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Haig-Brown at the Charterhouse, where he first went to school, to bid his old Head a brave and cheerful farewell. And what was more English, what more typical of the public-school man, than the letter B.-P. sent to England from bombarded Mafeking, saying that he had been looking up old Carthusians to join him in a dinner on Founder's Day?
The main Army changed front as soon as Pretoria was reached and faced to the east in the direction of the retreating Transvaal Government. Its line of communication became a prolongation of its front; its left flank towards the north was open; and on its rear was the unsubdued country west of the capital in the direction of Mafeking and Vryburg.
Colonel Ferreira was at the head of a commando at Mafeking. Paul Dietzch, the military secretary of General Meyer, fought under the British flag in the Gaika and several other native wars.
"The worst of it is," said he, "whichever side beats it's destruction to royalties. I lost a clean thousand on Spion Kop and I can tell you I didn't recover much on Mafeking, though I worked Tommy Atkins for all he was worth. This year my sales have dropped from fifty to thirty thousand. I can't stand many more of these reverses." He paused, dubious, between two entrées.
Individuals living miles apart asserted that the missile had seemed to shoot past their ears. Yet one shell had caused all the tumult. The awful whiz was repeated again and again. The great six-inch gun from Mafeking had started its work of destruction. The crisis had come. The last and bloodiest act of the tragedy had begun with no knowledge on our side that it was the last, to sustain us.
The Boers had brought an enormous gun across from Pretoria, throwing a 96-pound shell, and this, with many smaller pieces, played upon the town. The result was as futile as our own artillery fire has so often been when directed against the Boers. As the Mafeking guns were too weak to answer the enemy's fire, the only possible reply lay in a sortie, and upon this Colonel Powell decided.
Before he sent out a party detailed for a night attack that might easily go astray, he bethought himself of the device by which a ship is often guided into her haven, and hung up two lamps in the town as leading lights across the veld. Cronje soon found that Mafeking was not an easy prey.
We were not so far away from Orange River, where thousands of troops had been massing for weeks. We were not so far out of the way as Mafeking. Nor were we like the defenders of Ladysmith entombed within towering kopjes. No; to snap our bonds was a relatively easy task. Little provision had been made for a prolonged investment, and we had fifty thousand stomachs to cater for. So much was plain.
Keeley doing in Mafeking? Was he fighting for the English? How many head of cattle had they on the farm? And so on ad libitum. Mrs. Keeley, however, knew her friends well, and was quite capable of dealing with them, so they probably spent an unprofitable day. On another occasion an English farmer named Leipner looked in, and gave us some information about Vryburg.
Another of our circle was Major Hamilton Gould Adams, Resident Commissioner of the Bechuanaland Protectorate, who commanded the town guard, representing the civil as opposed to the military interests. In contrast to the usual practice, these departments worked perfectly smoothly together at Mafeking.
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