Chapter 24 - Page 2

administrator. He met the Boer
commandos with chaff and jokes which were as disconcerting as his wire
entanglements and his rifle-pits The amazing variety of his personal
accomplishments was one of his most striking characteristics. From
drawing caricatures with both hands simultaneously, or skirt dancing
to leading a forlorn hope, nothing came amiss to him; and he had that
magnetic quality by which the leader imparts something of his virtues
to his men. Such was the man who held Mafeking for the Queen.

In a very early stage, before the formal declaration of war, the enemy
had massed several commandos upon the western border, the men being
drawn from Zeerust, Rustenburg, and Lichtenburg. Baden-Powell, with
the aid of an excellent group of special officers, who included
Colonel Gould Adams, Lord Edward Cecil, the soldier son of England's
Premier, and Colonel Hore, had done all that was possible to put the
place into a state of defence. In this he had immense assistance from
Benjamin Weil, a well known South African contractor, who had shown
great energy in provisioning the town. On the other hand, the South
African Government displayed the same stupidity or treason which had
been exhibited in the case of Kimberley, and had met all demands for
guns and reinforcements with foolish doubts as to the need of such
precautions. In the endeavour to supply these pressing wants the
first small disaster of the campaign was encountered. 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. It was a small affair, but
it derived importance from being the first blood shed and the first
tactical success of the war.

The garrison of the town, whose fame will certainly live in the
history of South Africa, contained no regular soldiers at all with the
exception of the small group of excellent officers. They consisted of
irregular troops, three hundred and forty of the Protectorate
Regiment, one hundred and seventy Police, and two hundred volunteers,
made up of that singular mixture of adventurers, younger sons, broken
gentlemen, and irresponsible sportsmen who have always been the
voortrekkers of the British Empire. These men were of the same stamp
as those other admirable bodies of natural fighters who did so well in
Rhodesia, in Natal, and in the Cape. With them there was associated in
the defence the Town Guard, who included the able-bodied shopkeepers,
business men, and residents, the whole