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At no time can the building have laid claims to the picturesque or the beautiful, but it had one peculiarity namely, that of being the only two-storied building in Mafeking, and of standing out, a gaunt red structure, in front of the hospital, and absolutely the last building on the north-east side of the town.

We looked at it for a few moments in silence, and then Colonel Mahon said, "Well, let's be getting on"; and no one said anything more about Mafeking, but everyone thought a great deal. There was a difficulty about water, and it was finally decided to halt at midday at a point where the Molopo River curved near to the road.

"Now, what we want is a live wire, some one with imagination, some one with authority who will wake the countryside." "Looks ahead there," said Birrell, "as though it hadn't gone to bed." Before them, as on a Mafeking night, every window in Cley shone with lights. In the main street were fishermen, shopkeepers, "trippers" in flannels, summer residents.

The importance of the physical variety was only too well understood. On Monday many shells fell into the west end of the town. Our West End was not like London's; there were few houses in it, and they were unoccupied. It may have been so; but we did not believe it. There had all along been a great deal of chopping and changing anent the position of the Mafeking garrison.

We are not far from Vryburg now, and expect to enter it to-day without opposition. Another farm was burned this morning, and much ammunition destroyed. We have now got over a great and critical part of our journey, which has been admirably made through very difficult country, and we do not expect opposition until we approach Mafeking.

On October 12th, the day after the declaration of war, an armoured train conveying two 7-pounders for the Mafeking defences was derailed and captured by a Boer raiding party at Kraaipan, a place forty miles south of their destination. The enemy shelled the shattered train until after five hours Captain Nesbitt, who was in command, and his men, some twenty in number, surrendered.

I was fully determined that, having left Mafeking, where I might have been of use, I would run no risks of capture or impertinence from the burghers, who would also certainly commandeer our cart, pony, and mules. Then followed another endless night; the moon set at 1 a.m., and occasionally I was roused by the loud and continuous barking of the farm dogs.

Everyone was dog-tired, and although it was half-past five in the morning and the moon was sinking we lay down and were immediately asleep in Mafeking. We did not know it, but we were in a besieged town. Officially the relief did not take place until ten o'clock that morning, when the Boers hurried away with their last gun.

There were some, throwers of stones, searchers after a new thing on which to build a reputation, who have been preaching these many years past that the temper of England had changed, its solidity all dissolved into froth, and that a new race of neurotics was born on Mafeking night.

With the greater part of his command, the rest being sent back to hold the railway at Crocodile Pools, he withdrew to the base which he had established at Kanya; afterwards advancing to Sefetili, thirty miles from Mafeking, where he awaited the approach of Mahon's relieving column from the south.