Wilson, With the Flag to Pretoria. Chapter XXVI. The Seige of Mafeking.

COLONEL BADEN-POWELL AND HIS MILITARY AND CIVIL STAFFS.
Top row (reading from left to right): Major Panzera (commanding the Artillery), Captain Ryan (Commissariat Officer), Captain Greener, Lord Edward Cecil (Chief Staff Officer), Captain Wilson, A. D.C., Lieutenant, the Hon. A. Hanbury-Tracy (Press Censor, Military Intelligence Officer). Captain Cowan (Bechuanaland Rifles). Second row: Major Godley (commanding Western Outposts), Colonel Vvyan, Mr. C. Bell (Civil Commissioner), Colonel Baden-Powell, Mr. Whiteley (Mayor), Colonel Hore (in command of the Western Fort), Dr. Hayes (Principal Medical Officer). In front: Lieutenant Moncrieff.

[Photo by E. J. Ross]

Mafeking’s Defences and Defenders.
WHEN we left Mafeking, in Chapter III, that beleaguered town had defied the Boers for a month. Information, which has become available since the siege ended, and which was not likely to be allowed to pass through the British lines while Boers were still surrounding the town, has enhanced the brilliance of the early days of this defence. It is now known that at any time in these first weeks the place might have been rushed by 2,000 determined men. The terrible mines which Baden-Powell professed to have planted all round the town were in real truth "scarcely capable of damaging a cow," as one of the garrison writes.

Mafeking's Artillery
On the extreme right is "Lord Nelson," and next is
"The Wolf," the little howitzer made on the scene.

The artillery at the disposal of the defence was miserable, both in quantity and quality—a good sample of the carelessness and want of foresight of the British authorities. There were four muzzle-loading 7-pounders with worn rifling, dilapidated carriages, and rusty elevating gear; a Nordenfeldt machine gun, and a Hotchkiss gun.

"LORD NELSON." Dated 1770.
This was an old gun presented to Montsioa, father of Wessels,
the Kaffir chief. It had lain buried for twenty years, but at the commencement of the siege was unearthed and handed over to
the military by Wessels, and by them used throughout their later operations. It was a smooth-bore muzzle-loader, over a century
old, firing round balls, and, curiously enough, the initials of the founders stamped upon it were "B. P. & Co." The Boers did not
relish its missiles, which from every point of view were "uncanny."

Presently to these was added a venerable specimen of smooth-bore cannon, dating back to last century, and firing round cannon balls. Such was the equipment with which the progressive British nation supplied Colonel Baden-Powell for the encounter with the high velocity breech-loaders of the retrograde and stupid Boer. Yet the more inadequate the means, the greater the glory of the defence. On the other side were the very best and most modern guns, and here, as at Ladysmith and Kimberley, had these guns been intelligently used, and their fire concentrated upon one point to prepare the way for an assault, the town must have fallen.

The garrison of Mafeking was composed of the most heterogeneous elements agreeing only in this respect—in the possession of fine physique and of the high courage which is the inheritance of the British race. It included the mounted men of the Protectorate Regiment, sturdy, intelligent volunteers; two detachments of Cape Police; a detachment of British South African Police; the Bechuanaland Rifles; the Railway Employees, who were enrolled and armed; and the other whites in the town, who formed the Town Guard. The total strength at the outset did not exceed 1,200 men, and was rapidly reduced by casualties. Surprising to many of the British officers was the high efficiency of this curious medley of odds and ends. Even the Town Guard, without discipline and training, shaped admirably, enduring terrible hardships in the trenches—scorched by the sun in the day, shivering in the cold of the frosty nights, and in rainstorms, which were frequent, holding the lines in a foot or more of slimy mud. For water, the town depended on wells near the Molopo River, which ran through the lines; the river itself was undrinkable, but it served for washing. The total civilian population in Mafeking included 700 English and Dutch women and children, who were placed in the women's laager, under protection of the Red Cross flag, and no less than 7,000 Kaffirs of the Baralong tribe and refugees from the Rand, who were allowed to take no part in the fighting. These Kaffirs were a most serious encumbrance and source of danger. Though they loved the Boers less than the English, it was always possible that they might turn against the latter, if they saw any prospect of an ultimate Boer victory. The enemy steadily shelled the Kaffir "stad" with the express object of irritating the Baralongs against the British, who would naturally come to be considered as the ultimate cause of all the suffering.

The Boer tactics were to bombard the town with long-range guns, while slowly pushing trenches forward towards the British positions. As the sap drew nearer and nearer the garrison hourly dreaded an assault. It has been reported that the Cronjes were eager to deliver an attack, and that they telegraphed to Mr. Kruger that they could easily carry the place by hand-to-hand fighting. But Mr. Kruger, with a strange want of prescience and an utter ignorance of the immense importance of time, replied that an assault was not worth the lives of fifty burghers, and that Mafeking was certain to succumb to the mere process of blockade. Never was a more disastrous mistake made. The garrison under Baden-Powell displayed a capacity of endurance which must have been as astonishing to the Boers as it was to the anxious spectators in England; and the enemy, who had at the outset of the war boasted that in two days they would breakfast in Mafeking, saw ten weeks pass without the place being appreciably nearer its fall.

Leisurely Bombardment.
The bombardment was at first conducted with the same curious regularity as at Ladysmith. "At dawn we had half a dozen shells," says Mr. Neilly, a correspondent imprisoned in the town, “at luncheon time three, at 4.30 another half dozen, and at 7.45 one for good night.” “The people became so used to the times at which the gun was fired that I heard of some who timed their watches by the fire, and occasionally, when somebody heard the gun, he would say: 'There's the afternoon gun. My! I must hurry up. 'I’m ten minutes late already for an appointment I had.'" After a time, however, the enemy saw the mistake of their shelling at fixed hours, and fired more irregularly. Generally speaking, the bombardment was most ineffective. Mafeking was built of soft, sun-dried bricks, through which shells would pass without bursting. The roofs were of corrugated iron, and the houses much scattered. Bomb-proofs had been prepared, and in these the people took refuge when the Boer shells were falling; yet complete safety was not to be had, though the number of casualties among the whites was not large until men grew careless. Here, as in the other sieges, it was noted as curious that the Dutch and their sympathisers suffered most.

The heavy 6-inch gun, with its 94-lb. shell, at Mafeking, as at Kimberley, was most feared, but whereas Kimberley had to endure only a few days' shelling with its ponderous projectiles, Mafeking was deluged with them for months. Efforts were made to annoy the Boer gunners by "sniping," with considerable success. At times the enemy fired incendiary shells, but these caused no serious damage. Signals were arranged by which the inhabitants were informed, not only when the big gun had been fired, but also the direction in which its ugly muzzle pointed. Here, as at Kimberley and Ladysmith, the enemy from time to time shelled the hospital, the convent, in which the brave Irish Sisters of Mercy held their ground undismayed, and the women's laager, notwithstanding the Red Cross flags which flew above and in spite of Colonel Baden-Powell's frequent remonstrances, General Snyman in this matter sinned more than Cronje, and the feeling in Mafeking against the Boers grew exceedingly bitter in consequence.

On November 30, there was hot rifle firing on either side, but the only result was a prodigious waste of ammunition, by which one or two Boers were wounded. The British trenches were being steadily pushed out to meet the enemy's approach, for Baden-Powell, with rare judgment, saw that the best way to cow the Boers was to show them that the garrison was ready to take the offensive and would not sit still to be attacked.

The Trenches Flooded by a Storm.
On December 5, one of the most tremendous storms experienced in South Africa passed over the town. It opened with a terrific display of thunder and lightning, after which the rain descended in a veritable Niagara, flooding the trenches and bombproofs in a few minutes and driving all into the open. Had the Boers seized the opportunity and attacked, the drowned out garrison could have offered little resistance; as it was, the trenches had to be pumped out by the town fire-engine or baled with buckets. But the chance, like so many others, was allowed by the enemy to slip past unimproved. The soaked garrison stood to arms all the night in the awful slime of the trenches, and the Boers contented themselves with firm purposeless and useless volleys; yet the end of day brought indescribable relief to all who knew the danger.

Disquieting Rumours.
In these days rumours of British defeats began to reach and depress the garrison. It was known, more or less certainly, that in Natal affairs had gone badly, but General Snyman professed in his harangues to the Boers that the British now held only two points in South Africa, Capetown and Mafeking; and though, of course, these absurd fables were not credited, it was thought that they had some foundation in fact. To diminish the elation of the burghers Baden-Powell prepared a proclamation to the Boers, and with amusing audacity sent copies of it to the various Boer positions. It warned the enemy that there was no chance of foreign intervention, and asked them humorously whether it was worth their while to attempt to take a town which, if taken, would be of no use to them; adding that Mafeking could never be captured by "sitting still and looking at it," as the garrison had ample supplies. However, if they would go home to their farms by the 14th, their misdeeds should be forgiven. This piece of banter was not altogether appreciated by the Boers, though many of them confessed to the British flags of truce that they were thoroughly sick of the siege.