A. Hamilton

“ It is good sometimes to impress upon the Boers the uselessness of their efforts. Out here in these brickfields we appear to be upon the edge of a new world, with the limits of the old one just below. Mafeking itself is only 1,700 yards distant, but the undulating ground, the rocky ridges, the simmering heat, and the mirage give rise to the impression that the town, of which the brickfields is the outpost, is many miles away. We live a peaceful, almost serene existence, disturbed only by the hum of passing bullets. ”

“ Nevertheless, if Mafeking be not relieved before the Christmas season, the hour of our existence will be an hour of travail, impressed with the echoes of much suffering and saddened by the memories of many who will be dead. But for the time we will ignore the gravity in our situation, mock at our splendid isolation, our scanty resources, since to dwell too long upon the guilty splendour of the naked truth is to beget an earnestness which will depress our spirits, allowing us to read out the future of the siege in words of deadly omen. ”

“ Men remember where they stood when some particular house was shattered, others recall their proximity to a bursting shell, whose explosion tore up the roadway. It is these things which will never be effaced, since they are the impressions which have struck deep down upon the mind, leaving an afterglow. But as a rule we keep our cares, feeling that so many people have so much else to worry them, recognising also that upon one and each of us the siege hangs sorely. There can be no doubt that it has left its mark, not only upon the town, but upon the garrison. ”

“ ON THE ORANGE FREE STATE BORDER The Camp, De Aar,
September 23rd, 1899.
Africa was streaming past the dusty windows of the railway carriage, presenting an endless spectacle of flat, depressed-looking country, with here and there a hut, here and there a native. I am in the earliest stages of a journey which should lead to Ramathlabama, and the command of Colonel Baden-Powell. Slowly and with much effort the train drags itself along; the road is steep, the carriages hot and uncomfortable, and there is nothing to attract attention, nothing to fill the emptiness of the mind. ”

“ Morning and night we gird our loins for the attack, but night and morning we awaken to a sense of infinite disappointment, yet when it comes they may expect an avalanche, and, in result, an overthrow.
Day is dreary, sun-swept, dusty, teased with insects, and infinitely wearisome, but with the coming of night, the fragrant coolness of the air, the soft lisping of the evening breeze bringeth contentment. Each evening, when the peace of the camp be settled and the men resting, there is always an outpost standing within a few hundred yards of the Boer camp. ”

“ Infantry and musketry drill have not existed for the town of diamonds; they are for the Cape Police, for the Mounted Rifles, for Imperial troops; but for those who are regular in their mining, but irregular in their drill, there is none of it. These heroes shake with terror in private, but they gnash their teeth with impotent valour in public; at heart they are rank cowards, for the most part leaving to the few decently spirited the duties of volunteer defence, and to the soldiery and constabulary the rigours of the coming battle. ”

“ We have had the wager of life against life, the angry, turbulent crash of fierce-blooded men, fighting under the shadow of death, with their emotions strained as they struggled in the very atmosphere of passion. And it has done us good to see how reliable the force has been about which so much doubt existed. Unlike the Imperial service, these irregular corps act as much for the unit as they do for the mass, as animated by terror or by valour, by a fatal despair, or by a blooded triumph, (p. 96) they fight for an individual supremacy. ”

“ In a little the Major bustled up all eagerness and fluff and worry, and then as the guns trailed behind us and the little column moved on, it seemed that every step we advanced further would have brought the Boers tumbling about our ears. Much as one creeps about a house at night treading on every board which creaks in preference to those which do not creak, so was the march of the column. As the guns came on they seemed to find stones everywhere. Wheels fell into snug hollows, jammed in ragged holes, and bumped with such heaviness that the night was made hideous by the echo of their rumble. ”

“ But if there be little in the immediate situation to alarm us, there is behind the rose and silver of the clouds a dark spot, a spot which growing bigger, ever bigger as the days go by, implies that signs of the times are not wanting to prove that our official optimism, forecasting the siege as but of three weeks' duration, is based upon anything less secure than the imaginings of a man who, knowing the hollowness of his words in his own heart, seeks but to cheer the hearts of the garrison. ”

“ In the situation itself there is nothing to write about, it so constantly repeats itself until the absolute monotony of the days settles down upon the nerves, depressing one's spirit like a wet blanket. The Boers still fire at us, and we still sit tight, nursing our hopes by a sublime confidence in the relief column. If we be sceptical at times, we endeavour not to take our scepticism too seriously, and we talk airily about the date by which the van will have arrived here. But in reality there are but few people who believe in the practical existence of any relief column. ”

“ The guns took up their position to the left of the column, the hundred men lying in extended order across the veldt. Before us there was the ridge of rising veldt and scrub, and so we rested, fretting with curious impatience at the signs of life which began to animate the enemy's camp. When we stood up we could see the dull white of their waggons bent in position for their laager; we could see the fires within, we could hear in the still silence of early dawn the chopping of wood as the axe fell upon the logs. ”

“ It is almost impossible to kill a Dutchman on the field, since they are as pertinacious and industrious as beetles in seeking cover. We saw two waggon loads pass from their firing-line to their laager, but I am inclined to doubt if we killed and wounded forty of the enemy. To have scored that number in the face of the most remarkable fusilade of bullet and shell which was directed against the fort is a wonderful feat, since it should not be forgotten that to every shot which we fired, there were at least four hundred barrels emptied at our marksmen in return. ”

“ 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 shell 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 fortitude and most stoical resolution. ”

“ The Boers continue to shell 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 shell fire, but the daily and constant presence of exploding shells 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 illustrated by a longer list of fatalities through one shell claiming half a dozen victims. ”

“ Possibly from the Boer trenches Mafeking may look an armoured citadel. Possibly it is the sturdy appearance of our ramparts which have caused the Boers to bring their heavy artillery to bear upon our mud brick walls. Yet there is humour in this situation, since the gravity of our position accentuates the grim travesty of our defences. We have not so much as appears, and it would be unfair to give such a moment as the present the correct estimate of dummy camps which have been built, dummy earthworks which have been thrown up, of dummy guns which are in position. ”

“ He was lithe, supple and active, and as he stood there with the whitewashed walls of the gaol behind him, with his companions around him, and a guard upon each of the four walls which enclosed the courtyard, an air of romance clung to him and he might have been for the moment some creation of Anthony Hope, casting in his mind for some entrancing but desperate situation. He puffed my cigarette vigorously and began a conversation. "You know," said he, "I don't like horseflesh." "I am sorry," said I, "but you should have taken Mafeking before." ”

“ With the Boers behind them, with the Boers flanking them, with the Boers in front of them, with three hundred of the enemy within a circumference of seventy yards, what more could an honourable man and a gallant officer do than accept the responsibility of his situation and save the lives of his men by complying unconditionally with the demand of the enemy? Thus did Colonel Hore surrender. ”

“ 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 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 shelling 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 shell 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. ”

“ We are no longer surprised at the enemy; they seem to take the siege as a joke, but it is a comedy which has a tragic lining. We have astounding spirit; there is no question of the gravity of our situation; there is no doubt that if we were to relax our vigilance for a moment, if we were to withdraw an outpost, diminish the establishment of some trench, the Boers would be in upon us before the garrison had realised that any such alteration in the defences had taken place. ”

“ The breezes of the veldt are warm and gentle, impregnated with the fresh fragrances of the Molopo, although, as he walks with rapid, almost running, footsteps, leaving the black blur of the town for the arid and stony areas to the west, a new wind meets him—a wind that is clear and keen and dry, the wind of the wastes that wanders for ever over the monotonous sands of the desert. ”

“ But, doubtless, those people who send us ridiculous messages of congratulation may think that this is, after all, but the mere detail of the siege—the side issue which should be expected, and which should in any case be endured with a fine toleration. That is all right; we do not mind the bread, we do not mind the aroma of the soup-kitchen, but we do object to preposterous messages of congratulation telling us "the siege is over," at the very moment when the enemy is shelling us simultaneously from five different points. ”

“ To invade our territory—it will sound so well round the camp fires of the Boer laagers—a mere scamper across the frontier, a pell-mell, hell-for-leather retreat to their own lines, and the manœuvres would be executed felicitously and with every sign of success. But such a contingency is submerged under an accumulation of theories and official explanations each of which deny the possibility of the Boer taking upon himself the responsibility of rushing the situation. Moreover, it does not seem that the Boers require much instigation to attempt such an act. ”

“ For the most part, therefore, we are no better off than we were, since those natives who escaped invariably return to Mafeking.
With the good news which we have received, a slightly better tone of feeling would seem to be about the community. We are simple people for the present, living as we do under the rigours of Martial Law, but we have such genuine faith in the supremacy of our flag, that now that we have heard of the general movement of troops, we are infinitely happier and inclined to forget for the moment the trials and difficulties of our position. ”