Vigilant And Indomitable, Throwing Away
No Possible Point In The Game Which He Was Playing, The New Year
Found Him And His Hardy Garrison Sternly Determined To Keep The
Flag Flying.
January and February offer in their records that monotony of
excitement which is the fate of every besieged town.
On one day the
shelling was a little more, on another a little less. Sometimes
they escaped scatheless, sometimes the garrison found itself the
poorer by the loss of Captain Girdwood or Trooper Webb or some
other gallant soldier. Occasionally they had their little triumph
when a too curious Dutchman, peering for an instant from his cover
to see the effect of his shot, was carried back in the ambulance to
the laager. On Sunday a truce was usually observed, and the snipers
who had exchanged rifle-shots all the week met occasionally on that
day with good-humoured chaff. Snyman, the Boer General, showed none
of that chivalry at Mafeking which distinguished the gallant old
Joubert at Ladysmith. Not only was there no neutral camp for women
or sick, but it is beyond all doubt or question that the Boer guns
were deliberately turned upon the women's quarters inside Mafeking
in order to bring pressure upon the inhabitants. Many women and
children were sacrificed to this brutal policy, which must in
fairness be set to the account of the savage leader, and not of the
rough but kindly folk with whom we were fighting. In every race
there are individual ruffians, and it would be a political mistake
to allow our action to be influenced or our feelings permanently
embittered by their crimes. It is from the man himself, and not
from his country, that an account should be exacted.
The garrison, in the face of increasing losses and decreasing food,
lost none of the high spirits which it reflected from its
commander. The programme of a single day of jubilee - Heaven only
knows what they had to hold jubilee over - shows a cricket match in
the morning, sports in the afternoon, a concert in the evening, and
a dance, given by the bachelor officers, to wind up. Baden-Powell
himself seems to have descended from the eyrie from which, like a
captain on the bridge, he rang bells and telephoned orders, to
bring the house down with a comic song and a humorous recitation.
The ball went admirably, save that there was an interval to repel
an attack which disarranged the programme. Sports were zealously
cultivated, and the grimy inhabitants of casemates and trenches
were pitted against each other at cricket or football. [Footnote:
Sunday cricket so shocked Snyman that he threatened to fire upon it
if it were continued.] The monotony was broken by the occasional
visits of a postman, who appeared or vanished from the vast barren
lands to the west of the town, which could not all be guarded by
the besiegers. Sometimes a few words from home came to cheer the
hearts of the exiles, and could be returned by the same uncertain
and expensive means. The documents which found their way up were
not always of an essential or even of a welcome character. At least
one man received an unpaid bill from an angry tailor.
In one particular Mafeking had, with much smaller resources,
rivalled Kimberley. An ordnance factory had been started, formed in
the railway workshops, and conducted by Connely and Cloughlan, of
the Locomotive Department. Daniels, of the police, supplemented
their efforts by making both powder and fuses. The factory turned
out shells, and eventually constructed a 5.5-inch smooth-bore gun,
which threw a round shell with great accuracy to a considerable
range. April found the garrison, in spite of all losses, as
efficient and as resolute as it had been in October. So close were
the advanced trenches upon either side that both parties had
recourse to the old-fashioned hand grenades, thrown by the Boers,
and cast on a fishing-line by ingenious Sergeant Page, of the
Protectorate Regiment. Sometimes the besiegers and the number of
guns diminished, forces being detached to prevent the advance of
Plumer's relieving column from the north; but as those who remained
held their forts, which it was beyond the power of the British to
storm, the garrison was now much the better for the alleviation.
Putting Mafeking for Ladysmith and Plumer for Buller, the situation
was not unlike that which had existed in Natal.
At this point some account might be given of the doings of that
northern force whose situation was so remote that even the
ubiquitous correspondent hardly appears to have reached it. No
doubt the book will eventually make up for the neglect of the
journal, but some short facts may be given here of the Rhodesian
column. Their action did not affect the course of the war, but they
clung like bulldogs to a most difficult task, and eventually, when
strengthened by the relieving column, made their way to Mafeking.
The force was originally raised for the purpose of defending
Rhodesia, and it consisted of fine material pioneers, farmers, and
miners from the great new land which had been added through the
energy of Mr. Rhodes to the British Empire. Many of the men were
veterans of the native wars, and all were imbued with a hardy and
adventurous spirit. On the other hand, the men of the northern and
western Transvaal, whom they were called upon to face the burghers
of Watersberg and Zoutpansberg, were tough frontiersmen living in a
land where a dinner was shot, not bought. Shaggy, hairy,
half-savage men, handling a rifle as a mediaeval Englishman handled
a bow, and skilled in every wile of veld craft, they were as
formidable opponents as the world could show.
On the war breaking out the first thought of the leaders in
Rhodesia was to save as much of the line which was their connection
through Mafeking with the south as was possible. For this purpose
an armoured train was despatched only three days after the
expiration of the ultimatum to the point four hundred miles south
of Bulawayo, where the frontiers of the Transvaal and of
Bechuanaland join.
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