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.
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