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cer. For the nurses and doctors, who work day and night, the authorities endeavoured to provide slightly better rations than those available for the general community. Our sources of supply have been chiefly through Mr. Weil, who had a large stock on hand for the provisioning of the garrison, until the contract terminated at the beginning of February. Since then supplies have been collected from various merchants, storekeepers, and private persons, and stored in the army Service Corps dep?t, and from the original Army Service Corps stock, of which forage and oats formed a great proportion. Fresh beef is obtained by purchase from a private individual named White, and in a lesser degree from the natives.
"Breadstuffs are obtained, like groceries, by commandeering the stocks of various merchants and private persons."
The same correspondent, alas! remarks in a despatch of somewhat later date that "excellent brawn is now being made, and is eaten by both whites and blacks. It is made from ox and horse hides." He adds with a brevity which has a good deal of pathos and humour in it, that "the garrison is very cheerful, very dry, and very hungry." Most of the necessarily brief despatches from Mafeking in the most trying days of the siege have a spice of humour and a good deal of pathos in them. On May 3rd, Lady Sarah Wilson cabled the following laconic message to Lady Georgiana Curzon:--"Mafeking, May 3rd.--Breakfast consisted of horse sausages; lunch, minced mule and curried locusts. Well." "There is great demand for horse side and brawn," says Reuter's special correspondent on May 5th. But perhaps the most significant, and certainly the most impressive, message of all was that of Major Baillie, dated May 1st, which will surely be remembered when many incidents of the Boer War are forgotten:--
"This morning the Boers attacked us.
"The result was as usual.
"There is an aching void here.
"Pass the loaf."
Those of us who sit at home at our entire or comparative ease can scarcely comprehend the full meaning of these messages, nor of the heroism of the men who, sorely tried by hunger and disease, were keeping up the flag with such stern, immovable determination. In the town, hunger and sickness; outside the town, an enemy so bitterly unscrupulous as to observe no civilized conditions of warfare, and whose leaders did not scruple to fire on women, children, and sick men--here was a situation in which surely nobody but the most courageous could have preserved a cheerful confidence. How that confidence struck Baden-Powell may be judged from the despatch which he sent to Lord Roberts on the 200th day of the siege. "After 200 days' siege," he said, "I desire to bring to your lordship's notice the exceptionally good spirit of loyalty that pervades all classes of this garrison. The patience of everybody in Mafeking in making the best of things under the long strain of anxiety, hardship, and privation is beyond all praise, and a revelation to me. The men, half of whom are unaccustomed to the use of arms, have adapted themselves to their duties with the greatest zeal, readiness, and pluck, and the devotion of the women is remarkable. With such a spirit our organization runs like clockwork, and I have every hope it will pull us successfully through."
THE LAST DAYS
About the end of April a new Boer commandant appeared on the scene at Mafeking in the person of Sarel Eloff, a near kinsman of President Kruger. He was the fifth Transvaal officer to be placed in charge of the Boer attack, and it was rumoured that he was specially ordered to succeed where the elder and younger Cronjes, Snyman, and Botha had failed. But the siege had now been in progress for seven months, and the Boers were in no better position than at first. So far as the actual taking of the town was concerned they were in a much worse position, for Baden-Powell's watchfulness and daring had driven back their lines, wrecked a good many of their works, and done more damage to their forces than they had succeeded in effecting amongst the garrison. From a military point of view there was now little, if any, advantage likely to accrue to the Boers by this capture of Mafeking. If Cronje had reached the town by assault during the first few days of the siege he would have been able to command a large stretch of country, and in a position to dominate Rhodesia, but the lapse of several months had changed everything, and from the tactician's point of view there was nothing to be gained by the fall of Mafeking. Nevertheless the Boers continued to surround the place, and were able on more than one occasion to drive back the relieving force under Colonel Plumer, who advanced at various times to within a very near distance of the town. What the feelings of the besieged, weary with constant watching and weak with hunger and privation, must have been when it was known that their would-be succourers had been within six miles of them, and had then been obliged to fall back, may be better imagined than described.
"He is a wonderfully tireless man, ever on the alert, ever with one eye on the enemy and the other divided between the town and that nightmare, the native stadt. Some say that he never sleeps, and I half believe the statement. I have frequently seen him myself at the peep-of-day crossing the veldt on his return to town after visiting all the works, with the customary tune on his lips; and half an hour afterwards he was on the roof with his glasses glued to his eyes, having an early look at the enemy. Later on he takes a constitutional walk up and down before his quarters like one doing sentry-go. An hour or so later he is on the stoep writing his diary, generally with his left hand, for with his wonderful foresight he has recognized that in pursuing his trade he may lose his right, and he does not wish to be left in the lurch. Again he is on the roof once more, having another look at the enemy, and if everything is particularly quiet, he trusts the look-out men and goes to his nook to dip into a novel or have a stretch under his mosquito curtain. I always know that he is there as I pass when I see a pair of tan boots sticking out.
"He spends the rest of the day doing a thousand and one things, receiving reports, adjusting differences, learning from his staff all they know, powwowing with Lord Edward Cecil, his chief staff officer, discovering how much food we have from the D.A.A.G., and suggesting how it may be conserved, and how much per head shall be served out to each soul under his care--all the time with an eye fixed upon Snyman and his horde, reading their thoughts, knowing what they are about to do, and planning a checkmate. In the evening he goes up to the hospital to inquire after his wounded--he never misses this visit--and if a victim of the siege is to be buried it is ten to one that we see him at the graveside. The Colonel trusts his command, but like the good general that he is, leaves nothing to chance, and always has the concentrated knowledge of every officer in his head. Many stories are told by our sentries of one who silently steals out of the blackness of the night and is on them before they have time to challenge. He asks a question or gives a suggestion and a cheery word, and then departs as silently as he came. They even tell of a bearded stranger dressed in grey tweed who has the stature of B.-P., and strolls around the works and makes such remarks as 'Keep a keen eye in that direction; you never know what may be stirring or where they are.' He goes away and they know that he is the commander. Napoleon himself never kept keener vigil than B.-P., or had a greater grasp of what was going on around him. Added to this night-and-day round, our Colonel even directs the other force away up north that he never sees, yet every movement of which he is acquainted with. Nevertheless, the strain, the anxiety that must be there, despite the external show of light-heartedness, the constant watchfulness, and the worries connected with the interior economy of the town, would have soured and broken down and turned grey-headed many another man. But B.-P.'s temperament preserves him, and to-day he is as fresh, as keen, and as full of vigour as when he started in October."
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