The Siege Of Mafeking (1900) Part 5

But how wearily the time pa.s.ses; 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 a.r.s.enal in Pretoria. The Boers outnumber us in men and in artillery, and not a day has pa.s.sed since the siege began that they have not thrown shrapnel and common sh.e.l.l, 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 sh.e.l.l us; they cut our water off, and raid our cattle; they make life h.e.l.l, 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 a.s.sumes 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 towns.h.i.+p. 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 sh.e.l.ls from two nine-pound high-velocity Krupps. In a very short s.p.a.ce 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 superst.i.tion 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 pa.s.s.

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

Sh.e.l.lS AND SLAUGHTER

_November 30th, 1899._

The Boers continue to sh.e.l.l 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 sh.e.l.l fire, but the daily and constant presence of exploding sh.e.l.ls 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 ill.u.s.trated by a longer list of fatalities through one sh.e.l.l claiming half a dozen victims. Europeans perhaps, are less careless of the consequences of sh.e.l.l 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 sh.e.l.l 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 sh.e.l.l 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 fort.i.tude 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 a.s.sist him. When the gaze of the curious is turned upon his mangled and wounded form he attempts to laugh, makes every effort to a.s.sist 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 sh.e.l.l had first struck in Market Square before delivering its full effect upon the windows of the local chemist. Amid the splintered gla.s.s and the consequent disorder of the chemist's shop lay the writhing figure of an unhappy native. As an ill.u.s.tration of the appalling wounds which these sh.e.l.ls inflict, I am purposely dilating upon this very pitiful scene. As the sh.e.l.l 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 gla.s.s 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 sh.e.l.l, and so near had its unfortunate victim been to the galvanised iron wall, that as body and sh.e.l.l 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 sh.e.l.l, 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 sh.e.l.l screaming its pa.s.sage 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 sh.e.l.l fire, much less employ their leisure in endeavouring to unload those of the enemy's sh.e.l.ls 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 sh.e.l.l 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 sh.e.l.l 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Effects of Sh.e.l.l 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 sh.e.l.ls 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. Sh.e.l.ls 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 quant.i.ty 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 sh.e.l.l-fire. The Mauser perforates, the Martini splinters, the sh.e.l.l pulverises. The point of entry of the Mauser bullet is somewhat smaller than the circ.u.mference of a threepenny piece, and if it pa.s.ses 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 pa.s.ses 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 sh.e.l.l-fire, adding to that account, however, the fact that the merest fragment of a sh.e.l.l is as capable as the sh.e.l.l itself, of making most terrible injuries.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Effects of Sh.e.l.l 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 ma.s.ses 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 sh.e.l.ls 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. .h.i.therto 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 a.s.sistance 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 ma.s.ses 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 ma.s.ses of vapour and fantastic columns of smoke. The tumbling volumes of mist and the grey-black ma.s.ses 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 s.h.i.+fted the gloomy ma.s.ses 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 relations.h.i.+p to the two Protectorates, Bechua.n.a.land 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 Bechua.n.a.land and a.s.sisting 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 custodians.h.i.+p an open line of communication, they would, at the same time, have been free to utilise, in a combined and united ma.s.s, 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 a.s.sisted 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 Bechua.n.a.land. 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 wors.h.i.+pped the Golden Calf, and to see Colonel Baden-Powell and Colonel h.o.r.e 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 ama.s.sed 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 h.o.a.rd of shekels and trade with him for his cattle. It is a weird and motley crowd that const.i.tutes Mafeking: disgusted with Imperial government, wis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sionate 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 friends.h.i.+p, they have consciously or unconsciously a.s.similated 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 s.e.x by the Boers, despite the fact that they might have made her position somewhat unpleasant, since she had quite voluntarily taken up active partic.i.p.ation 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 pa.s.sing days have not borne what we have now come to regard as their full quota of sh.e.l.ls 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 sh.e.l.ling 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 sh.e.l.l 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 flouris.h.i.+ng 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 sh.e.l.ling 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 sh.e.l.l 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 antic.i.p.ating from the fas.h.i.+on 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 pract.i.tioners, 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 sh.e.l.l 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 pa.s.sing 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 ma.s.s 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, pa.s.sing 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 was.h.i.+ng clothes upon the banks of the Molopo, when a flight of one-pound steel-pointed Maxim sh.e.l.ls 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-gla.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed, 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 a.s.sembled 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 s.h.i.+rt-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