire. We have
+policed Burma, we patrol Ireland (but in a different sense), and in
+India we have incorporated and turned into admirable efficiency many
+of the hill tribes, but we cannot translate the native-born Republican
+nor convert the rebel Dutch without the almost certain contingency
+arising of their proving traitorous. There are many who know the Boer,
+and, knowing him and appreciating his strange strategy, his curiously
+warped mind, his natural aptitude for breaking his bond, would not
+trust him in any transaction where integrity of character and probity
+were the essential complement. There has been much opinion among
+colonials that the Imperial Government might, anxious to be as
+conciliatory as possible, enrol the Dutch for constabulary duties,
+giving, indeed, to the younger generation the preference, and thus
+enabling them to possess an employment definite, if not altogether
+lucrative. But in this we should be perpetrating against the loyal
+colonists of Cape Colony a grave injustice, for until the present
+generation of Dutch has passed away, taking with it the memories of
+the war, it will be unsafe, it will be unwise, to employ in any
+administrative capacity whatsoever, those men who, themselves nursing
+a rancour against Great Britain, will omit no opportunity to foster
+the traditional hatred of their forefathers. We have in France, and in
+the French animosity against Germany, a case which is identical,
+proving, as it does, how the prejudices of a people can be nurtured
+and kept evergreen through the sheer force of malignant sentiment; and
+there can be little doubt that time, and time only, is capable of
+removing from the minds of the Republican Dutch that feeling of
+detestation and contempt which has maintained them in their attitude
+of hostility towards us for so many decades. To them, for many years
+to come, the British will be a nation of iconoclasts; we may banish
+them, we may wipe out all traces of their misrule, and so obliterate
+the signs of their existence that historians may find it difficult to
+believe that they once lived. We may do all these things, but it will
+be impossible to govern their instincts by Act of Parliament, to curb
+their impulses by the rulings of the High Commissioner. It would
+therefore be thrice foolish to employ them in their own country and
+among their own people, and such action would imply that we intended
+to ignore uses to which the younger colonists can be so conveniently
+put. In South Africa, as in Australasia and in Canada, there is a
+large army of young men who loaf their hours away in the idleness of
+an agricultural life rather than seek some trade in the offices of the
+big cities. They achieve little that is profitable upon their farms,
+clinging tenaciously to such a livelihood, since it possesses finer
+natural elements in its intimacy with the life of the veldt than any
+form of metropolitan activity could give to them. There are, of
+course, many men who have been driven to the towns through the failure
+of their holdings, but in this present state of war these especially,
+and all those others, have answered eagerly to the call for
+volunteers, and in proving themselves worthy, have rendered excellent
+services to the State. The great majority of these men would willingly
+take service in the forces to which the order of the colonel
+commanding makes reference, and by this we have at hand an army
+extraordinarily adapted to colonial purposes, and needing only to be
+called out. Moreover, at a time when the Empire has seen how its
+various units have hastened to the aid of the Mother-country, would it
+not be well to create in each colony a permanent militia from the men
+who have so unanimously come forward; a force which would be to the
+colonies what the Imperial army is to India, and which would supersede
+the local defence forces in Australasia, approaching in its conception
+a fixed soldiery rather than one to which is given a certain number of
+exercises in the year? There would be no lack of numbers in any of the
+colonies, and in Africa we could make use of the Zulu, the Matabele,
+and the Cape Boys. We have long rested in fancied security, and not
+until China falls a prey to Russia and India passes from us, need we
+fear that Australasia can be taken from us by the combined fleets of
+the Powers of Europe; nevertheless, since we must reorganise our army,
+it would be no mean policy to place, once and for all, upon their true
+foundation the defences of our colonies.
+
+To those who know the life of the mounted police in Burma, of the
+constabulary in the West Indies, and of the police in Canada, the
+duties of the corps that are raised for South Africa will be at once
+comprehended. They would both police and administer the areas of the
+Transvaal and the Orange Free State, and it may be that they will be
+affiliated with the British South Africa Police corps that are already
+enrolled. The life is enjoyable, there is much sport, and for a few
+years to come there is sure to be trouble, at odd intervals, among the
+Dutch. It is, perhaps, doubtful whether the man from home will be
+quite adapted to such work, since, in a very high degree, a knowledge
+of the Dutch language will be indispensable, and much valuable time
+will be lost in acquiring some smattering of this tongue and in
+teaching the recruits to ride, to shoot, and to drill. But life in the
+mounted constabulary has also possessed so great a fascination for the
+average Englishman that, should the Government decide to make eligible
+the men from home, any paucity among the colonial applicants can be at
+once remedied. Care, however, should be taken that the colonial men
+who came forward on behalf of the colony in its hour of peril, should
+be given the first refusal, and a greater financial consideration
+should be meted out than, with the exception of the Canadian police,
+has hitherto been customary. The economy of Africa is high priced, and
+it will be eminently difficult for men to live upon their pay should
+they have to forfeit any large proportion of it for extras, the cost
+of which might well be borne by the Government itself. There has been
+a great outcry about the higher rates of pay which are drawn by the
+colonial corps now serving at the front as compared with the
+wretchedly inadequate wages of the regulars, and it is a great pity
+that we, who can be so foolishly magnanimous, cannot disavow the petty
+economies of the service at a moment like the present. Five shillings
+a day is small enough when men have to provide their entire equipment,
+but to argue that because the War Office is supplying the kit the rate
+should be reduced, since the main source of expenditure be removed, is
+to incline towards a policy of expenditure which is penny wise and
+pound foolish. We read recently, and with infinite zest, that the
+artillery by which Mafeking is defended includes a battery of field
+guns and four heavy pieces. This, of course, is a grotesque
+exaggeration. We have no heavy ordnance, and our field pieces are
+obsolete muzzle-loading monstrosities. Had the War Office paid
+attention to its work, and supplied this advanced outpost of the
+Empire with efficient artillery, instead of rushing up to Mafeking an
+improvised field battery, it would be possible to ignore the attempt
+to curtail the pay of the colonial forces, since, if Africa had been
+prepared for war, it is improbable that Great Britain would have been
+compelled, in order to crush the combined forces of the Republics, to
+summon to her aid men from her colonial dependencies. But we did not
+do this, and if we be now reaping the fruits of an impotent
+administration, we should be sufficiently generous to accept the
+responsibility for the expenditure, and to desist from an endeavour to
+bolster up accounts by imposing upon the colonial contingents the
+effects of an economy which aims at sparing a few thousand pounds by
+saving some portion of their pay. Moreover, if it be true that the
+colonial contingents which have been enrolled since war began, are
+receiving ten shillings a day, why should not that rate be accepted as
+the standard of pay for all colonial forces under arms? In relation to
+Mafeking, where the question of compensation has become acute, such
+addition to the pay of the defenders of the town as would increase
+their rate to ten shillings would be a felicitous manner of
+recognising the gallant work which the garrison has performed, and
+provide at the same time, a practical exposition of official
+appreciation for the units of the defence.
+
+If this be the one question of moment, in reference to the other
+problem--the pastoral and agricultural future of the country--there is
+little doubt that Africa--more especially these western districts,
+where agricultural and pastoral pursuits are widely followed--will
+require the assistance of the capitalist before the mere emigrant from
+England can make much headway. In a sense Mafeking is the central
+market for farm produce for areas which stretch far into the
+Transvaal, and which, lacking the propinquity of a local market, are
+compelled to send their products across the border. Many of these
+districts have proved to possess valuable mining qualities, so that it
+is possible we shall see in a few years the development of towns
+which, owing their existence to the mines, will attract the trade
+which now finds its bent in the Mafeking market. But the hope here is
+of railway communication with Johannesburg and Pretoria, and the
+consequent opening out and settlement of the Bechuanaland
+Protectorate, and it is in this respect the capitalist will be the
+Alpha and Omega of the countryside; for the youngster who goes to
+Australasia with five hundred pounds and leases a property will be
+unable to obtain a hearing up here until the economy of daily life has
+been reduced to a less expensive order. There is a golden future here,
+but much gold will have to be poured into the lap of Mother Nature
+before any very satisfactory results are gained. The cost of transit
+is prohibitive, and there is a scarcity of water, which will make
+wells a necessity. There is much cheap labour, but the present mode of
+existence of the farming class is one which favours a bare
+sufficiency, and for the remainder a state of placid idleness.
+
+The insufficient development of South Africa in respect to its
+agricultural and pastoral resources is largely due to the
+unprogressiveness of the Boer or South African farmer. He personifies
+useless idleness, and contents himself with raising a herd of a few
+hundred head of cattle; he seldom plants a tree; seldom digs a well;
+seldom makes a road; and has an unmitigated contempt for agriculture
+and agriculturists. His ploughs, harrows, and utensils of husbandry
+are clumsy, ill-formed, and, where they exist at all, are hopelessly
+antiquated. He cannot be prevailed upon to make any alteration
+whatsoever in the system of his agriculture. His ancestors were
+farmers, and he himself does not conceive it to be his duty to alter
+methods which were already obsolete when he was a child. The English
+farmer, with good training, active disposition, and accurate
+knowledge of how and where to institute radical reforms, possessing
+capital, might find both home and fortune in these areas. It is a good
+cattle country, and with a careful reorganisation in the management of
+the cattle-farms across the border--a reorganisation which should
+extend throughout all agrestic or nomadic communities in the
+Transvaal--it should receive material assistance from the farms of the
+western border of the Transvaal that are already stocked. The Dutch
+farmer, living the life of the patriarch of old, leaves everything to
+nature, and does not, as a rule, combine the varieties of farming
+which his property would sustain. He remains a stock-breeder, or a
+grower of cereals: the combination of the two is usually too complex.
+It will be therefore a good thing should a different basis of
+management be inculcated, and when this be accomplished, greater
+facilities for stocking their farms will be held out to the intending
+colonists who may favour the country, but for the time the new-comers
+should check their eagerness, since, above all things, capital will be
+necessary to their salvation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+"A HISTORY OF THE BARALONGS"
+
+
+                               MAFEKING, _March 22nd, 1900_.
+
+Beyond a few successful cattle-raiding forays on the part of the
+Baralongs, we have done nothing these past days but maintain
+courageously the glories of our splendid isolation. In a way we have
+been compelled to depend to no small extent upon the prowess of the
+local tribe. The Baralongs have done well by us, and have served us
+faithfully, and with no complaint. They have fought for us; they have
+preyed upon the enemy's cattle, so that the white garrison might have
+something better than horseflesh for their diet; they have manned the
+western defences of the stadt, and they have suffered severe
+privations with extraordinary fortitude. There have been moments in
+the earlier stages of the war when they might well have considered the
+advisability of supporting a power that could not from the outset
+hinder their own arch-enemy, and one against whom they have been
+pre-eminently successful in other years, from invading the territories
+of the Empire. But whatever may have been the workings of the native
+mind, however they may have dallied with the treacherous overtures of
+the Boers, they have individually, and as a tribe, unanimously risen
+to the occasion, and given to the Great White Queen their absolute
+support. In the history of these people there is not much in the
+consideration which we have shown them to justify their allegiance,
+and if we have secured their loyalty at so critical a moment, let us
+hope that it may, in some way, epitomise the actions for the future,
+of the tribes that are allied with them, and, when the moment comes
+for compensation, let us at least remember the debt of honour which we
+owe them.
+
+The Baralongs are, of course, identified with the Bantu peoples of
+Africa, but they come from a stock that is industrial as opposed to
+the military element of this race. The distribution of the military
+and industrial Bantu is significant, but in this latter we will
+consider one of the peaceable tribes. The military Bantu is found in
+possession of the most fertile regions, and it may be well to remember
+that they occupied the Southern extremity of Africa, contemporaneously
+with Europeans. They are now found between the Drakensberg Mountains
+and the Indian Ocean, fruitful areas about the Zoutpansberg and
+Kaffraria. It would seem that they held these grounds by right of
+might, and their district is in somewhat striking contrast to the
+regions in which the industrial Bantu are at home. These latter cling
+to the mountains, as in Basutoland, and are scattered over the high
+plateau which forms so great a part of the Free State and the
+Transvaal, or in the confines of the Kalahari Desert and those deserts
+and karoos which lie to the south of the Orange River. The desert has
+ever been their ultimate retreat, and as their more warlike kinsmen
+seized and held the finer qualities of the country, the arid and, so
+to speak, waste areas of Africa fell to the heritage of the industrial
+Bantu. Descendants from the same family, there is naturally an analogy
+between their tribal organisations which is yet curiously dissimilar.
+They are both armed with the same weapon, but the assegai of the
+military Bantu is short-handled and broad bladed; while the assegai of
+the industrial Bantu is long and sharp, light in the blade, and
+intended mainly for purposes of the chase. Among the former the chief
+is a despot, against whose word there is no appeal; his town is
+designed with a view to defence; the chief's hut and the cattle-pens
+of the tribe are placed in the centre, and around these the remaining
+huts are built in concentric circles. The power of the chief among the
+industrial Bantu is limited; first by the council of lesser chiefs,
+secondly by the general assemblage of the freemen of the tribe. His
+town is intended to serve the requirements of a peaceful people, while
+outside the ground is cultivated in a rough and unscientific manner;
+they are even acquainted with the art of smelting ore and working in
+iron. The pursuit of the military Bantu is directed to the successful
+cultivation of a bare sufficiency of corn and cattle, and he pays
+little attention to anything which is beyond his immediate
+requirements. The Kaffirs, the Zulus, and the Matabele Zulus are among
+the warlike tribes of this dark-skinned race; but the chief seats of
+the industrial tribe are Bechuanaland and Basutoland, and it is with
+the peaceful Bechuanas, with whom are identified the Baralongs, that
+we propose to deal.
+
+Historically, Bechuanaland will remain ever interesting to Englishmen
+as being the scene of the labours of Robert Moffat, David Livingstone,
+and John Mackenzie: three famous missionaries, who in their time did
+so much for the interests of our country in what was then the Dark
+Continent. The immense area lying to the north of Cape Colony
+possessed in itself one great political feature which made its
+possession of paramount importance. It was the natural trade route
+between that colony and Central Africa at a moment when Imperialism
+was a soulless conception, and when our ideas of the Empire in Africa
+shrank at the possibility of northern expansion. During all those
+years possession of Bechuanaland was the golden key to a future which,
+had we but realised it then, would have given us some right to claim
+the distinction of being a race of discoverers. We were, however, very
+diffident about accepting and recognising any greater responsibilities
+in relation to any enlargement of the areas of our African domains,
+and if a vindictive spirit had not encouraged the Boers to plunder and
+destroy the settlement in which missionary Livingstone abode, and thus
+driven him to pastures of a fresh kind, we might never have possessed
+the gate through which the stream of prosperity has flowed, until it
+reached to the limits of Central Africa. If the Boers had resolved to
+oust this intrepid Englishman, they failed lamentably, insomuch as
+they did but drive him to explore the interior, and to open up a
+magnificent reach of country to his fellow Englishmen. Bechuanaland
+lay at his feet when he first started forth, but to-day the point of
+exploration is many hundred miles in advance. Bechuanaland has
+flourished, and would have prospered more, had we but appreciated the
+doctrine of those Victorian statesmen who, recognising the wondrous
+wealth which lay in this new country, but fearing that the moment had
+not come for such gigantic undertakings, were regretfully compelled
+to delegate to posterity the duty of some day acquiring these very
+areas. Great Britain does not go very far back into the history of the
+native tribes of Bechuanaland. We are the later agents of a new
+civilisation, but we have yet to undo many wrongs to the lawful
+possessors of this proud heritage, to adjust many intricate questions,
+and to grapple, without fear and hesitation, with the problems which
+confront us--problems upon which it is surely not too much to say the
+effectual solidarity and stability of this great African Empire
+depends.
+
+Tradition tells us that the Baralong branch of the Bantu came from the
+north under the leadership of Chief Morolong, and that the tribe
+settled, after a protracted exodus from the north, on the Molopo River
+under a chief who was fourth in descent from their first leader,
+Morolong. The combination of the military and industrial Bantu had
+been already broken by the character of the tribe itself. Before they
+had been settled very long, Matabele Zulus under Moselekatse attacked
+Mabua, and there was once again a complete division of tribe. They
+scattered in three directions. Thaba N'chu was selected by the leader
+of that party as their eventual resting-place. Two other sections, led
+by Taoane, the father of Montsioa, and Machabi, found their way into
+the country which lay between the Orange River and the Vaal. There
+they remained, leading a quiet and comparatively harmless existence
+until the Boers, under Hendrik Potgieter, entered into alliance with
+the Baralongs to attack Moselekatse. When the old lion of the north
+had been driven beyond the Limpopo, Taoane returned with his followers
+to the south bank of the Marico. By virtue of this conquest Potgieter
+issued a proclamation, claiming for himself and the Transvaal
+Government the country which had previously been overrun by the Zulu
+chief. Under this proclamation the Boers claimed to exercise sovereign
+powers over the Bechuana tribes, but upon the protest of the British
+Government this was withdrawn, Taoane and Montsioa, who had by this
+time succeeded his father, refusing to recognise the implied
+sovereignty of the Boers. By the intervention of the Imperial
+Government on behalf of the native chiefs of a territory which was
+practically unknown, it became the eventual channel through which we
+pushed a benign salvation, and an indifferent protection upon the
+natives of Bechuanaland until that time when we were enabled to
+assimilate the country. The attempt of the Transvaal Government to
+seize the areas of Bechuanaland was the rift in the silver lining of
+the clouds of Transvaal prosperity. The question became, between the
+two Governments, one of great moment, and its existence, since the
+Republic declined to ratify the award of the Keate Arbitration, was a
+bone of contention which was never altogether buried. The attitude of
+this Republic, the indirect assistance which the Transvaal offered to
+Moshette and Massou for the perpetuation of civil strife among the
+Bechuana chiefs, undoubtedly hastened the annexation by Great Britain
+in 1877 of the Transvaal territory. When this happened, despite the
+fact that the border was immediately delimited, Bechuanaland passed
+through a period of the greatest anarchy. The chiefs were warring
+amongst themselves, and although the two parties claimed the
+protection of either the Transvaal or the Imperial Government, the
+country was not definitely pacified till the despatch of the Warren
+Expedition, an expedient which by its success made Bechuanaland an
+integral portion of our African Empire. Montsioa, the Baralong chief,
+was fighting with his brother Moshette; Mankorane, the Batlapin chief,
+was engaged in struggle with David Massou, who was head of the
+Korannas. Of these four chiefs Montsioa and Mankorane sought the
+protection of the Imperial Government, while Moshette and Massou
+acknowledged the sovereignty of the Transvaal. European volunteers or
+freebooters who would be rewarded for their services by grants of
+land, assisted each of the four chiefs. At this juncture the Imperial
+Government changed its policy of administration in relation to the
+natives of Bechuanaland, and the result was that the High Commissioner
+of the Cape became supreme chief of the natives outside the Republic
+and the territories of foreign powers. In pursuance of the new policy
+Mr. Mackenzie arrived in Bechuanaland as British Resident, for the
+purpose of giving effect to the newly proclaimed Protectorate which
+had been established over the country outside the south-western
+boundary of the Transvaal by the consent of the delegates from the
+Republic, who had visited London to obtain certain modifications of
+the Convention of Pretoria. An extraordinary state of things awaited
+the arrival of Mackenzie, for the volunteers in the service of the
+Bechuana chiefs, Moshette and Massou, had established two independent
+communities, the "republics" of Land Goshen and Stellaland. The
+freebooters of Stellaland offered no resistance to the authority of
+the British Resident, but the burghers of Land Goshen celebrated the
+arrival of the Resident by a series of outrages and the contemptuous
+rejection of the demands made to them by these new officials. With
+the successful resistance of the filibusters from Rooigrond, the
+capital of Land Goshen, President Kruger issued a proclamation in the
+interests of humanity, by which he brought under the protecting wing
+of this South African State, the contending chiefs and their European
+advisers; thus the anomaly existed of a power endeavouring to assert
+its authority over rebels in a country in which we ourselves had
+assumed control. The mediation of the Transvaal Government was brought
+about, partly by the situation of Rooigrond, partly by the
+unjustifiable arrogance and assumption of the Transvaal President. The
+town had been so placed that it lay across the line of the new
+south-western boundary; the divisions lying partly in the Transvaal,
+partly in the Protectorate, and since it had become apparent that the
+Imperial or Colonial Government were unable to remedy the evils which
+arose from the depredations of marauders of Rooigrond, their leaders
+justified their actions by claiming that their town was the property
+of the Transvaal, and that they themselves were acting for that state,
+under the orders of General Joubert, and endeavouring to suppress
+conditions of anarchy in a country which, from the state of its
+existence, would appear to possess no controlling influences. If the
+outcome of this diplomatic feat were the proclamation of the
+Transvaal, it also aroused Great Britain to the true condition of
+affairs. The Transvaal had gone too far, and, in response to hints
+from the Imperial Government as to the feeling of the colony,
+resolutions were passed stating that public opinion in Cape Colony
+considered the intervention of her Majesty's Government for the
+maintenance of the trade route to the interior, and the preservation
+of native tribes to whom promise of Imperial protection had already
+been given, was an act dictated by the claims of humanity and by the
+necessities of policy. It was thus brought home to the Government that
+the Cape Colonists considered that it would be fatal to British
+supremacy in South Africa if we failed to maintain our rights which we
+derived from the Convention of London, and to fulfil our obligations
+towards the native tribes of the new Protectorate. After this
+assurance of moral support the Imperial Government despatched Sir
+Charles Warren, in order that he might remove the filibusters from
+Bechuanaland, pacify the country, and restore the natives their land,
+taking measures, in the meantime, to prevent a recurrence of the
+depredations and atrocities which had been enacted recently there.
+When the forces were finally withdrawn Bechuanaland was created a
+Crown Colony, and at a subsequent date, it was incorporated into the
+Cape Colony. Since this time we have continued to perform the duties
+of a central authority in respect to the native tribes beyond the
+borders of the South African Republic, the expenses of administration
+being paid from the proceeds of the hut tax which is levied upon
+natives, together with the revenue derived from trading licenses, and
+paid for by European traders. In the settlement of Bechuanaland we
+reached a critical point in the history of England's administration in
+South Africa. We have been compelled to accept the responsibilities of
+such a central power as we have become, and we can no longer disregard
+the adjustment of those problems which so burdened that office. Now
+that our Imperial interests are so strong and our holdings in the
+country so great, let us no longer continue to oppose the means which
+will lead to that eventual federation of the Colonies and States of
+South Africa, the union which, once secured, will do so much to
+rectify the mistakes that we have made in our African policy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+'TIS WEARY WAITING
+
+
+                               MAFEKING, _March 31st, 1900_.
+
+We have lived for so many months now under the conditions which govern
+a town during siege that we almost accept existing circumstances as
+normal. We have ceased to wonder at the shortness of our rations,
+content to recognise that we might grumble from sunrise to sunset and
+gain nothing by it. We are no longer surprised at the enemy; they seem
+to take the siege as a joke, but it is a comedy which has a tragic
+lining. We have astounding spirit; there is no question of the gravity
+of our situation; there is no doubt that if we were to relax our
+vigilance for a moment, if we were to withdraw an outpost, diminish
+the establishment of some trench, the Boers would be in upon us before
+the garrison had realised that any such alteration in the defences had
+taken place. Nevertheless, there is really an admirable exhibition of
+almost uncomplaining acquiescence in the hardships which have fallen
+to our daily lot. Here and there there is grumbling, but the man who
+grumbles to-day rejoices to-morrow, since no siege can be endured with
+fortitude and determination if one dwells unduly long upon the
+difficulties and trials which beset us. Lately we had an exhibition,
+and many people in the garrison have consumed the past three weeks in
+a feverish and untiring activity to complete their exhibits. Ladies
+accomplished something rather fine in lacework, the men turned their
+attention to constructing models of the town's defences, and one and
+all entered into this little break in the monotony of the siege with
+the cheering intention of getting as much out of the event as was
+possible. Prizes varying from L5 to a sovereign were offered, and
+indirectly, each endeavoured to foster the spirit of the town. It had
+a beneficial effect, this artificial method of killing time, and it
+realised some L50 for the hospital. There have been other things
+besides the exhibition to stimulate the spirits of the garrison.
+Native runners brought us the news of the fall of Bloemfontein, a
+feature in the campaign which adds fresh laurels to the reputation of
+Lord Roberts. His continued successes have been an _elixir vitae_, and,
+indeed, so freely have we imbibed of this new medicine, that there
+have been many who have found themselves possessed of a fresh
+strength. There is, however, one thing which does not give any
+satisfaction whatsoever to the little band of men who have held this
+outpost of the Empire during so many weary months, and this is
+embodied in the absence of any very definite signs of a speedy relief.
+Lord Roberts has told us to hold out until the middle of May, but it
+is a weary wait, and we could well see the van of the column crossing
+the rise. Within the past few days the town has been swept by rumours
+about the propinquity of the southern column; we have understood
+Colonel Plumer has been within fifty miles of Mafeking for some weeks.
+The rumours anent the southern relief place this column at any point
+within two hundred miles of Mafeking; some days it has reached Taungs,
+upon others it has not left Kimberley, again it is a week's march
+north of Vryburg, and in the meantime we receive telegrams from London
+congratulating us upon our successful and happy release. Where do
+these rumours come from? How comes it that London should be in
+ignorance of our condition?
+
+We, who have followed with so much interest the fortunes of the
+campaign, sharing in the success of others with all sincerity and
+feeling reverses like personal insults, are disinclined to deny the
+existence of a relief column; but perhaps it is not altogether
+understood that, while we have food lasting till the middle of May, it
+is not impossible to feel famished upon our present rations at the end
+of March. Of food in the abstract there is an abundance, but the
+condition and quality of the ration is such that it cannot be reduced
+any further without immediately affecting the health of the garrison
+and proving a very serious obstacle to the successful execution of any
+work which may be detailed to the command. Experiments have been tried
+for the purpose of discovering whether it were possible to exist, and
+to work, upon an allowance of 8 oz. of meat and 4 oz. of bread, and,
+while it was proved that the garrison might exist upon such short
+commons, it would be very injudicious to issue this allowance, since
+it caused a serious deterioration in the stamina of the men; it has,
+therefore, been condemned. The bread is impossible, and, although
+every effort be made to improve it, it still resembles a penwiper more
+than a portion of bread. It is made from the common oats which one
+gives to horses. These oats are crushed, but, sift them as you please,
+treat them by every process which the ingenuity of the entire
+garrison can devise, they positively bristle all over with
+sharp-pointed pieces of the husks. Recently we have been promised Boer
+meal, but it would appear, according to Captain Ryan, that the Boer
+meal is to be held in reserve as long as possible. For the moment we
+rather hanker after that reserve, and we do not take much of the
+composite forage which is served us as bread. However, if we are
+eating the rations of horses, the unfortunate people of Kimberley ate
+the horses, and so, it would seem, our lot might be much worse. Horses
+have not become our daily ration yet, although they form the basis of
+a curious soup which is made and served out to the natives. The smell
+of that soup turns many weary pedestrians from their usual paths,
+although the spectacle of the starving natives swarming round the
+soup-kitchen is one of the sights of the siege.
+
+But, doubtless, those people who send us ridiculous messages of
+congratulation may think that this is, after all, but the mere detail
+of the siege--the side issue which should be expected, and which
+should in any case be endured with a fine toleration. That is all
+right; we do not mind the bread, we do not mind the aroma of the
+soup-kitchen, but we do object to preposterous messages of
+congratulation telling us "the siege is over," at the very moment when
+the enemy is shelling us simultaneously from five different points.
+The other day they endeavoured to concentrate their fire upon the
+centre of the town, and, if they did not do this altogether, they most
+certainly fired into Mafeking a weight of metal that has exceeded
+every other day's. We had from sunrise until dusk 79 Creusot shells,
+100 lb. each; 35 steel-capped, armour-piercing, delay-action,
+high-velocity Krupp, 15 lb. each; 29 9-pounder Krupp; 57 3-pounder
+Maxims; and such a merry flight of 5-pounders that these shells have
+become a drug in the market, and to such an extent that we would very
+gladly exchange between here and London, a few such stormy petrels as
+a polite and cordial memento of the day of our deliverance. It is true
+that in part we are relieved, since we have chosen to take the
+initiative into our own hands and expelled the enemy from a position
+on the south-eastern facing of the town which they have occupied since
+the beginning of hostilities. This has given us immense relief, since
+it has practically placed the town beyond the effective range of the
+Mauser rifle and the Boer sharpshooters.
+
+The trench was exceedingly well made, divided by traverses, protected
+with a rear bank and a strong head cover. It was a mercy that we did
+not attempt to storm it, and its remarkable strength and composite
+construction goes some way to explain the difficulty which we have
+experienced in making much impression, either by shell fire or
+storming party, upon the Boer entrenchments. We did this in a single
+night, having led up to such a climax by devoting our attentions to
+this particular quarter. We bombarded them by day, we sniped them by
+night, and sapped them in the intervals. For a brief moment the enemy
+checked us, but it was only for a moment, and our fire was so warm and
+so persistent that they relinquished their attempt to prevent our
+advance, leaving, however, in their trench at the moment of evacuation
+a little trifle, possibly forgotten in their scramble to the rear, of
+250 lbs. of nitro-glycerine. The mine was at once located, the wires
+were cut, the trench was occupied, and in the morning when day
+dawned, instead of there being the roar of a great explosion, there
+was simply the ruddy blaze of our artillery fire from the gun
+emplacements which they had constructed and which we had converted to
+our own use. But we have taken care of that little mine, and
+possession of the trench leaves us masters of the situation. This,
+however, is the only relief that has come to Mafeking.
+
+The Boer possesses a natural aptitude for digging ditches and throwing
+up earthworks, since his instinct tells him what not to do, much as
+this same intuition teaches him how to secure the natural
+fortifications of a kopje, and has made him, as the war has proved, a
+foeman worthy of our steel. We have despised the Boer; we have
+contumaciously called him a barbarian; but, nevertheless, these nomads
+of the South African veldt have given the mighty majesty of England a
+lesson which will take her many years to forget. Boer tactics are
+unique, but one has to witness them to believe in their feasibility.
+Their horses are so trained that when the reins are thrown over their
+necks they remain immovable. Their fighting is based on this fact,
+combined with the dictates of common-sense and their empirical, yet
+successful manner of encountering us in the Gladstonian War. Each
+commando of one hundred men is their unit; these are concentrated in
+scattered groups in rear of their outpost lines, and upon coming in
+contact with the enemy they endeavour to encircle their adversary,
+cantering in eccentric circles until they are able to dismount in a
+fold of ground near some coign of vantage. They are extraordinarily
+adept at making the best of their cover, and they are most patient,
+waiting hours for a shot, prone upon the ground, under a scorching
+sun. It would seem that they have maintained their time-honoured
+system, applying to the present campaign tactics possessing great
+mobility, rapid powers of concentration on vulnerable points, and as
+rapid retreats therefrom if seriously threatened. This power of rapid
+movement incidental to all being mounted gives them great advantage,
+increasing their powers of offence and defence, and representing the
+crux of their theories of war. The Boer carries on his horse one
+hundred rounds of ammunition, and rations of sun-dried beef sufficient
+for four days. The horses feed upon the veldt. In four days the Boer
+can cover two hundred miles, and it is this ability to move from point
+to point with extraordinary despatch, that makes the Boer force a body
+of mounted infantrymen possessing great strategical value. It has been
+impossible not to admire the tactics which the Boers have pursued in
+investing Mafeking, and where they have detached a force for any
+special purpose the execution of their work has been accomplished with
+laudable celerity. They dismantle and re-set, at an emplacement some
+miles away, their big Creusot gun--a process which seldom occupies
+them longer than between dusk and dawn; sometimes we see them moving
+their guns northwards, and hear from natives that they arrived at a
+point some thirty miles from Mafeking by daybreak. It may be that in
+respect to the mobility of their forces we have much to learn, and let
+us at least profit by the lessons which are thus afforded us.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+TWO HUNDRED DAYS OF SIEGE
+
+
+                               MAFEKING, _April 15th, 1900_.
+
+There is now happily no longer any doubt of the truth of the native
+reports of important successes having befallen our arms in the
+vicinity of Kimberley. We hear with infinite rejoicing that Kimberley
+has pulled through, and is no longer invested by the enemy, and almost
+so soon as these tidings reached us, natives brought in the
+unconfirmed news of the capture of Cronje. This has since been
+officially published, and the garrison here is beginning to feel at
+last that their turn is about to come! We have waited long for this
+moment, passing many black hours in the interval, but even now it
+seems that the power of England may be successfully defied by these
+federated South African Republicans. Yet we hope and, in the changing
+of the fortunes which we anticipate, we express and share in the
+felicitous congratulations which the Empire is offering to Lord
+Roberts. The shrewdness and tactical genius of this gallant veteran
+has been a source from which the entire garrison has drawn an
+inspiring hope which encouraged one and all to resist to the uttermost
+the attacks of the Boers.
+
+We have already been besieged six months, and although the internal
+situation does not appreciably differ from that which existed on the
+first day of the siege, the signs of the times betoken the gravity of
+our condition. During recent days there have been two separate
+indications of the straits to which the siege has reduced us. Colonel
+Plumer endeavoured to pass into Mafeking a mob of cattle; the Almighty
+sent a flight of locusts in such numbers that for many miles the veldt
+was brown beneath the thousands which alighted upon it. Now the locust
+is an article of diet, though it has not yet attained the dignity of
+the position enjoyed by the nimble prawn. At present the locust is
+compared only to a tasteless prawn, but it may be that when the siege
+of Mafeking be raised and the world knows that no small portion of the
+garrison were reduced to locusts without wild honey, this somewhat
+unconvincing appetiser may be relegated to the office of a _hors
+d'oeuvre_. Dame Fashion is responsible for so much that she might well
+introduce to the social world such a toothsome delicacy. To catch your
+locust is almost as difficult as to eat it, but it may be done by
+turning out at night and throwing a blanket over any patch whose
+numbers suggest the possibility of a profitable return. This, of
+course, is not the native mode: the native, being as nimble as the
+locust, goes for them on the rush, and sweeps them into heaps before
+they have quite recovered from the shock of the surprise. By this
+method you certainly secure your locust, by the other you generally
+catch a cold, for the process of catching an individual locust is
+somewhat laborious. However, it may be done, more especially where
+there is the tedium of a siege to while away. Having caught your
+locust, you then immerse him in boiling water, a treatment which at
+once subdues him. You then proceed to sun-dry him and pluck away his
+wings and head. The locust is then ready for the table, when, after
+eating him, you discover that he has all the aroma and subtlety of
+chewed string. For all the world one might as well munch string, but
+since the possibilities of imparting to him an especial flavour be so
+numerous and so eminently calculated to test the qualities of the
+_chef_, he should again be commended to the notice of society in so
+much that it is possible to create an altogether original locust.
+There is, of course, another way of eating locusts, and that is to eat
+them alive. This practice, however, is not held in any very great
+esteem, since the native who cannot afford to wait to cook his locust
+is _declasse_, even if he be starving. Personally, I rather like
+locusts if they be fried, more especially if they be curried, for just
+now the great thing is to eat, and, having digested what has been laid
+before you, discreetly to ignore any question which might verify the
+truth of your suspicions: therefore in eating curried locusts, you
+thank Heaven for the curry, and pass on quickly to the next course. To
+eat just now upon this basis is to enjoy consolation, which, in
+relation to our food, is our sole form of enjoyment, since when you
+know that you are eating horse and you imagine that you are eating
+beef, your imagination is necessarily so strong and so triumphant that
+the toughness of the horse becomes the tenderness of beef. Moreover,
+everything is only a question of comparison, and as a consequence the
+toughness of horse-beef and the tenderness of ox-beef necessitates
+merely an exchange of terms which imply similar standards of
+perfection.
+
+The pleasures of the table, however, are as nothing compared to the
+delights of the bombardment by which the Boers assail the town almost
+daily. We have had more time these days to recognise the precise value
+of the enemy's shell fire and its wide area of demolition--more time
+because the Boers have withdrawn "Big Ben," and we no longer fear to
+walk freely in the streets, nor are we kept constantly upon the alert
+listening to the clanging of the alarm. The guns remaining do not
+appear to be able to reach the town from their distant emplacements.
+They are an array of minor ordnance, uninteresting to us, since their
+attentions would seem to be directed upon the outposts and the
+outlying forts. "Big Ben," however, was no respecter of places, but
+gaily hurled defiance at us from a variety of points, maintaining with
+wonderful regularity an almost daily bombardment.
+
+We who are anxious for his welfare, now spend many dreary hours upon
+the housetops, for, if we show appreciation of his presence by taking
+refuge in the cellars, we ascend to the highest points of our houses
+in order to make sure that he is gone. The sense of gratitude which
+inspires us to do these things is unrestricted, and were it not that
+there were smaller guns around us, we might have waved a parting
+salutation from a more adjacent point; but under the circumstances we
+are content, and although we feel sorry that he has left us, we shall
+more infinitely deplore his presence when he returns. It is almost
+pleasant in Mafeking just now, and if it were not for the scarcity of
+food, the coldness of the weather, the never-ending rains, the fever
+which exists (and of which we are all frightened), the entire absence
+of wood with which to make fires, and the appalling monotony of the
+days, the dreariness of the situation and the dulness of the people,
+we might be happy, possibly inclined to exchange our lot for that of
+anyone else who was not in Mafeking; but as it is, we are really
+rather anxious to get out and to see the siege raised. Our nerves are
+altogether raw, our tempers soured, our digestions failing. We were
+young men six months ago, impressed with the importance of our
+situation, invigorated with a determination to stick it out; but we
+have aged considerably since then, and we would willingly send the
+siege to the devil if we, by way of exchange, were permitted to
+indulge in the comparative comfort of another form of purgatory. It
+has become quite the accepted fashion to draw a simile between
+Mafeking and hell, and to give the early Christian fathers full credit
+for their powers; they were nevertheless quite incapable of imagining
+a punishment so deliberate as the mental and physical torture of a
+siege. To use a colonial colloquialism, "we went in blind," but one
+experience is sufficient to guarantee that every member of the
+garrison just now would put a thousand miles between him and the next
+beleaguered town. In the situation itself there is nothing to write
+about, it so constantly repeats itself until the absolute monotony of
+the days settles down upon the nerves, depressing one's spirit like a
+wet blanket. The Boers still fire at us, and we still sit tight,
+nursing our hopes by a sublime confidence in the relief column. If we
+be sceptical at times, we endeavour not to take our scepticism too
+seriously, and we talk airily about the date by which the van will
+have arrived here. But in reality there are but few people who believe
+in the practical existence of any relief column.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+THE EPICUREAN'S DELIGHT
+
+
+                               MAFEKING, _April 30th, 1900_.
+
+We have duly celebrated the two hundredth day of the siege, and if one
+examines closely into the condition of a town which has withstood the
+attacks of the enemy during two hundred days, it is to find a spirit
+that is strong and self-reliant among the garrison and to realise the
+sadness of the picture which presents the aspect of a town slowly
+passing into ruin. The ravages of the siege have in no way been so
+prominent as has been the case during the last few weeks. Mafeking of
+yore was somewhat stately, although it was merely a colonial
+up-country centre, possessing nothing which was grandiose or even
+elegant. But its calm and unruffled dignity sprang from clusters of
+stately trees around which it had sprung up, and from which in these
+days of tempest and adversity it snatches something of their
+independence, something of their indifference to the press of battle.
+But now it is almost a treeless town, and it is difficult to go
+anywhere without meeting the signs by which one may read the stress
+and privation which a siege imposes upon a beleaguered village.
+Mafeking was never a tiny town; it rambles too far over the veldt to
+be considered even compact, but these natural features are now greatly
+aggravated by the ruin which has fallen upon the outlying areas of the
+town, causing even the most central streets to be disorderly in
+appearance. From a very early date in the siege we have been
+accustomed to the spectacle of ungainly structures stretching across
+those thoroughfares which were exposed to the enemy's fire. These
+traverses were among the earliest preparations of the war, but now, in
+addition to these, at frequent intervals in the streets one comes
+across shelter-pits which have been excavated in the various
+thoroughfares. These protections against the enemy's shell and rifle
+fire were not perhaps any lasting imposition upon the elegance of the
+place, but as the siege developed its effects became more formidable
+and were more calculated to leave traces of a permanent character.
+To-day, perhaps, we are achieving to the end of this enforced
+vandalism, since we have already utilised the garden fences and
+demolished for the value of the wood which they may contain any houses
+which may have been damaged by shell fire. Indeed, just now, we are
+buying up the deserted huts of Kaffirs who have either been killed or
+who have made their way with safety through the lines. These huts
+comprise no small quantity of wood, so we are pulling them to pieces
+on account of the props which support the reed roofing. But before we
+ventured into the stadt for our wood, the trees in town were trimmed
+of their branches, or, as in many cases, chopped down altogether, and
+as a consequence the outward and visible sign of the results of the
+siege is an infinite sense of desolation. There is now no longer the
+gentle rustle of the trees as the night winds sigh through them; no
+longer do the birds scramble amid the branches, screaming merrily.
+There is no bird life now, for we have been unable to consider
+sentiment in the ordering of our daily life. The best timber in the
+town enjoys no greater immunity, since young and old trees each serve
+their purpose. Where there was once order, there is now confusion.
+Streets blockaded at one end are also furrowed by the many shells
+which have come into the town; the walls of the houses have been
+riddled with bullets, or wide, ragged holes gape where the projectiles
+of "Big Ben" pounded their way through. Telegraph poles and lamp posts
+are bent and twisted, some lying completely broken upon the roadside.
+The roads and paths are covered with weeds, and everywhere the neglect
+of the seven months' siege is in evidence. It is a depressing
+spectacle, and it is well just now to close one's eyes to
+everything--to the famine which is stalking in our midst, to the fever
+which is raging round the outposts, to the ill-conditioned horses and
+cattle, to the weary, patient women, to the children who,
+unfortunately fortunate, have survived so much distress, and yet if
+one looks a little forward it is difficult to see that the remedy will
+be forthcoming. It has required the labour of years to rear the trees,
+and in many cases the houses that were wrecked and upon whose sites
+lie piles of rubble, represented the successful conception of a life's
+handiwork which, destroyed in the passing of a moment, can never be
+altogether replaced. There are many men and some few women who have
+lost everything they possessed, and even if they receive an adequate
+compensation will still feel the absence, in their new abodes, of
+those subtle sentiments which made the fruition of their efforts so
+dear and treasured to them. It is impossible not to feel this when
+one perambulates through the town; every spot recalls something to the
+mind of some one, an indelible association, emanating from the siege
+and which time cannot obliterate. Men remember where they stood when
+some particular house was shattered, others recall their proximity to
+a bursting shell, whose explosion tore up the roadway. It is these
+things which will never be effaced, since they are the impressions
+which have struck deep down upon the mind, leaving an afterglow. But
+as a rule we keep our cares, feeling that so many people have so much
+else to worry them, recognising also that upon one and each of us the
+siege hangs sorely. There can be no doubt that it has left its mark,
+not only upon the town, but upon the garrison. The men are just a
+little gaunt, just a little unkempt; the women are haggard and
+careworn, for it is difficult to keep up one's spirit when from day to
+day there comes no news, only that curious, ironical instinct, that
+perhaps it may be that we are not to be relieved at all. The garrison
+is famished, that is, in reality, the kernel of our situation. Our
+energies are exhausted because our vital processes are insufficiently
+nurtured. We are all listless; we all feel that the siege has been a
+strain of the most severe description, and we are holding ourselves in
+for the final rally, anxious to support the position, determined to
+hold the town and occupy till the end our posts. Yet there is a false
+note through it all, and in those moments when one finds oneself alone
+one realises how artificial is the gaiety which we profess, feeling,
+by intuition, that one's own emotions are alike those of one's
+neighbour. However, each one of us endeavours to make an effort to
+maintain in public some appearance of interest in the daily conditions
+of the siege. It is a difficult part to play, because, as I have
+said, there is so much that is unsatisfactory in our position. The
+signs of the times are read by little things, and if one goes for a
+walk round the outposts it is as well not to mention in the town the
+presence of the fever flags which float over certain areas near which
+it is not permitted to go. There are three such places; one is remote
+from our lines, well out into the veldt, where, isolated and apart,
+living in a world of their own making for the time being, is a family
+fighting against the ravages of diphtheria; between them and the stadt
+there is the smallpox reserve, where the yellow jack droops from the
+trees beneath whose shade the tents of the patients have been pitched.
+Still nearer into town at the hospital the flag of mercy protects a
+building in which there is much malaria, some typhoid, and a few cases
+of enteric fever. This is the gamut of our sickness, and it is in
+these quarters that we, who are hale and hearty, look with anxious
+eyes. There are many there who will pay their lives as tributes to the
+siege, for, as in Ladysmith, so are we reduced to horseflesh, being
+fortunate enough to possess, however, a small store of medical
+comforts. The sick cannot be given very much, but we are very
+solicitous for their welfare, and only lately the garrison as a body,
+surrendered the ration of sugar to the needs of those who were ailing.
+Our rations are sadly diminished; three-quarters of a pound of minced
+horse-meat occasionally interchanged with mule and donkey flesh; four
+ounces of horse forage, a microscopical quantity of tea and coffee,
+pepper and salt, comprises the daily issue. Few of us have extras, but
+there are many who indulge in experiments with certain toilet adjuncts
+of an edible nature. Scented oatmeal, violet powder, poudre de ris,
+and starch, have all been tested, and it would seem that starch is
+the more adaptable. Recently I was allowed to taste a starch
+blancmange, with glycerine syrup; it was excellent, and infinitely
+better than scented oatmeal porridge. We also fry our meat in
+cocoa-nut oil, in dubbin, and in salad oil--if we can "find" any.
+Indeed, there is quite a boom in grease-stuffs for culinary purposes.
+Aside from starch, violet face powder gives very fair results, but
+when used as an ingredient for brawn, it is a hopeless failure. It
+will be seen, therefore, that we are somewhat puzzled to know how to
+satisfy our appetites, and we attempt infinite devices in order to
+supplement our daily food supply; occasionally we shoot small birds
+and less frequently we catch fish, but the size of both birds and fish
+is such that a day's bag is seldom sufficient for a meal. If the
+Europeans be exerting themselves to discover new processes by which to
+cook inedible compounds, the natives also are at their wits' end, and
+have resource to a variety of dishes which under more favourable
+circumstances they would not touch. Pet dogs that are sleek, family
+cats that are fat, are stolen nightly from the hotels and empty
+houses, but they are invariably traced to native marauders, who,
+inspired by hunger, prowl around by night seeking what they may
+devour. These details give a somewhat gloomy aspect to our situation,
+and if the truth be told our plight is quite sufficiently serious, but
+it must not be imagined that by reason of these things we are
+faint-hearted; we are not so. If we can pull through, and we are
+proposing to make every effort, we shall be content, and we are
+content, even at the present crisis, to think that it is not
+altogether impossible that very earnest efforts are being made to
+expedite our relief, and so alleviate our distress. Our
+constitutions, perhaps, are somewhat impaired by the scarcity of food,
+by dysentery and by fever, but we are well enough if the pinch should
+come and the Boers again make a serious attack upon the town. We will
+beat them off; possibly we may laugh at their efforts. It is only at
+odd moments that we become depressed, when the intelligence does not
+seem satisfactory, when our personal worries press too closely upon
+us. In those moments we may perhaps take an unduly gloomy view of the
+situation, but it is not so quick set that it cannot be dissipated by
+the receipt of some good news, by a cablegram from the Queen, or a
+message from Lord Roberts. It is these things after which we hanker,
+and it is these things by which we keep up our hearts. That there
+should be any possibility of a weak spirit manifesting itself at this
+late hour need not be considered seriously for a moment, since above
+all else, the garrison and townspeople of Mafeking have devoted
+themselves to the work of holding this important outpost to the Empire
+until such moment as the relief may come. In the beginning we
+withstood six thousand men, just now there are not two thousand men
+around us, and if they have more guns now than they had, we have also
+strengthened our weak places and thrown out a chain of outposts
+through which it should be impossible for an enemy to penetrate. Thus
+we have made ourselves secure against everything but the menace of
+starvation, and if there be anxiety upon our behalf in the centres of
+the civilised world, the message which we send touches not upon the
+question of relief, but asks that it should be remembered that, even
+if our spirits endure, our foodstuffs will not last for ever. That is
+the gist of our prayer, and we trust that it may receive some hearing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+THE LAST FIGHT
+
+
+                                 MAFEKING, _May 13th, 1900_.
+
+From time to time intelligence has reached us from native sources that
+the Boers were still anxious to make a final attempt to capture the
+town. We have had this story repeated to us so frequently that there
+were many in our midst who had altogether ceased to pay any attention
+to it; but that there was some sincerity in the desire to attack us
+has now been proved to be true, and it would seem that the obstacle
+which existed, and which prevented an earlier realisation of the
+enemy's plans, was the absence of any leader sufficiently capable and
+enterprising to attempt the execution of so hazardous a venture.
+However, when General Cronje delegated full command to General Snyman,
+President Kruger sent from Pretoria his youthful but gallant nephew,
+Commandant Eloff, who had not only frequently expressed his desire to
+capture the town, but brought with him from Pretoria men whose special
+knowledge of our fortifications had been gained when serving as
+troopers in the Protectorate Regiment. It was these men who were
+destined to conceive and carry to a successful conclusion the work of
+projecting a body of the Boers within our interior lines. Weeks have
+elapsed since Commandant Eloff arrived from Pretoria, but he has bided
+his time, studying carefully our system of defence, our outlying
+earthworks, and collecting all scraps of information which would
+convey to him a more intimate knowledge of our position. For a time
+his plans matured, but, as he conned them well over, he began to make
+his preparations, recognising that, if he allowed many more days to
+pass, the relief column from the south would be an additional and
+important factor in his scheme of operations. Upon May 10th the relief
+column had reached Vryburg, and Vryburg is only ninety-six miles from
+Mafeking. Upon May 12th this southern column had advanced to
+Setlagoli, a point only forty-five miles distant from the town, and
+the receipt of this intelligence, which was brought to Commandant
+Eloff by his scouts, revealed to him the urgency and absolute
+necessity of carrying out his attack upon the town. It was a
+well-considered scheme, whose eventual success was only nullified by
+the lack of cohesion and estranged relations which existed between
+General Snyman and Commandant Eloff. It was a glorious day for
+Mafeking; it was a day of honourable misfortune for the Boers.
+Mafeking fell heavily upon Eloff, recapturing the fort which the Boers
+had surprised and taken in the early morning, and thereby effecting
+the release of the thirty-two prisoners whom the Boers had caught, and
+causing known casualties among the Boers of killed, wounded, and taken
+prisoners, 139.
+
+[Illustration: Killing Horses for the Natives and Entire Garrison.]
+
+Commandant Eloff had designed to pierce our western lines under cover
+of a well-organised feint upon the eastern front of the town. Upon the
+morning of May 12th and a little before 4 a.m., the bells sounded a
+general alarm and the bugles summoned a general assembly of available
+arms to all posts. As in the early days of the siege, I ran from my
+hotel to Musson's Fort, where, upon similar occasions, I have served
+as a volunteer. There was no sign of disturbance in the west, but very
+heavy firing was breaking over the town from the main position of the
+enemy in the east. Gradually this fire was extended until the flanking
+positions of the Boers north-east and south-east were also engaged. As
+we stood to our arms in the fort, it seemed that they were directing
+an attack upon the brickfields, when, just as it appeared to be the
+usual innocuous fusilade, streaks of fire were seen leaping to the sky
+towards the west; there was a lurid glow across the native stadt and
+dense clouds of smoke were drifting and piling heavily towards the
+north. There was instant commotion in the fort, everybody exclaiming
+at once that the stadt was ablaze. At that moment we did not realise
+that the conflagration which we saw was the deliberate work of the
+enemy, although there were many who, catching sight of the blaze,
+concluded that the attack upon our eastern front was the blind to a
+movement of much greater importance upon the west. Thoroughly aroused
+and anxious to learn the reasons of the fire, I returned to the hotel.
+By this time rifle fire had slackened upon the east of the town, but
+bullets were coming over from the west, the town being under this
+cross-fire. There were few people about the town, and, save for an
+occasional group of frightened women, one saw no one. My horse was
+already saddled, and, riding to the front of the town, I at once
+recognised that the Boers were in the stadt. Huts were burning in all
+directions, the separate fires blending into a sheet of flame; dense
+smoke overhung everything. There was the crackle of the burning
+huts, and showers of golden sparks tossed themselves into the air. It
+was still dark and the hour was about five; a lemon-coloured dawn,
+sheathed in the golden glory of the fire and obscured by the
+grey-black waves of smoke, was slowly breaking, following closely upon
+the heels of a flame-coloured night. It was the hour when confusion
+reigns supreme, when it is impossible to tell tree from man, an
+outcrop of stone from a recumbent beast. It was the very hour in which
+to attack, but the Boers secured an additional advantage from the
+dense and heavy smoke which filled the atmosphere, making the gloom
+more impenetrable than ever and screening effectually the rapidity of
+their progress. Heavy firing was proceeding from the direction of the
+stadt, and there was a confused babel of voices. Natives were running
+in all directions, and against the flames groups of figures were
+noticeable in silhouette.
+
+There seemed little doubt that the situation at this moment was grave
+in the extreme. The Boers in the stadt, dividing rapidly, had advanced
+upon the British South Africa Police Fort, in which from the beginning
+of the siege the regimental headquarters of the Protectorate Regiment
+have been installed. At this moment Colonel Hore and the officers and
+men attached to the regimental headquarters staff, including four
+belonging to the British South Africa Police, numbered some
+twenty-three. Preparing to resist the invasion, Colonel Hore had
+already manned the earthwork, which from the days of the Warren
+expedition has been designated as a fort. The distance between the
+stadt and the fort is about four hundred yards, and around the
+regimental headquarters lie scattered numerous outbuildings. It is an
+impossible place to hold with a small number of men, while the
+outbuildings are so situated as to afford very excellent cover to any
+troops which may be advancing with the intention of surrounding the
+main buildings; and it was this manoeuvre which Commandant Eloff was
+endeavouring to carry to a successful issue. Scattering quickly, and
+under the cover of the different houses, he advanced within a very
+short distance of the fort. In the dim light, obscured by smoke, and
+in part concealed by the native refugees, it was impossible to tell
+whether these men were the van of a Boer force or our own outposts in
+process of retirement upon Colonel Hore. Under the guidance of Trooper
+Hayes, a deserter from the Protectorate Regiment, seven hundred Boers
+had rushed the interior lines of the outposts, making their way along
+the bed of the Molopo and through Hidden Hollow into the stadt. The
+movement had been noticed by the outposts, who, unable to do anything
+against such overwhelming odds, had given the alarm and fallen back
+upon either flank, delivering a flanking fire when the Boers were
+discovered. Arriving in the stadt, Commandant Eloff had ignited the
+huts in various directions, in this manner giving to the main body of
+the Boers their signal to advance. Before the rush of Commandant
+Eloff's men the Baralongs separated, reforming behind the enemy, in
+order to co-operate with our advanced outposts in repelling the
+progress of the main body. From the moment that this was accomplished
+the Boers outside our lines and those who were within the stadt were
+cut off from one another; but, leaving half his force in the stadt,
+Commandant Eloff, with whom were Captain Von Weiss and Captain de
+Fremont, prepared to assault the fort, and, advancing rapidly upon it,
+had surrounded it with but little difficulty. When the little band of
+men saw the Boers emerging from stadt, fire was at once opened upon
+them, but, as they claimed to be friends, and as it was understood
+that they were our own outposts, the fire from the fort ceased until
+the enemy were within sixty yards of its front face, being at the same
+time, unknown to the inmates of the fort, in occupation of the
+buildings upon either flank and in the rear.
+
+This, then, was the situation which had come to pass within three
+hundred yards of the railway and about seven hundred yards from the
+town. In the town itself the Town Guard, the Bechuanaland Rifles, and
+the entire strength of the Railway Division had been ordered at once
+to man the railway line. The men from the Hospital Redan and the
+establishment from Early's Corner Fort were detailed to the line in
+addition to the Bechuanaland Volunteers, while the Railway Division,
+screening their movements behind the corrugated iron fencing which
+encloses the railway yards, and perforating rifle holes in the
+sheeting of the fence, were given charge of the railway yards.
+Lieutenant Feltham and his troop of C Squadron supported Major Panzera
+and the artillery at the railway bridge, while, under orders from
+Colonel Baden-Powell, Lieutenant Montcrieff advanced a section of the
+Town Guard to occupy a house a little removed from the new line of
+defences which had been already taken up. The town itself, agog with
+excitement, had been reinforced by the Cape Police from the
+brickfields and the British South Africa Police from the kopje, and
+with these forces opposing them, the Boers at the fort found their
+further advance cut off, while, unless General Snyman forced the
+passage of the outposts and brought up his artillery, the entire body
+would be hemmed in.
+
+In the meantime Commandant Eloff demanded the unconditional surrender
+of the twenty-three men who were established at the fort, an order
+which, had Colonel Hore refused, implied that every man with him would
+be shot. Then, in that moment, it was known that the cheering which
+had been heard in Hidden Hollow a few moments before was the
+triumphant chortle of the Boers as they stepped within the inmost
+lines of our defences. Around the fort there was silence--there was a
+terrible silence; there was a man who was weighing in his hand and in
+his heart the lives of twenty-two others, who was considering in a
+fleeting moment of time the flight of an honourable career which had
+brought to him a string of six medals, and who saw in one of two steps
+instant death for his little band and irrevocable and almost
+irretrievable ruin in the other. The pause was indeed death-like;
+there was the hallowed uncertainty of a future existence, but there
+was the moral certainty that no living future would fall to the lot of
+any of the twenty-three men upon whose ears the cry had fallen of
+surrender. The position was hopeless. With the Boers behind them, with
+the Boers flanking them, with the Boers in front of them, with three
+hundred of the enemy within a circumference of seventy yards, what
+more could an honourable man and a gallant officer do than accept the
+responsibility of his situation and save the lives of his men by
+complying unconditionally with the demand of the enemy? Thus did
+Colonel Hore surrender. It was impossible to withdraw to the town.
+Such a movement would have meant retirement over seven hundred yards
+of open, level ground without a particle of cover and with a force of
+three hundred of the enemy immediately in the rear; moreover the
+situation imperatively demanded this action in consequence of events
+over which he had no control. It was, perhaps, a moment as pathetic
+and great as any in his career. The surrender was effected at 5.25
+a.m., and was not without incident, for with the garrison holding up
+their hands, their arms laid down, with five Boers within a few yards
+of the Colonel with their rifles at his breast, there was one man who
+went to his death. "I'll see you damned, you God forgotten----" said
+Trooper Maltuschek, and he went to his Maker the next moment. The news
+of such a catastrophe did not tend to relieve the gravity of the
+situation. With the Boers in the fort and in occupation of the stadt,
+it was necessary so to arrange our operations that any junction
+between the stadt and the fort would be impossible; at the same time
+we were compelled to prevent those Boers who were in the stadt from
+cutting their way through to the main body of the enemy. The situation
+was indeed complex, and throughout the remainder of the day the
+skirmishing in the stadt and the repulse of the feints of the enemy's
+main body, delivered in different directions against the outposts,
+were altogether apart from the siege, which we were conducting within
+our own investment. From the town very heavy rifle fire was directed
+upon the fort, which the Boers in that quarter returned with spirit
+and determination. But the position in the stadt had become acute,
+since, behind our outposts and our inner chain of forts, which are
+situated upon its exterior border, were a rollicking, roving band of
+four hundred Boers, who, for the time being, were indulging in pillage
+and destruction wherever it was possible.
+
+[Illustration: The British South Africa Police Fort, Colonel Hore's
+Headquarters.
+
+_The Bomb-proof shelter in the foreground was the Colonel's refuge
+during the enemy's shell fire._]
+
+Gradually, however, the situation changed. The rifle fire from the
+town had forced the Boers back from the limits of the stadt adjacent
+to the fort, enabling Inspector Murray and a troop of the Cape Police
+and Lieutenant Feltham with his troop of C Squadron to fight their way
+to this same border, affording to the town a definite and established
+barrier against any possible communication between the enemy in the
+fort and the Boers in the stadt. Skirmishing thenceforward progressed
+over the entire area of the stadt. Major Godley, with Captain Marsh
+and Captain Fitzclarence, and B and D Squadrons, effectively supported
+by the Baralongs, chevied and rounded up the Boers from point to
+point, until, shortly after noon, they took up a strong position in a
+mule kraal and upon the facings of some neighbouring kopjes. To
+dislodge these men was the work to which Major Godley now directed his
+attention, and, manoeuvring carefully and with discretion, he
+surrounded the position upon three sides and emplaced a seven-pounder
+under Lieutenant Daniel, of the British South Africa Police, within
+two hundred yards of the kopje. The enemy were now compelled to fight
+or to surrender, and, refusing the request to surrender, they fought
+pluckily, and with such stubbornness that they kept Major Godley's men
+some time at bay. But, gradually drawing his circle closer, he poured
+in a few terrific volleys and charged the position at the point of the
+bayonet. There was a rapid volley from the Boers, but it was of no
+avail, and, as the glistening steel was poised for a moment over the
+walls of the kraal, a flutter of white from the interior betokened
+that at least this body of the enemy had surrendered. Major Godley
+then proceeded to shell the kopjes, but the Boers at this point were
+not proposing to increase by their numbers those of the twenty-five
+who had laid down their arms in the mule kraal. They scattered and
+broke into the stadt, fighting from hut to hut, from rock to rock,
+from snug hollows to the broken points of the many rugged mounds which
+characterise the configuration of the stadt. These skirmishes
+continued, and Major Godley contrived to drive the scattered Boers in
+the direction of Captain Lord Charles Bentinck, who, so conducting his
+operations, managed to hem the enemy in between the fire of Major
+Godley and that of his own men. It would have been impossible for the
+Boers to escape; but dusk was falling, our men were weak and hungry,
+and we already had a number of prisoners, and, after a sharp rally
+between the three squadrons, Major Godley instructed Captain Lord
+Charles Bentinck to withdraw C Squadron and assist in driving out the
+enemy.
+
+These, then, were the events which were occurring in the stadt, and,
+if Major Godley had been successful in circumventing the Boer plan and
+checking any very definite occupation of the stadt, the outposts had
+also successfully repulsed the indifferent and weak-hearted attempts
+which General Synman had made to assist his colleague. There had been
+a definite plan of attack, and, although a portion of it was
+successful, its main features had failed because their execution had
+been left to a man who, faint-hearted and cowardly, was altogether
+unworthy of the command with which he had been entrusted. Upon General
+Synman must fall the responsibility of Commandant Eloff's capture,
+inasmuch as he failed to support his share of the operations. The Boer
+movement upon the town was carried out with remarkable precision and
+extraordinary dash, but, despite their splendid gallantry and
+enterprise in penetrating so far within our lines, the fatality which
+would seem to attend their attacks upon Mafeking rendered their
+present efforts again unprofitable, causing their assault to recoil
+upon their own heads. It had been the intention of the Boers to make
+the fort the key of a position from which they were proposing to shell
+the town with the guns which would have been brought up by the main
+body. But General Snyman did not fulfil his obligations to Commandant
+Eloff, and, as a consequence, when the siege of the fort had been
+effected the little which they could accomplish had been concluded,
+and they found themselves compelled to defend their newly-won position
+from the galling fire and spirited attacks of the townsmen. Their
+position, only seven hundred yards from the town, would have proved
+untenable much earlier in the day, had not the Boers secured the
+officers and staff of the regimental headquarters as their prisoners.
+We should have shelled them and in all probability caused tremendous
+carnage; as it was, however, killed and wounded upon either side were
+not numerous, although there is some ground to believe that the Boers
+were successful in carrying off a large proportion of their wounded.
+Upon the following morning, when the returns for the previous day were
+made up, it was found that 110 had been taken prisoners, ten had been
+killed, and nineteen had been wounded. Our own casualties were four
+killed and seven wounded, while there were five natives who had
+received slight wounds. These are the figures, correct, so far as we
+can ascertain, of this very remarkable day--a day which is almost
+without parallel in the history of war, inasmuch as the garrison, who
+in themselves had sustained a seven months' siege, were yet able once
+more to turn the tables upon their enemy, who, although penetrating
+into the heart of the invested town, failed to carry the position.
+
+During the morning of the fight, after accompanying Lieutenant
+Montcrieff to Major Hepworth's house, where he was engaged in
+installing a section of the Town Guard, I thought that I would attach
+myself to Colonel Hore, since his headquarters appeared to be a
+central position in the engagement. It was only a short ride--a few
+hundred yards. The bullets whistled over from the stadt, and I
+scampered rapidly across in order to gain what I thought was
+protection from this fire. The light was not clear, and the smoke was
+still drifting across the line of vision. Men were standing about the
+regimental headquarters, some were scurrying, many were sitting upon
+the stoep facing the town. It did not seem to me possible that these
+could be Boers; but, as I galloped on, my horse was struck, and,
+swerving violently, I found myself pulled up short by a peremptory
+demand to surrender. They were Boers, or rather they were the enemy,
+for there were Germans, Italians, and Frenchmen, and a few
+Republicans.
+
+They ordered me to hold my hands up, they ordered me to give up my
+revolver and to get off my horse; they asked me a dozen questions at
+the same time, speaking in Dutch, French, and English. As I sat upon
+my horse we conducted quite an animated conversation, but the bullets
+were coming from our men in town rather rapidly, and it seemed to
+strike the Boers that they had best take cover, advice which I pressed
+home upon them with much irony. In the meantime I had not dismounted,
+nor had I given up my revolver, nor were my arms thrust upwards in the
+air. "Will you hold your damned hands up?" said one, playfully
+thrusting a rifle into my ribs. "With pleasure, under the
+circumstances," I replied with alacrity. "Will you hand over that
+revolver?" said another. "What, and hold my hands up at the same
+time?" asked I, quibbling to gain a little time in which to think.
+"Get off your horse," said another, when, as they unstrapped my belt,
+I rolled to the ground. It was only then that I knew my horse had been
+shot in the shoulder, and as they dragged me to the shelter of the
+building, I asked them to shoot him. They refused. "Your men will do
+that soon enough," said they, and it seemed to me that this was the
+unkindest cut of all. The poor animal stood there looking at me. When
+I saw him again his throat had been cut, and there were seven bullet
+wounds in his body.
+
+The fort had surrendered. Colonel Hore, Captain H. C. Singleton,
+Veterinary-Lieutenant Dunlop-Smith, with fifteen non-commissioned
+officers and men of the Protectorate Regiment, Captain Williams and
+three men of the British South Africa Police, and five native servants
+were prisoners in the hands of the enemy. Around them were numbers of
+the enemy talking rapidly in French, German, Italian, and Dutch, while
+there were also many who spoke English. They were all well armed,
+carrying some 250 rounds of ammunition with eight days' rations in
+their haversacks. Some were eating breakfast, many were drinking from
+bottles which they had looted from the regimental mess; occasionally
+the group around us was swelled by the numbers of those who, hitherto
+engaged in looting the quarters of the officers, were now mostly
+anxious to preserve their skins from the fire from the town and to
+enjoy an inspection of their plunder. In the short time which the
+enemy had been in possession of the fort many of them had ransacked
+the premises, breaking open boxes, cutting open bags, and generally
+appropriating all the effects which they found. It seemed to me at
+this moment that the men engaged in this work were Boers, as distinct
+from the foreign element in their force, and I thought that I caught a
+current of conversation which was passing in French between two of our
+captors, and which denounced the unnecessary and almost wanton
+destruction which was in progress.
+
+From the remarks which were passing round us it seemed that the
+majority were discussing the precise treatment which should be dealt
+out to the prisoners. At this moment Trooper Hayes, deserter,
+swaggered towards the circle; he sported Colonel Hore's sword, and a
+gold chain and watch dangled from his belt. Hearing the subject of the
+conversation, he at once suggested that we should either be made to
+stand upon the verandah, a mark to the fire of our own men, or be
+given the opportunity of taking up arms and joining in the defence of
+the fort. "You cannot do that, I'm a war correspondent," said I in
+English to a Boer who was speaking fluent English to a friend. "You be
+damned!" said he, pleasantly enough, "we'll put you upon the roof."
+But at that moment Commandant Eloff approached and ordered our removal
+to a building in the centre of the fort, which hitherto had been used
+as the storeroom for the regimental mess. Into this they crowded us,
+together with three others who, visiting the fort in ignorance of the
+turn of affairs, had likewise been taken prisoners. We were thus
+thirty-two, and were confined for the day in a space which was not
+only short and narrow, but ill-ventilated, dirty, littered with
+rubbish, and already smelling horribly. Firing from town had now begun
+in earnest, and the bullets whistled and cracked and spat all round
+the fort. They struck upon the stones and spattered the roof with
+splinters of rock and lead, while we could detect from these signs how
+ably directed and how fierce was the rifle fire which was delivered
+from the town. When they had safely secured us in the storehouse the
+space in front of the building was at once occupied by some
+sixty-seven men, who crouched up against the walls of the house or lay
+within the lee of the exterior wall of the fort. From time to time
+these men moved to points whence the fire was hottest, seeming to take
+their share of the work in pleasing earnestness and with much
+keenness. Occasionally those who were without and around the door
+handed in fragments of dried meat and broken biscuits, but the
+quantity was not great, and there were many of us who had nothing to
+eat all day, while few Boers or prisoners had anything to drink. Early
+in the morning bullets from the town had perforated the water tanks,
+and as a consequence there was no water to drink, nor was there
+anything with which to alleviate the sufferings of the wounded. As the
+day wore on many casualties occurred among the Boers in the fort, and
+the absence of efficient medical aid among his men prompted Commandant
+Eloff to appeal to us for assistance, whereupon Veterinary-Lieutenant
+Dunlop-Smith, Farrier-Corporal Nichols and Forbes, the regimental
+canteen-keeper, offered and rendered valuable services to the wounded
+Boers, running the gauntlet of our own fire in the cause of a common
+humanity. Early in the fight the Boers took over the Children's
+Hospital, which was located some two hundred yards away from the fort,
+and in which those devoted nurses, Mrs. Buchan and her sister, Miss
+Crawfurd, remained the entire day, attending indiscriminately to the
+sick children, to the wounded Boers who were brought there, and
+bringing upon two occasions tea to the prisoners. During the progress
+of the fight we constantly caught glimpses of the Red Cross flag
+escorting one or other of these gallant ladies to points where wounded
+Boers were lying. Throughout the fight the Boers respected the
+conventions, repeatedly expressing their appreciation and their
+gratitude for the services of these ladies. For this courtesy
+Commandant Eloff was largely responsible, and indeed if there was any
+abuse of the Red Cross flag the blame of such disrespect cannot be
+charged against the enemy, since our side, I understand, issued orders
+that the men of the firing line were not to take notice of any white
+flags which the Boers displayed. The enemy respected its conventions,
+treated the prisoners humanely, and behaved throughout a situation
+almost maddening from the strain which it must have imposed upon them
+with conspicuous gallantry, coolness, and consideration.
+
+In our prison the situation was more than uncomfortable, and when
+towards evening they locked the door the atmosphere became fetid, and
+was seriously aggravated by the condition of a man who was suffering
+acutely from the agonies of dysentery. In a recess, piled up, were
+the stores of the regimental mess, comprising principally cases of
+liquors--whisky, Beaunne, pommade, and lime-juice. In a big open crate
+were tinned provisions of an indefinite character--fruits, peas, and
+parsnips, and other canned luxuries. These were at once looted by the
+troopers, who in this respect and the indifferent manner in which they
+received the orders of their officers, did not set a particularly
+praiseworthy example. Within the storehouse, however, the prisoners
+mingled irrespective of rank, and mutually sympathetic in the face of
+common misfortune. At first every man seemed to be smoking, but
+gradually the atmosphere became so bad that it was absolutely
+necessary to desist, and all pipes, cigars, and cigarettes were
+ordered to be put out. Commandant Eloff returned constantly to the
+prisoners, chatting brightly with them and sympathising upon the
+fortunes of war. He sat within the door upon a case of Burgundy, his
+legs dangling, his accoutrements jingling, and the rowels of his spurs
+echoing the tick-tacking of the Mauser rifles. Herein and within our
+presence the drama of the situation was slowly passing; orderlies came
+and went, but the Commandant, still tapping with his spurs, continued
+to issue his instructions and his orders. He seemed to possess the
+complete mastery of the situation; his buoyant face was impressed with
+the confidence of youth, reflecting the happiness he felt in so much
+that his ambition seemed to be about to be realised. But as the
+situation became more critical, beneath the brightness of his manner
+he seemed to be feeling the gravity of his position. At times he lost
+control of himself and complained querulously in Dutch about the
+non-appearance of his reinforcements; at other moments he regaled the
+prisoners with scraps of information relating to the situation, and by
+this means we learnt that Limestone Fort had fallen, and that the
+trench beneath the railway bridge had surrendered. This news was, of
+course, not particularly pleasing, and it somewhat added to our
+dejection when we learnt that, when night arrived, we were to be
+marched to the south-western laager and thence to be conveyed to
+Pretoria. I never wished less to see a place than I did the Transvaal
+capital at this moment. Since Commandant Eloff made himself so
+agreeable I was moved to chat with him. We discussed the situation in
+China and the feeling which America was showing for the Boers. To this
+latter he did not attach much importance, shrugging his shoulders as
+he said, "Americans and the English----" The pause was eloquent, and I
+changed the conversation, requesting his courteous permission, should
+the fortunes of the day go with him, to communicate with the _Times_.
+He expressed surprise at my being a correspondent, and said that he
+thought the correspondents had more sense than to get themselves
+captured. Then he laughed and asked my name. I told him, upon which he
+replied, "I have heard of you, but I have not read any of your stuff;
+you have been writing unpleasant things about the Boers." I retired
+crestfallen to the darkest corner I could find and reflected upon the
+character of the punishment which General Snyman would mete out to a
+man who had been so iniquitous as to write "unpleasantly about the
+Boers." Night was coming on rapidly now, and we were rather glad,
+since it removed from us the horror of being with the enemy and
+watching while they fired upon our own men. It seems to me that the
+strain which emanates from such a sight is more awful than anything
+in the world.
+
+As dusk settled down we prisoners, crowding in a small room, could
+hear echoes of desperate fighting outside. Bullets penetrated the
+wall, perforated the roofing, crashed through the windows, splintered
+the door. Ever and anon the fire would die away, breaking out again
+spasmodically within a few minutes. Through the grating of the windows
+we could see the enemy keeping an alert look-out; we could see them
+scurrying and scrambling to defend the points against which the firing
+was heaviest; we saw the limping figures of the wounded; we heard
+voices cursing us, threatening the prisoners, and urging Commandant
+Eloff to handcuff and march us out across the line of fire while the
+Boers used us as a screen to escape; while upon one occasion the door
+opened suddenly and three wounded Boers precipitated themselves
+violently into the room. The inside of the building was pitch dark by
+now, and lighted only by the fitful flashing of the rifles, which made
+almost a glow within. Straining eagerly at the windows, we caught
+glimpses of a number of Boers scrambling over the exterior walls of
+the fort, in order, we afterwards learnt, to make good their retreat.
+This movement to the rear surprised us and was followed by a terrible
+outburst of firing, caused by the order of Commandant Eloff to shoot
+down the fugitives. Then time dragged heavily, and we were hungry and
+tired and faint when there seemed signs of a rally among the Boers.
+After an interval of extraordinarily heavy firing, in which the noise
+from the snap of bullets and the reports of the rifles were deafening,
+there was a sudden silence. Commandant Eloff rushed to the door, and,
+summoning Colonel Hore, stated that if he could induce the town to
+cease fire the Boers would surrender. It was an altogether unexpected
+_denouement_, and in that moment there was not one amongst us who did
+not think that each in his turn was about to be summoned to an instant
+execution. We feared a ruse, and whispered to Colonel Hore, as he
+advanced to meet the commandant, to be careful. Our momentary
+hesitation caused Commandant Eloff to surrender himself as a hostage
+until the cessation of fire could be arranged. The Boers, like
+ourselves, were unable to grasp the situation, and seeing their
+commandant in our midst, made an attempt to rescue him, which only
+helped to increase the confusion of the moment. Commandant Eloff
+called out, "Surrender, surrender," and endeavoured strenuously to
+pacify his men. We, upon our part, shouted to the town to cease fire;
+this was at once done, whereupon sixty-seven Boers laid down their
+arms, handing them to the prisoners, who piled them up within the
+storehouse. Those of us who were not engaged in this work seized
+rifles and bandoliers from the heap and manned the defences of the
+fort until the prisoners could be delivered into proper custody. The
+Boers were then marched off and were found accommodation in the
+Masonic Hall and in the gaol. As I retraced my steps to the town and
+was passing the stables of the British South Africa Police Fort, the
+groaning of a wounded man caught my ear. I ran to him to find that
+lying within the shelter of the stables, with a wound through his
+thigh, was the man to whom I had surrendered myself in the morning. We
+smiled as he handed over to me his rifle and bandolier. My revolver he
+had lost, but lying beside him, stiff and dead, with a bullet wound
+through his forehead, was, by one of those extraordinary coincidences
+which do happen, the man who had shot my horse. And thus this day of
+melodrama passed; dramatic in its beginning, dramatic in its
+conclusion, with enough bloodshed, firing, and animation to satisfy
+the cravings of the most dispassionate seeker after excitement.
+Commandant Eloff, Captain von Wiessmann, Captain Bremont, dined at
+Headquarters. The town came to greet the prisoners, drink was
+unearthed, and everybody seemed to be congratulating somebody upon
+their mutual good fortune. We who had been prisoners and were now free
+rejoiced in the liberty which was restored to us, yet it was difficult
+to restrain oneself from feeling compassionately upon the great
+misfortunes which had attended the extraordinary dash and gallantry of
+the men who were now our prisoners. They had done their best. They
+proved to us that they were indeed capable and that we should have
+kept a sharper look-out, while it was indeed deplorable to think that
+it was the treachery of their own general, in abandoning them to their
+fate, that had been mainly instrumental in procuring them their
+present predicament.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+RELIEVED AT LAST
+
+
+                                  WEDNESDAY NIGHT, 7.30 P.M.
+                                 MAFEKING, _May 16th, 1900_.
+
+The relief of Mafeking is now an accomplished fact, and the first
+Imperial troops to enter our lines were eight of the Imperial Light
+Horse, under the command of Major Karri Davis. They had ridden in
+advance of the main body in an effort to pierce our lines while
+General Mahon, who had already formed a junction with Colonel Plumer,
+was engaging the main body of the enemy along the watershed of the
+Molopo, some seven miles north-west of the town.
+
+We had known since Sunday that an Imperial force was approaching
+Mafeking from the south, and during Monday immense activity was
+displayed in the Boer laagers, while towards the south-west a thick
+fringe of dust was drifting slowly under the commotion of a column of
+Boers who were retiring rapidly before the approach of the Southern
+force. During Tuesday we thought we heard the distant booming of the
+guns, and we could see the Boers preparing to take up positions along
+the north-western ridges of the Molopo River. At an early hour on
+Tuesday morning news reached us that the respective commands of
+General Mahon and Colonel Plumer had joined at Saane's Town, a few
+miles up the valley of the river. From the moment that the town
+received this news the memory of the past seven months was dissipated
+in the first flash of the glad tidings. Speculation was rife as to the
+precise hour of the arrival of the relief, but the day passed without
+much prospect of the siege being raised before nightfall. However,
+this morning the most positive information had arrived during the
+night, and it seemed that within the next forty-eight hours the
+combined forces would be here. The morning passed uneventfully. No one
+seemed quite to know how to spend the few remaining hours which were
+all that remained of the siege. About noon it became known in town
+that the forces would not enter Mafeking without having a smart brush
+with the enemy. We had observed small, detached forces of Boers making
+from north and south of the town for the ridges about the western
+areas of the Molopo. Artillery accompanied these men, whose numbers
+had been drawn from the various Boer positions around Mafeking. A
+large contingent had moved from the eastern laager and similar bodies
+had been called out from the south-western and northern camps. It was
+an anxious time for us in Mafeking, and, although there was no doubt
+about the final result, we still felt that the fate of the relief
+column hung in the balance. About half-past two General Mahon's guns
+opened upon the enemy, the smoke of the bursting shells being plainly
+discernible away towards the north-west. There was a constant booming
+of artillery, and the smoke of heavy rifle fire just above the
+horizon. As the news swept through the town there were many who
+gathered upon coigns of vantage to witness the action. It was
+impossible to see details, and indeed it was about half-past four
+before we even caught sight of the moving masses of men. It seemed
+then that the Boers were falling back; the artillery had ceased to
+play, and we were under the impression that they were engaged in
+taking up fresh positions. About five o'clock a large force of Boers
+was noticed moving rapidly along the ridge to the east, while a
+smaller body of three hundred men, detaching themselves from the main
+column, were riding rapidly towards the west.
+
+In the meantime Colonel Baden-Powell, Colonel Hore, Colonel Walford,
+of the British South Africa Police, and Captain Wilson, A.D.C. to the
+Colonel commanding, had taken up their position upon the roof of the
+railway sheds, where during the last few days a special outlook had
+been prepared. The scene in the railway yards was animated and
+dramatic, and in order to be close at hand I secured permission to sit
+upon the ladder which led to the outlook. In the town people were
+taking events quite calmly. The final in the siege billiard tournament
+was taking place at the club, and in many other respects it seemed
+difficult to realise that our deliverance was at hand. Between the
+railway yards and the outposts there were men shooting small birds,
+while in the yards around us natives were engaged in skinning and
+cutting the carcase of a horse which, shot overnight, had been handed
+over to the soup-kitchens. For perhaps an hour everything was calm and
+peaceful, but ever and anon the bubble of voices reached me from the
+roof as orders were transmitted over the telephone to Headquarters.
+Of a sudden Captain Wilson scrambled down the ladder, calling an
+order to Lieutenant Feltham to saddle up the horses and mount. While
+this work was in progress orders were issued to Captain Cowan, of the
+Bechuanaland Rifles, to march his men at once to the barracks of the
+Protectorate Regiment, while in a cloud of dust and with a cheering
+rattle Major Panzera galloped by with the guns. "I think we can catch
+them," said Colonel Baden-Powell, and a minute afterwards he had
+mounted his horse and was off. I found that he was referring to the
+detached party of three hundred Boers who were making their way from
+the scene of the fight in a south-westerly direction. I mounted and
+followed, and the small force which had thus been rapidly collected
+moved quickly towards our extreme position in the north-west of the
+town. It was just possible that we should catch them between the fire
+of General Mahon's guns and our own, and there was every necessity for
+speed. In a short time we were out at the "Standard and Diggers' News
+Fort," where, while our horses were given a short rest, the guns were
+unlimbered. That particular body of Boers who had been our objective
+seemed to be unconscious of the movement which had taken place in our
+own lines. As they emerged from the valley we opened fire and turned
+their head. For a moment they did not seem to realise their situation,
+when they rapidly wheeled about and put themselves out of range by a
+hurried retreat towards the main body. Dusk was now falling, and it
+was impossible to see any longer, and as a consequence the guns were
+ordered to retire to town and the men to return. It was half-past six
+when we reached town, and General Mahon's artillery had not been heard
+to fire for quite an hour. We went to dine, cheered by the comforting
+and consoling thought that by noonday upon the morrow the siege would
+be raised. However, about seven o'clock, in the bright moonlight, and
+totally unexpected, eight mounted men suddenly appeared in the Market
+Square. In a short space of time the news flashed round the town, and
+a concourse of people gathered to cheer vociferously about the
+precincts of the Headquarters Office. As round after round of cheers
+broke out it became known that these mysterious horsemen had galloped
+in under Major Karri Davis with a despatch from General Mahon. In a
+trice they were surrounded, besieged with questions, clapped upon the
+back, shaken by the hand, and generally welcomed. These plucky
+troopers seemed as surprised as ourselves and as glad. Major Karri
+Davis called for cheers for the garrison, while the crowd took up with
+tremendous fervour the National Anthem and "Rule Britannia." It was an
+exciting moment and a picturesque scene, bathed in the soft moonlight
+and irradiated by the glow of countless stars; but the men were
+hungry, and Major Lord Edward Cecil, the chief staff officer, busied
+himself in making arrangements for the care of these eight Imperial
+Light Horse, who, not content with relieving Ladysmith, had insisted
+upon being accorded the privilege of making the first entry into
+Mafeking.
+
+That night the town retired early, but about two in the morning a
+subdued roar came from the direction of the north-western outposts,
+and in a very little time word was passed round that the troops were
+making their entrance into Mafeking. Just as the relief column had
+proceeded from Vryburg without any flourish of trumpets, so was their
+entry into Mafeking unexpected and unostentatious. But the town had
+aroused itself and was soon flocking across the veldt to the ground
+where the combined columns had already begun to form their camp. It
+was not a large force; its full muster was below two thousand men; but
+amid the soft and eerie shadows of the starry, moonlit night there
+seemed no end to the lines of horses, mules, and bullocks, to the camp
+fires, to the groups of men, to the number and variety of the waggons.
+In a corner, as it were, were the guns, a composite battery of the
+Royal Horse Artillery, eight pieces of the Canadian Artillery, and a
+number of Maxims. It was these which we had heard booming to us the
+first distant echoes of relief, and we were of course proud of them.
+Then and there we examined them, felt them over, pondered upon them,
+and then and there we thanked our God that we had in our own hands at
+last some really serviceable artillery. But there were other sights to
+be seen, early as was the hour, tired as were the troopers. There were
+the men of the Kimberley Light Horse and their comrades of the
+Imperial Light Horse to be inspected, to be patted upon the back, to
+be admired, and to be congratulated. There was scarcely any one who
+could not claim a friend among the mere handful of men who had marched
+from Vryburg to our relief, but if by chance there were such a one he
+quickly placed himself _en amitie_ with the first group of troopers
+with whom he came in contact. Alas! such was our plight that we could
+not give them anything to drink, but we most willingly had prepared
+cauldrons of steaming soup and boiling coffee. A cup of coffee is not
+much to offer, but the goodwill was taken with the spirit, and there
+was no one who did not seem glad to receive even so small a thing. It
+was not possible to stay long in the camp. The men were weary, and,
+moreover, there was much to be done before, with their martial cloaks
+around them, they were able to snatch a few hours' repose; and so the
+town returned to its bed, drunk with enthusiasm, in an abortive effort
+to calm its excited brain with sleep. But, good heavens! was such a
+thing possible? It was now four, and although it was somewhat early,
+in the morning we began to call upon one another, passing the hours
+between dawn and sunrise in hilarious uproar. About seven the camp was
+all a-bustle. There were rumours that the men were to move out and
+attack the Boers, who were still in position upon the east side of the
+town. Presently, as we moved about the streets down by the western
+outposts, clouds of dust were tossing themselves in the air. The guns
+were coming--our guns, if you please--and thereupon a pandemonium was
+raised. Every one seemed to be screaming, and as the Royal Horse swept
+through town we streamed after them, feebly endeavouring to keep pace
+with them, so as to be able to witness the effects of their power. The
+Market Square at this time presented a picture of military life which
+has never been equalled by any of the scenes that have been enacted
+there in its earlier days. Men in uniform were hurrying from point to
+point, troops from the various squadrons were coming in,
+squadron-leaders, majors and colonels were falling over one another.
+These were the beginnings of the fight, and much as the relief had
+fought its way into Mafeking so were they now going to secure definite
+freedom for the townspeople by driving out the Boers. As the guns came
+into the Square willing hands tore down and pushed aside the line of
+carts and fencing of corrugated iron which for these seven months had
+served duty as a traverse. Then the guns of the Horse Artillery swept
+on, taking up positions upon the veldt in front of the town, in
+readiness to begin the bombardment of the Boer position, while, in
+simultaneous co-operation with this movement, the Canadian Artillery
+were sent out with orders to shell Game Tree. However, the fight did
+not last long. In a very short time the Game Tree fort was deserted,
+the Boers from there hurriedly joining their main body. But the
+presence of the guns had terrorised the Boers, and they fled
+precipitately, leaving their camp, their guns, their stores behind
+them. We shelled for an hour with the composite battery of the Royal
+Horse, comprising four 12-1/2-pounders and two pom-poms. Then we
+advanced in skirmishing order, extending our line rapidly until we had
+outflanked their position. Then we charged, and the day was ours. The
+enemy had vanished, and we were in possession of their camp, while so
+undignified had their retreat been that they did not even wait to
+remove their hospital. Upon General Snyman's house there was still
+floating the Republican flag, while the Red Cross hung drowsily in the
+air above the hospital. There were thirty wounded in the hospital, and
+these, for the time being, were placed under a guard, but otherwise
+left undisturbed; in this manner did the siege come to an abrupt
+conclusion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+THE END
+
+
+                                 MAFEKING, _May 26th, 1900_.
+
+The imprimatur has now been given to the siege, and that chapter of
+the war which bears reference to the investment of Mafeking must now
+be considered as closed. The end of the drama is with us; the curtain
+has dropped, and the people of the play are scattering--some are dead,
+some have been wounded, lying nigh to death in the Victoria Hospital,
+some have passed through this seven months' ordeal suffering neither
+monetary loss nor physical hurt, but bearing with them, in their
+minds, the almost indelible impress of an interesting but terrible
+experience. And so the play is ended, and the great historical drama
+in which we have enacted our part is soon to present fresh scenes, and
+with the transformation, let us hope some stirring incident and a
+picturesque scenario. To the end, of course, there is the story, but
+it is simple of fact, it is plain of feature, it deals only with what
+one may consider as the final obsequies of the siege, and in a brief
+space we will consider them.
+
+The siege is now officially returned as having been raised by General
+Mahon's force at half-past ten upon the morning of May 17th. It has
+been quiet since then. The garrison has mainly rested, taking itself
+idly and participating in the few last deft touches with which Colonel
+Baden-Powell has adorned the siege. These issues to the relief have
+been sad, have been pleasing, but mournful or gay they have served
+their purpose, fitting in most accurately with the long chain of
+circumstances which has enclosed the siege. There was the time when
+the garrison attended just beyond the precincts of the cemetery, where
+the rank and file of the forces which have been beleaguered, stood to
+attention as they paid their last honour to the dead, to all of those
+who died so nobly, to those who had been the victims of disease, and
+who, one and all, had paid the penalty of our success. It was a
+mournful retrospect which was thus forced upon our notice as the names
+of our dead were passed slowly in review; but as the mournful cadences
+dropped from the lips of the preacher we braced ourselves to think
+that such an end, as we had gathered to conclude, was but the
+inevitable. As the Colonel stood before us--the man who reaped the
+glory of the siege--we wondered whether beneath the calmness of his
+demeanour there lurked any feeling of regret, any half-cherished
+desire to express aloud to those who stood around him the potency of
+his sorrows. To him it was but the simple ceremony, and one, moreover,
+to be got through quickly, and indeed there was but little in the
+service. Occasionally the breeze, which sighed so tremulously through
+the hedge of trees that fringe the graveyard, wafted to us snatches of
+prayer. And that was all, so far as we were concerned--the mere
+fragments of a passing communion, ending as abruptly as it began,
+seeming all to concentrate in that one moment when at command three
+rounds of blank cartridge were fired across the graves. That was the
+full weight of our honours to the dead, since afterwards--for it does
+not do to dwell too much upon these things--the Colonel commanding
+reviewed the remnants of his force, unbending insomuch that he
+addressed to each unit, a few words of appreciation and of thanks. And
+then where we had assembled, there did the Town Guard and other corps
+of the garrison receive their dismissal, since now that the siege was
+raised they might return to their businesses, to their homes, and to
+their families to spend a cheering hour or two in an endeavour to
+compute some estimate of the ruin which has fallen upon their
+fortunes.
+
+Now that the siege is over, it is not without interest to know to what
+extent the garrison has suffered. We have had 1,498 shells from the
+100-pounder Creusot, but in addition to this the enemy has fired into
+Mafeking some 21,000 odd shells of a smaller character. These have
+ranged from the 14-1/2-pounder high-velocity, armour-piercing,
+delay-action shell, down to the high-velocity one-pound Maxim,
+embracing in the series a variety of nine-pound shells--common,
+segment, shrapnel, and incendiary--several hundred seven-pound shells,
+and a multitude of five-pounders. This has been the weight of the
+enemy's artillery fire which has played upon the town since October
+12th, and which has supported commandos of Boers which were reckoned
+as 8,000 men in October, and whose numbers are believed never to have
+fallen below 3,000 rifles. Throughout the siege there have been some
+eight guns around us, including the big Creusot piece, but at times
+there have been eleven, and at rare intervals our spies reported that
+the strength of the enemy's artillery was fourteen guns. And we have
+stood this with a certain cheerfulness and with a pretty spirit of
+determination: moreover, we have returned their fire, claiming to have
+disabled three guns and killing and wounding several hundred men. Our
+own casualties from shot and shell and sickness until the end of April
+were 476. In October there were 77; November, 49; December, 101; in
+January, 47; February, 68; March, 67; and April, 67. The admissions
+into the base hospital during this period were 685, while 496 were
+discharged. Among those who were admitted to the hospital there were
+106 deaths. During a similar period and through identical causes, 180
+natives were admitted to this hospital, 115 were discharged, 56 died,
+but irrespective of these figures 398 deaths were registered from
+amongst the natives. That their mortality was great, the monthly
+returns from the native population will show. In October 12 natives
+died; in November, 13; December, 46; January, 64; February, 44; March,
+84; April, 135. These figures relate to those patients only who were
+passed through the base hospital, but the monthly returns bear upon
+the available strength of the garrison, and are in themselves an index
+to the conditions of the siege. The town itself has suffered to a
+great extent, although the amount of damage which the enemy's shell
+fire has created is insignificant when compared to what would have
+been the result had the main elements in its construction been bricks
+and mortar. The tin shanties and the mud walls have given to Mafeking
+a remarkable salvation, making it possible for the little town to
+compare, when the weight of metal brought against it is considered,
+even favourably with Ladysmith. Among the men forming the relief
+column there are many who were with Sir George White, and from these
+one gathers that the damage which Mafeking has sustained is infinitely
+greater than the injuries which Ladysmith can show.
+
+[Illustration: The Author's Dog "Mafeking," Wounded three Times
+during the Siege.]
+
+And so the siege is ended; but if this were taken in its more literal
+sense it would imply that there has been an immediate change for the
+better in our condition. But such is not the case. We have been
+relieved of the presence of the Boers, a matter which did not greatly
+trouble us, but there has been no alteration in our scale of diet--a
+matter which does greatly trouble us; we are still issued four ounces
+of rusty bread and a pound of scraggy meat, and there is still an
+absence of table delicacies. We have no sugar, we have no milk, we
+have neither eggs nor fowls. In point of fact we have nothing, and
+indeed there has been no change. Yet we understood that Field-Marshal
+Lord Roberts in his kindly and generous way had sent us a mob of prime
+bullocks, and a convoy of something other than hospital luxuries. This
+is told to us upon the authority of Major Weil, who controls the
+commissariat, and if it be true, it is still most certainly the case
+that the commissariat officer who has controlled the food supplies of
+the garrison during the siege is still, relatively speaking, doling
+out his sugar by the thimbleful, and ladling his flour with a spoon.
+However, there is to come a time some day when Captain Ryan will be
+far away, and the hours of meal times will be graced with such
+luxuries as we have not seen for seven months. It is only recently
+that the issue of horse meat was stopped, but there is a very general
+belief that if the horses are not being slaughtered for human
+consumption, their carcases still play an important part in the soup
+with which the garrison is served. Of course, the days of starch
+puddings and other table delicacies which were manufactured from
+toilet necessaries are over, while we believe that an effort is to be
+made to improve, but not increase, the bread allowance and to put
+fresh meat on the public sales. But these are the boons of the future;
+since we are relieved that is held to be sufficient for the present.
+However, our thoughts do not dwell much upon our food, we rejoice so
+much over our liberty that we can spare but little time for grumbling,
+and indeed feel but little inclination. The town is bright again, and
+people throng the streets as though a load had been lifted from off
+the backs of every one. The shops are open, the post office has
+resumed its work, and now once more accepts telegrams and letters.
+During the siege there has been but little opportunity to send to the
+outer world any message of a private character that contained more
+than a few words. Letters were almost out of the question, and were
+expensive luxuries even to war correspondents, who were compelled to
+employ special runners at high prices to carry their despatches to the
+nearest office. Lately, and when the investment of the enemy was not
+so close, the intelligence department did manage to pass through the
+lines small parcels of mail matter. The occasions have been
+infrequent, and there were so many people who were anxious to write
+that it became necessary to restrict the general public to a certain
+limit of space. It does not seem that many letters got through, since
+now that we have had time to overhaul the laagers of the enemy we have
+found much correspondence in their waggons. We have also found a
+number of telegrams, and these provide interesting reading and bear
+importantly upon the situation. Moreover, it would seem that our
+estimate of the Boer forces in the field is much exaggerated, for
+President Kruger complains bitterly to Commandant-General Botha of the
+paucity of numbers at the command of the State President. The
+Commandant-General had but fifteen hundred men with him in Natal,
+while General Snyman mentions the numbers of the various commandos
+which he has summoned to his assistance, and by which he hopes to
+secure an additional eight hundred men. But from the telegrams it
+would seem that, for the most part, the Boers are timorous and tired
+of fighting. The Field Cornet of Christiana asks what he is to do with
+twenty men, and states that the Johannesburg Police are bolting.
+"What, then, am I to do with my men?" At this moment the British
+troops were within one hour's ride of Christiana. General Snyman has
+many interesting comments upon the situation on the Molopo, and if
+President Kruger believed one half of the intelligence that General
+Snyman telegraphed to him, his knowledge of the situation must have
+been obscure. From the despatches which passed between this worthy
+General and the State President, mention is made quite frequently of
+the desperate assaults upon our lines which General Snyman organised
+and in some cases personally carried out, and which upon many
+occasions resulted in the capture of one of our outlying positions. If
+this be true such positions as were captured must indeed have been
+outlying, in fact so far beyond the perimeter of our defences as to
+altogether have escaped the notice of the garrison. But it does not
+seem that President Kruger believed everything that General Snyman
+communicated to him. In one message Oom Paul requests immediate
+information upon the whereabouts of Colonel Plumer. There is a certain
+pathos in the question of the aged President asking General Snyman,
+"Where is Plumer? You must know," and one gathers that the old man saw
+somewhat further into the future than the majority of his councillors,
+since he gives it as his opinion that Mafeking will be relieved. But
+prophets have never been respected in their own country. General
+Snyman does not seem to have found favour in Pretoria; perhaps the
+character of the man was too well known, since the State Secretary,
+Mr. Reitz, is ordered by the State President to inquire as to whether
+the failure of General Snyman's reinforcements to support Commandant
+Eloff in his attack upon the town on May 12th was due to drunkenness
+or to cowardice. "If it be drunkenness, let us say so," advises Mr.
+Reitz, "since it would be better that the truth be known than that it
+should be believed that General Snyman was a coward." Does this
+sentence contain the secret history of the failure of Commandant
+Eloff? If it be so one can afford to be generous and to sympathise
+with President Kruger, even to feel a certain pity for Commandant
+Eloff.
+
+The Commandant, since he surrendered to us, has taken life very
+philosophically. He is confined in the gaol, and with him are Captain
+de Fremont and some half-dozen others. The majority of the prisoners
+are lodged in the Dutch Church and in the Masonic Hall. Their time
+hangs heavily upon their hands, but when the tedium of their
+imprisonment becomes too great they indite long letters to their
+friends, using much paper, in villainous denunciations of the English,
+in complaining bitterly of their food, and in villifying Snyman.
+
+Commandant Eloff smokes and reads and talks. Sometimes he becomes
+abstracted, and again upon Sundays he is dejected. As I had the
+pleasure of meeting him in the British South Africa Police Fort upon
+May 12th, the occasion upon which he captured me, I called upon him in
+the gaol. He was pacing the courtyard, but he stopped and smiled when
+he saw me, and as I saluted him he held out his hand. "My prisoner,"
+said he, amiably. "The fortunes of war," said I, and he waved a hand
+in the air as he accepted a cigarette. His costume was free and
+comfortable. He wore a brown jersey, a pair of riding breeches, and
+slippers. The jersey fitted him, and he seemed to take some pains in
+showing the physical development of his shoulders. His arms also were
+strong, and with every move of his body his muscles quivered. He was
+lithe, supple and active, and as he stood there with the whitewashed
+walls of the gaol behind him, with his companions around him, and a
+guard upon each of the four walls which enclosed the courtyard, an air
+of romance clung to him and he might have been for the moment some
+creation of Anthony Hope, casting in his mind for some entrancing but
+desperate situation. He puffed my cigarette vigorously and began a
+conversation. "You know," said he, "I don't like horseflesh." "I am
+sorry," said I, "but you should have taken Mafeking before." "We shall
+have it yet," said a man at the table, whereupon the Commandant
+shrugged his shoulders and threw the end of his cigarette somewhat
+petulantly from him. "If," said I. "Ah," said the Commandant, and
+there was a pause in which we all laughed. He looked at me for a
+moment as though he thought. "It is possible," said he, and he
+punctuated his words with little nods. As he finished Captain de
+Fremont joined us. "My God," said he; "you English." Eloff laughed.
+"Do not let us make this Fashoda," said he. "Yes, it is possible," he
+began again, "and I think we should have captured your town, but
+Snyman----" he paused and spat. "I wish to God you would make Snyman a
+prisoner," said he. The conversation had become interesting, and I
+passed my cigarette case around again. It returned to me empty, but
+Commandant Eloff had begun to smoke a pipe. "Are not you Dutchmen
+tired of the war?" said I; "the end, after all, is inevitable."
+Captain de Fremont spoke again. He twisted his cigarette between his
+fingers and remarked with an air of incisive inanity, "Life and death
+are inevitable." "And the English," said Commandant Eloff, whereupon I
+laughed. The Commandant once more took up the thread of the
+conversation. "We attacked you because it seemed to me that you had
+relaxed your vigilance. How could we otherwise have pierced your
+lines?" His view was right--at least I thought so. "We expected you,"
+said I. The Commandant shook his head and looked at me somewhat
+quizzingly. After all it was a palpable lie. "No," said he; "you
+should at least allow us that amount of energy. You did not expect us,
+and had Snyman pressed home the attack upon your eastern front and
+supported me with the guns and reinforcements, I think that Mafeking
+must have fallen." He paused for a moment, and said, slowly, "I am
+certain that we should not be prisoners." "It was bad luck," said I,
+"we would rather have you with us than against us, but this time you
+will remain with us." He glanced at the four walls, upon each of which
+there was sitting a guard. "I notice," said he, "that I am well
+protected." The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders, as I suggested he
+would rather be outside. "Give me a chance," said he, and he snapped
+his fingers. "What, don't you know," said I, "what has occurred this
+morning?" In a flash his mind reverted to the firing upon the previous
+day. "Tell me, what was that firing last night?" "Mafeking has been
+relieved," said I. The Commandant said nothing, and once more there
+was a pause; but before we spoke again the sergeant of the guard
+clanged upon the door with his musket. "Time is up," called he, and
+the door opened. For a moment the Commandant could see through the
+open space of the doorway, beyond and above the heads of the five
+guards who were waiting outside, the glimpse of blue sky, a line of
+trees, a stretch of veldt. "Is there anything I can do for you?" said
+I, before I went. He waved his hand. "Nothing," said he, "except fresh
+meat." I stayed for a moment and pointed outside. "Fresh meat and
+fresh air are both outside." I thought I caught a sigh: it seemed to
+lurk for a moment amid the harsh and grating noises of the bolts as
+they were thrust forward in their sockets.
+
+From the prison I strolled to my hotel. The day was fine, the cold of
+the morning had given place to a warm and brilliant sunshine. It was
+the Queen's birthday, and our little world seemed at peace. For the
+moment we were forgetting the strife and tribulations of the past
+seven months, and in our anxiety to do honour to her Majesty there was
+much commotion in the town. Flags were flying and bunting was
+fluttering from the verandahs of the houses. Here and there, passing
+in a cloud of dust, were the troops marching to the parade. There was
+to be a review and there was also a general muster of arms. In the
+centre of the Market Square were the guns which we had captured from
+the enemy. In a corner, but surrounded by an admiring crowd, were the
+two pieces which we had improvised during the siege. There was
+"B.-P.," there was also "The Wolf," and acting as guard to these guns,
+were two men who, the day before had reached Mafeking from Pretoria,
+having eluded the vigilance of their sentries and walked one hundred
+and eighty miles in a gallant and successful attempt to gain liberty
+and freedom. The men were almost as interesting as the guns. But time
+was speedy and the war correspondents were anxious to attend the
+parade. The review was a study in contrast, the contrast between a
+birthday parade and that review at the cemetery where the souls of the
+dead were passed in inspection and for whom prayers were offered. The
+parade stretched from end to end of the ground immediately in front of
+the British South Africa Police Fort, taking place upon the very spot
+where the town had so valiantly contested the attack which Commandant
+Eloff had organised. Behind the lines of the men were the white
+buildings of the Protectorate Barracks, while from the flag-mast,
+which stands aloft in the centre of the fort, there floated the Union
+Jack. The scene was indeed a study in contrast. We were at peace now
+with the elements of war within our midst. We were fighting then, a
+grim and determined struggle waging all round us, and in a way this
+birthday parade was the issue of that day's fighting, since had the
+end been otherwise, it might have been Commandant Eloff who passed in
+review order upon the birthday of our Queen Empress. We formed up,
+detachments from the different corps and the artillery upon the right
+of the line. It was only the siege artillery, and nothing very much at
+that. The pom-poms and the guns of the Royal Horse Artillery were
+guarding the front of the town, and could not be spared.
+
+And so we waited, when of a sudden there came a cheer from the rear
+and we realised that General Mahon was approaching. There was no band,
+there were no horses, the entire parade were dismounted. The Colonel
+inspected, the men dressed, and the Colonel returned to the saluting
+base. He seemed conscious of the crowd, and stood as though he
+realised that the parade which he was now holding meant to him so much
+more than the mere abstract honour to the Queen. It signified the end
+of his labours, epitomising his successes, touching with ironical
+glory the honours which the near future must surely bring to him, and
+as he stood he seemed quite nervous. It was one of the few occasions
+upon which I have ever known him to be moved. The men who had come to
+his relief were passing by him, and ever and anon one heard the
+commands of the officers calling to their squadrons as they gained the
+shadow of the saluting base, "Shoulder arms; eyes left." Then Colonel
+Baden-Powell would raise his hand, taking and returning the salutes as
+they were made. In the distance there was a haze of dust through which
+a gaudy sunlight was flickering, and in the distance and, beside us,
+there was the heavy music of the armed tread, as squadron after
+squadron marched by. The air was filled with sound and sentiment, but
+yet the crowd that stood behind was quiet and quite subdued. It was no
+wonder that they were impressed, that they recognised in the rumble of
+the distant feet and in the flowing masses of men the hour of their
+deliverance. Their troubles were indeed past, their siege was over,
+and the moment was approaching when those who had been in their midst
+during so many months would be again upon the move, advancing this
+time against the enemy upon Pretoria. But the hour was not one in
+which to say farewell. It was an hour which lived for itself, an hour
+that bore to each of us some knowledge of our liberty, and a secret
+appreciation of the duties which our Empire asked of us. We were all
+contented, happy in the knowledge that the siege was over, but imbued
+with even a greater happiness since, upon this day, her Majesty was
+sharing with us the joys of our good news. And presently the ceremony
+concluded, and for the remainder of the day we attended sports and
+organised a concert; while that night there was a dinner and a
+pyrotechnic display in Market Square. We dined and drank the Queen,
+and drinking this, streamed to the air where the rockets were already
+rushing to the _ewigkeit_ with the roar of the racing tide. And then
+beneath the steely beauty of the moonlight and the soft radiance of
+countless stars we sang "God Save the Queen" and wandered home,
+chanting as we went the strains of "Rule Britannia." Thus in a cloud
+of loyal enthusiasm were brought about the closing scenes of the Siege
+of Mafeking.
+
+[Illustration: Plan of Mafeking.]
+
+THE END
+
+
+UNWIN BROTHERS, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Siege of Mafeking (1900), by J. Angus Hamilton
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