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"Well, I must say!" she exclaimed at last, "I am a Sherlock Holmes and no mistake! I was so busy being clever that I never even thought of a milkman, which would have been Baden-Powell's first idea. Of all the silly things! Why on earth didn't we think of it, Prue?"
During these expeditions, by the way, Baden-Powell's wardrobe came to ignominious grief, and under the tattered breeches, the stained shirt, and the split boots, he was a mere network of holes. The ankles of his socks remained true to the end, but the rest of them, in B.-P.'s euphemistic phrase, were most delicate lace.
Even the most coddled schoolboy will appreciate the force of this comparison. To give a general idea of these cruelties we will quote a vivid passage from Baden-Powell's book, The Downfall of Prempeh: "Any great public function was seized on as an excuse for human sacrifices. There was the annual yam custom, or harvest festival, at which large numbers of victims were often offered to the gods.
Five weeks of Baden-Powell were enough for Cronje, who on November 19 trekked away to the south, leaving Snyman and 3,000 burghers to continue the siege. His self-esteem had been wounded because the walls had not immediately fallen to the sound of the big gun, and by Baden-Powell's refusal to take a serious view of the situation in the frequent communications that passed between them.
The special correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazette in Mafeking, who sent to his journal some of the most interesting letters received during the siege, bore witness to Baden-Powell's efforts in this direction. In one of his letters he said: "The Colonel does all in his power to keep up the spirits of the people.
It is not a bad ambition, I promise you, to try and be a perfect regimental officer. A party of sergeants in Baden-Powell's old regiment were once asked by a civilian whether the men liked him. There was a silence for a minute or two, and at last one of the sergeants replied, hesitatingly, "Well, no, I shouldn't say they like him"; then in a burst "why, they worship him!"
The battle of Game Tree fort, as it is called, is one of those events which thrill the heart with pride, and then at the conclusion bring tears into the eyes with the reflection that so much skill in the planning, so much valour in the execution, should be defeated by base treachery. Baden-Powell's plans for the taking of this fort were perfectly understood by his officers.
Of course the first bush passed by the battery fired the carbine, and Baden-Powell remarks of the incident, "Many a man has nearly been shot by an ass, but I claim to have been nearly shot by a mule." It is Baden-Powell's habit to keep in perfect readiness at his London house an entire kit for service abroad.
"Now I'll show you how to paint a picture," said Ruskin, and with a piece of paper on the top of his hat and B.-P.'s penny box of paints at his side he set to work, taking a little china vase for a model. Both the vase and the picture are now in the drawing-room of Mrs. Baden-Powell's London house.
Baden-Powell's familiarity with the names of his men's horses reminds one of his difficulty in swallowing horse-flesh during the hungry days with the Shangani Patrol: "It is one thing to say, 'I'll trouble you to pass the horse, please, but quite another to say, 'Give me another chunk of D15." He is a man who can grow very nearly as fond of his troop's horses as of his own.
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