Hunting the boar takes place early in the morning and again in the evening, so that men find themselves with nothing to do for the greater part of the day. This time is usually spent in the tent sketching, dozing, and reading, with occasional "goes" of claret cup. But it is characteristic of Baden-Powell that he should give useful advice concerning these waste hours. "If you prefer not to waste this time altogether," he says, "it is a good practice to take a few books and dictionary of any foreign language you may wish to be learning." Again, his character as a thoughtful man may be seen in the warning he gives novices against ill-treating villagers, or allowing the shikaris to do so. "Shouting and cursing at a coolie already dumbfoundered at the very sight of a white man is not the way to clear his understanding." His remark that native servants under cover of their master's prestige will frequently tyrannise over the villagers reminds me of a story which I cannot forbear to tell. A bridge had been thrown over a river in some outlandish part of India, and his work done, the Englishman in charge was returning to more civilised regions. Just before turning his back on the scene of his labours he inquired of a villager whether he was pleased with the bridge. The man expressed voluble admiration for the sahib's great skill, but lamented the high toll that was charged for crossing the bridge. "Toll!" exclaimed the Briton, "why, there's no toll at all; the bridge is free to everybody." But the native still protesting that a charge was made, and saying that a notice to that effect was written up in big English letters, the engineer went down to the bridge himself to investigate the mystery. There he discovered his own servant sitting at the receipt of custom, with a flaming advertisement of Beecham's Pills pasted on to a board over his head, to which he pointed as his authority when questioned by rebellious natives.

Baden-Powell tells an amusing story of an impromptu boar hunt. "At a grand field-day at Delhi, in the presence of all the foreign delegates, in 1885, a boar suddenly appeared upon the scene and charged a Horse Artillery gun, effectually stopping it in its advance at a gallop by throwing down two of the horses. The headquarters staff and the foreign officers were spectators of this deed, and hastened to sustain the credit of the Army by seizing lances from their orderlies and dashing off in pursuit of the boar, who was now cantering off to find more batteries on which to work his sweet will. The staff, however, were too quick for him, and, after a good run and fight, he fell a victim to their attentions, amidst a chorus of vivas, sacres, and houplas."

The pig is a born fighter. From his early infancy he learns the use of butting, and perceives, at an age when civilised piggies are just beginning to root up one's orchard, that his growing tusks are meant for other uses than those of mere captivation. Little "squeakers" have been watched by B.-P. having a regular set-to together, while the older members of their family sat in a pugilistic ring grinning encouragement. Once Baden-Powell managed to secure a baby pig, and kept him in his compound, just as he had kept rabbits and guinea-pigs in England. To watch this squeaker practising "jinking" from a tree ("jinking" is "pig-sticking" for jibbing), and charging ferociously at an old stump, was one of our hero's pet amusements for many weeks.

Although dogs are not regularly used in hunting the wild boar they are sometimes employed for scouting in a particularly thick jungle, and Baden-Powell frequently went to work of this kind with a half-bred fox-terrier. He regards as one of the joys of true sport the bending of animals' wills to his own, and while in this respect the horse ranks highest in his estimation, he is always glad to work with a keen dog. Beetle, the fox-terrier, was just such a dog as Baden-Powell would like; he was quick, full of intelligence, a complete stranger to fear, and moreover he had an individuality of his own. When B.-P. started off for the haunt of his quarry, Beetle would sit with an air of great dignity in the front of the saddle, keeping a sharp look-out for signs of pig. At a likely spot the little dog would jump nimbly from the saddle and plunge boldly into the jungle. Then a sharp yap would reach the ears of B.-P., then a smothered growl, a crashing of twigs and branches, and at last, with a floundering dash, out came the boar, struggling into his stride with Beetle at his heels. "In the run which followed," says Baden-Powell, "the little dog used to tail along after the hunt, and, straining every sense of sight and hearing as well as of smell to keep to the line, always managed to be in at the death, in time to hang on to the ear of a charging boar, or to apply himself to the back end of one who preferred sulking in a bush." And in the end it was a change of climate, at Natal, that killed the gallant-hearted Beetle. He died with a tattered ear, a drooping eyelid, an enlarged foot, and twelve scars on his game little body—all honourable mementos of innumerable fights with the dreaded boar.

As showing Baden-Powell's prowess as a hunter we may mention some of the stuffed animals in the hall of his mother's house, all of which have fallen to our hero: Black Bucks, Ravine Deer, Gnu, Inyala, Eland, Jackal, Black Bear, Hippopotamus (a huge skull), Lion, Tiger, and Hog Deer.



CHAPTER VII

SCOUT

All hardy exercise is good for a soldier, but in pig-sticking Baden-Powell found a sport which, in addition to its effect upon the nerves and sinews, gives a man what is called a "stalker's eye," and that, says B.-P., is par excellence the soldier's eye. It was this that made B.-P. an enthusiastic hunter of the wild boar. "Without doubt," he exclaims, "the constant and varied exercise of the inductive reasoning powers called into play in the pursuit must exert a beneficial effect on the mind, and the actual pleasure of riding and killing a boar is doubly enhanced by the knowledge that he has been found by the fair and sporting exercise of one's own bump of 'woodcraft.' The sharpness of intellect which we are wont to associate with the detective is nothing more than the result of training that inductive reasoning, which is almost innate in the savage. To the child of the jungle the ground with its signs is at once his book, his map, and his newspaper. Remember the volume of meaning contained in the single print of Friday's foot on Crusoe's beach." And so he advises officers in India to go with a native tracker to the jungle and watch him and learn from him "the almost boundless art of deducing and piecing together correctly information to be gathered from the various signs found." The importance of tracking, and the art of it, is shown in an interesting story which B.-P. tells, a story which demonstrates the close relationship of hunter and scout. A sportsman in India was out tiger-shooting early one morning, with two professional trackers walking in front of his elephant, and the usual company of beaters behind. As they went along, the fresh pugs of a tiger were seen on the ground, but the professional trackers passed on without so much as a sign of having noticed the spoor. In a minute the beaters were up with the professionals, asking, with Asiatic irony, if they had eyes in their professional heads. To which one of the trackers merely replied, "Idiots! at what time do rats run about?" And then the humbled coolies went back to look at the spoor again, and there they saw, after a close scrutiny, the delicate tracing of a little field-rat's feet over the mighty pugs of Stripes. This rat only comes out of its hole early in the night, and retires long before the Eastern day begins, so that several hours had elapsed since the tiger journeyed that way, and the professional was a better man than the amateur.

Baden-Powell has all the qualifications that go to make a good scout. His eye is as keen as the hawk's, and many a time "by keeping his eyes skinned" he has done useful, if unobtrusive, work. Once he was riding in the night with despatches for headquarters' camp, guiding himself by the stars. Arriving at the place where he thought the camp ought to be, he was surprised to find no sign of it. Dismounting from his saddle, he was thinking of lying up for the night (rather than overshoot the mark) when a distant spark, for the fraction of a second, caught his eye. Jumping into the saddle again, he rode towards the place where the spark had flickered its brief moment, and there he found a sentry smoking a pipe. The red glow of the baccy in the bowl had guided B.-P. with his despatches safely to camp.

But not always does Baden-Powell see what he says he sees. On one occasion in Kashmir he was matching his eyes against a shikari, and the story of the contest is related by B.-P. in his Aids to Scouting (published by Gale and Polden, London and Aldershot): "He pointed out a hillside some distance off, and asked me if I could see how many cattle there were grazing on it. It was only with difficulty that I could see any cattle at all, but presently I capped him by asking him if he could see the man in charge of the cattle. Now, I could not actually see this myself, but knowing that there must be a man with the herd, and that he would probably be up-hill above them somewhere, and as there was a solitary tree above them (and it was a hot, sunny day), I guessed he would be under this tree." And when the incredulous shikari looked through the field-glasses he marvelled at the vision of the white man—the herdsman was under the tree as happy as a hen in a dust-bath. The uses of inductive reasoning!

A good instance of Baden-Powell's skill in "piecing things together" is given in the same excellent manual on scouting. He was scouting one day on an open grass plain in Matabeleland accompanied by a single native. "Suddenly," he says, "we noticed the grass had been recently trodden down; following up the track for a short distance, it got on to a patch of sandy ground, and we then saw that it was the spoor of several women and boys walking towards some hills about five miles distant, where we believed the enemy to be hiding. Then we saw a leaf lying about ten yards off the track—there were no trees for miles, but there were, we knew, trees of this kind at a village 15 miles distant, in the direction from which the tracks led. Probably, then, these women had come from that village, bringing the leaf with them, and had gone to the hills. On picking up the leaf, it was damp and smelled of native beer. So we guessed that according to the custom of these people they had been carrying pots of native beer on their heads, the mouths of the pots being stopped with bunches of leaves. One of these leaves had fallen out; but we found it ten yards off the track, which showed that at the time it fell a wind had been blowing. There was no wind now, but there had been about five A.M., and it was now nearly seven. So we read from these signs that a party of women had brought beer during the night from the village 15 miles distant, and had taken it to the enemy on the hills, arriving there about six o'clock. The men would probably start to drink the beer at once (as it goes sour if kept for long), and would, by the time we could get there, be getting sleepy from it, so we should have a favourable chance of reconnoitring their position. We accordingly followed the women's tracks, found the enemy, made our observations, and got away with our information without any difficulty."

In the chapters referring to his work as Sir Frederick Carrington's Chief of the Staff in the Matabele campaign of 1896, we shall see what great service Baden-Powell has rendered the army by his tireless scouting. Here I can hardly do better than quote from his Aids, for in this book he unlocks his heart as a scout, and in order to encourage non-commissioned officers and men to interest themselves in the more intelligent side of soldiering (not for self-advertisement) tells us innumerable instances of his own interesting experiences. The chief charm of scouting, of course, is in actual warfare, when a man goes out, sometimes alone and unattended, to find out what a well-armed enemy is doing and how many fighting men are to be expected in the morrow's battle. But just as Cervantes could "engender" the ingenious Don Quixote in a miserable prison, so Baden-Powell in the arid times of peace finds means of enjoying the fascinations of scouting. When out in India he used to spend many an early morning in practising, and he gives the result of one of these mornings in his little book on Scouting, which I would have you read in its entirety. It is a book which has many of the virtues of a novel, and is written in plain English.

The following instance will show you how assiduously B.-P. practises scouting, and will also give you an idea as to beguiling your next country walk.

Ground: A well-frequented road in an Indian hill-station—dry—gravel, grit, and sand.

Atmosphere: Bright and dry, no wind.

Time: 6 A.M. to 8 A.M.

Signs: Fresh Wheelmarks. [Fresh because the tracks were clearly defined with sharp edges in the sand; they overrode all other tracks.]

[This must mean a "rickshaw" (hand-carriage) had passed this morning—no other carriages are used at this station.]

Going Forward. [Because there are tracks of bare feet, some ridden over, others overriding the wheel track, but always keeping along it, i.e. two men pulling in front, two pushing behind.]

[Had they been independent wayfarers they would have walked on the smooth, beaten part of the road.]

The men were going at a walk. (Because the impression of the fore part of the foot is no deeper than that of the heel, and the length of pace not long enough for running.)

One man wore shoes, the remaining three were barefooted.

One wheel was a little wobbly.

Deduction

The track was that of a rickshaw conveying an invalid in comparatively humble circumstances, for a constitutional.

Because it went at a slow pace, along a circular road which led nowhere in particular (it had passed the cemetery and the only house along that road), at an early hour of the morning, the rickshaw being in a groggy state and the men not uniformly dressed.

NOTE.—This deduction proved correct. On returning from my walk I struck the same track (i.e. the wobbly wheel and the one shod man) on another road, going ahead of me. I soon overtook them, and found an old invalid lady being driven in a hired bazaar rickshaw.

While following the tracks of the rickshaw, I noticed fresh tracks of two horses coming towards me, followed by a big dog.

They had passed since the rickshaw (overriding its tracks).

They were cantering (two single hoof-prints, and then two near together).

A quarter of a mile farther on they were walking for a quarter of a mile. (Hoof-prints in pairs a yard apart.) Here the dog dropped behind, and had to make up lost ground by galloping up to them. (Deep impression of his claws, and dirt kicked up.)

They had finished the walk about a quarter of an hour before I came there. (Because the horse's droppings at this point were quite fresh; covered with flies; not dried outside by the sun.)

They had been cantering up to the point where they began the walk, but one horse had shied violently on passing the invalid in the rickshaw. (Because there was a great kick up of gravel and divergence from its track just where the rickshaw track bent into the side of the road, and afterwards overrode the horse's tracks.)

NOTE.—I might have inferred from this that the invalid was carrying an umbrella which frightened the horse, and was, therefore, a lady. But I did not think of it at the time and had rather supposed from the earliness of the hour that the invalid was a man. Invalid ladies don't, as a rule, get up so early.

Deduction

The tracks were those of a lady and gentleman out for a ride, followed by her dog.

Because had the horses been only out exercising with syces they would have been going at a walk in single file (or possibly at a tearing gallop).

They were therefore ridden by white people, one of whom was a lady; because, 1st, a man would not take a big, heavy dog to pound along after his horse (it had pounded along long after the horses were walking); 2nd, a man would not pull up to walk because his horse had shied at a rickshaw; but a lady might, especially if urged to do so by a man who was anxious about her safety, and that is why I put them down as a man and a lady. Had they been two ladies, the one who had been shied with would have continued to canter out of bravado. And the man, probably, either a very affectionate husband or no husband at all.

NOTE.—I admit that the above deductions hinge on very little—one link might just be wrong and so break the whole chain. This is often, indeed generally, the case, and corroborative evidence should always be sought for.

In the present instance my deductions proved pretty correct. I saw the couple later on, followed by their collie dog, riding along a lower road; but I could not determine their relationship to one another.

Note on Examples I. and II.

Incidentally, the horse-tracks of No. 2 gave me a clue to the hour at which the invalid in the rickshaw had passed that way. Thus: I came on the droppings at 7.14.

Assuming that they were actually 15 minutes old and the horses had walked 1/4 mile since passing the rickshaw, 19 minutes must have elapsed since the passing; i.e. they passed each other at 6.55.

On my arrival at the point where they had passed, the rickshaw would now be 23 minutes ahead of me, or about 11/4 mile.

But it is not only on set occasions that Baden-Powell practises scouting. He rarely takes a walk, boards a 'bus, or enters a train, without finding opportunity for some subtle inductive reasoning. Thus he recommends the men in his regiment to notice closely any stranger with whom they may come in contact, guess what their professions and circumstances are, and then, getting into conversation, find out how near the truth their surmises have been. Therefore, dear reader, if you find yourself in a few months' time drifting into conversation with a good-looking, bronzed stranger, this side of fifty, who puts rather pointed questions to you, after having studied your thumbs, boots, and whiskers intently, take special delight in leading him harmlessly astray, for thereby you may be beating, with great glory to yourself, the "Wolf that never Sleeps."

The joy of a walk in the country is heightened, I think, by following the example of Baden-Powell, and paying attention to the tracks on the ground. It would be an uncanny day for England when every man turned himself into a Sherlock Holmes, but there is no man who might not with advantage to himself practise scouting in the Essex forests or on the Surrey hills. The world is filled with life, and yet people go rambling through fields and woods without having seen anything more exciting than a couple of rabbits and a few blackbirds.

The chief joy of scouting, however, is not to be found in what Baden-Powell calls "dear, drowsy, after-lunch Old England." They who would seek it must go far from this "ripple of land," far from

The happy violets hiding from the roads, The primroses run down to, carrying gold,— The tangled hedgerows, where the cows push out Impatient horns and tolerant churning mouths 'Twixt dripping ash-boughs,—hedgerows all alive With birds and gnats and large white butterflies Which look as if the May-flower had caught life And palpitated forth upon the wind,— Hills, vales, woods, netted in a silver mist, Farms, granges, doubled up among the hills, And cattle grazing in the watered vales, And cottage-chimneys smoking from the woods, And cottage-gardens smelling everywhere, Confused with smell of orchards.

Far from our tight little island must they journey for that inspiring spell which turns the man of means into a wanderer upon the earth's surface, driving him out of glittering London, with its twinkling lights and its tinkling cabs, out of St. James's, and out of the club arm-chair—out of all this, and wins him into the vast, drear, and inhuman world, where men of our blood wage a ceaseless war with savage nature. And it is when Baden-Powell packs his frock-coat into a drawer, pops his shiny tall hat into a box, and slips exultingly into a flannel shirt that the life of a scout seems to him the infinitely best in the world. No man ever cared less for the mere ease of civilisation than Baden-Powell.



CHAPTER VIII

THE FLANNEL-SHIRT LIFE

In The Story of My Heart Richard Jefferies begins his enchanting pages with the expression of that desire which every son of Adam feels at times—the longing for wild, unartificial life. "My heart," he says, "was dusty, parched for want of the rain of deep feeling; my mind arid and dry, for there is a dust which settles on the heart as well as that which falls on a ledge.... A species of thick clothing slowly grows about the mind, the pores are choked, little habits become part of existence, and by degrees the mind is inclosed in a husk." Then he goes on to tell of a hill to which he resorted at such moments of intellectual depression, and of the sensations that thrilled him as he moved up the sweet short turf. The very light of the sun, he says, was whiter and more brilliant there, and standing on the summit his jaded heart revived, and "obtained a wider horizon of feeling." Thoreau, too, went to the woods because he wanted to live deliberately, and front only the essential facts of life. "I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms."

This longing for a return to nature in minds less imaginative than Thoreau's and Jefferies' results in globe-trotting or colonisation—according to circumstances,—it wakes the gipsy in our blood, be we gentle or simple, and sends us wandering over the waste places of the earth in quest of glory, adventure, or a gold mine—anything so long as it entails wandering. When it stirs in the mind of the disciplined soldier it turns him into a scout, and drives him out of the orderly-room, out of the barrack square, to wander in Himalayan passes and ride across the deserts of Africa. Baden-Powell is a nomad. The smart cavalry officer who can play any musical instrument, draw amusing pictures, tell delightfully droll stories, sing a good song, stage-manage theatricals—do everything, in short, that qualifies a man to take his ease in country houses, loves more than any other form of existence the loneliness and the wildness of the scout's. Often, he tells us, when he is about the serious business of handing teacups in London drawing-rooms, his mind flies off to some African waste, to some lonely Indian hill, and straightway he longs with all his soul to fling off the trappings of civilised society, and be back again with nature, back again in the dear old flannel-shirt life, living hard, with his life in his hand.

Once, after two months of wandering, he got into a hotel and, after dinner, into a bed. But it would not do, he says; in a twinkling he had whipped the blankets off the bed and was lying outside on mother earth, with the rain beating upon his face, and deep in refreshing slumber. The best of beds, according to B.-P., is "the veldt tempered with a blanket and a saddle." When he is on his lonely wanderings he always sleeps with his pistol under the "pillow" and the lanyard round his neck. However soundly he sleeps, if any one comes within ten yards of him, tread he never so softly, Baden-Powell wakes up without fail, and with a brain cleared for action.

One of the sayings of Baden-Powell which I most like is that which most reveals this side of his character. "A smile and a stick," says he, "will carry you through any difficulty in the world." And he lives in accordance with this principle; and it is typical of the man. Over the world he goes on his solitary expeditions, hunting animals, hunting men, making notes of what foreign armies are doing, what are the chief thoughts occupying the minds of distant and dangerous tribesmen, and he never goes about it blusteringly or with the Byronic mystery of the stage detective. He trusts to his sense of humour—to his smile—first; after that, and only when there is no hope for it, do those hard jaws of his lock with a snap, the eyes light up with resistless determination, and whir-r-r goes the stick, and—well, it requires a tough head to bear what follows.



Baden-Powell's friends were amused during the early days of the siege of Mafeking by the complaint of some fellow in the town who had incurred the Colonel's wrath. I forget the exact words of the silly creature's complaint, as, indeed, I forget his offence, but it was something after this fashion: "The Colonel called me before him and, in a dictatorial manner, told me that if I did it again he would have me shot. He then most insolently whistled a tune." The last words I believe to be quite correctly quoted: "He then most insolently whistled a tune." How they suggest laughter! One of Baden-Powell's choicest epigrams refers expressly to this very trick of whistling: "There is nothing like whistling an air when you feel exasperated beyond reclaim." Uncle Toby whistling "Lillabullero" when muddled by his scarps and counter-scarps, and Baden-Powell whistling a scrap from Patience to prevent himself from kicking a dangerous idiot out of his presence! "He then most insolently whistled a tune." I recall those words sometimes when I am dropping off to sleep, and they wake me up to laugh. I tell this story not only for its own dear sake, but because it is necessary to remember, when considering Baden-Powell's character, that though he meets you with a smile on his face he carries a stick in his hand to prevent you from taking liberties with his good nature. The best-tempered fellow in the world, and blessed with the keenest sense of humour, he can be as uncompromising a martinet as the sternest fire-eater of old days—when there is real necessity for it.

In this flannel-shirt life of his, Baden-Powell has had many adventures, but few, I think, are more interesting in a subdued way than one he records in his diary of the Matabele campaign. I give it in his own words: "To-day, when out scouting by myself, being at some distance from my boy and the horses, I lay for a short rest and a quiet look-out among some rocks and grass overlooking a little stream, and I saw a charming picture. Presently there was a slight rattle of trinkets, and a swish of the tall yellow grass, followed by the apparition of a naked Matabele warrior standing glistening among the rocks of the streamlet, within thirty yards of me. His white war ornaments—the ball of clipped feathers on his brow, and the long white cow's-tail plume which depended from his arms and knees—contrasted strongly with his rich brown skin. His kilt of wild cat-skins and monkeys' tails swayed round his loins. His left hand bore his assegais and knobkerrie beneath the great dappled ox-hide shield; and in his right a yellow walking-staff. He stood for almost a minute perfectly motionless, like a statue cast in bronze, his head turned from me, listening for any suspicious sound. Then, with a swift and easy movement, he laid his arms and shield noiselessly upon the rocks, and, dropping on all fours beside a pool, he dipped his muzzle down and drank just like an animal. I could hear the thirsty sucking of his lips from where I lay. He drank and drank as though he never meant to stop, and when at last his frame could hold no more, he rose with evident reluctance. He picked his weapons up, and then stood again to listen. Hearing nothing, he turned and sharply moved away. In three swift strides he disappeared within the grass as silently as he had come. I had been so taken with the spectacle that I felt no desire to shoot at him—especially as he was carrying no gun himself." It is little adventures of this kind, I think, which most impress one with the romance and fascination of a scout's life.

On his solitary wanderings over the earth Baden-Powell has had many narrow escapes of death, but none so near, perhaps, as that of an excited native who, after an action, told B.-P. with bubbling enthusiasm that a bullet had passed between his ear and his head! Once Baden-Powell came unexpectedly upon a lion prepared to receive him with open jaws, and but for perfectly steady nerves, which enabled him at that critical moment to fire deliberately, he had never brought home another lion's skin to decorate his mother's drawing-room in London. Another narrow escape occurred during the Matabele campaign, when Baden-Powell was quietly and peacefully marching by the side of a mule battery. One of the mules had a carbine strapped on to its pack-saddle, and by some extraordinary act of carelessness the weapon had been left loaded, and at full-cock. 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. The most methodical of men, he has made a study of this important branch of a wanderer's service, and when he sets out on his journeys he carries with him everything that is essential both for himself and his horse, and packed in such a way as would be the despair of the deftest valet. When the War Office asks him how long he will be before starting on a commission abroad, B.-P. answers, "I am ready now." Everything is there in a room in his mother's house, and Baden-Powell is never so happy as when that khaki kit leaves its resting-place and is packed away in a ship's cabin. And what journeys he has been on Queen's service! Before he was twenty-three he had travelled over the greater part of Afghanistan, and then after seeing most of India, he was in South Africa at twenty-seven, and did there a wonderful reconnaissance, unaccompanied, of six hundred miles of the Natal Frontier in twenty days. He has travelled through Europe, knows the Gold Coast Hinterland as well as any European, and has almost as good a notion as the Great Powers themselves concerning their frontier defences.

This reminds me that Baden-Powell sometimes spends his holidays in visiting historical battlefields and travelling through various countries to see how their defences and their guns are getting along. He is an excellent linguist, and can make his way in any country without arousing suspicions. During some military manoeuvres one autumn (we need not enter into special details) Baden-Powell was wandering at the back of the troops, seeing things not intended for the accredited representatives of Great Britain, who had the front row of the stalls, and saw beautifully what they were meant to see. What he noted on this occasion is regarded by military authorities as very valuable information.

But exciting as these adventures are, they possess no such fascination for Baden-Powell as the life in breeches, gaiters, flannel-shirt, and cowboy's hat—when the mountains infested with murderous natives are blurred by the night, and he is free to steal in among their shadows at his will, and creep noiselessly through the enemy's lines. The Matabele, of whom we shall speak later on, soon got to distinguish Baden-Powell from the rest of Sir Frederick Carrington's troops in 1896. They christened him "Impessa" then, and to this day he is spoken of by the Kaffirs with awe and admiration as the "Wolf that never Sleeps." Silent in his movements, with eyes that can detect and distinguish suspicious objects where the ordinary man sees nothing at all, with ears as quick as a hare's to catch the swish of grass or the cracking of a twig, he goes alone in and out of the mountains where the savages who have marked him down are asleep by the side of their assegais, or repeating stories of the dreadful Wolf over their bivouac fires. This is the life which has most attractions for Baden-Powell, and if he had not been locked up in Mafeking all through those precious months at the beginning of the war, it is no idle guesswork to say that we should have lost fewer men and fewer guns by surprise and ambuscade.

In this flannel-shirt life, however, Baden-Powell is not always on the serious emprise of soldiering. Most of his holidays, at any rate while he is abroad, are spent in shirt-sleeves. His periods of rest from the duties of soldiering are given over to expeditions which carry him far away from the smooth fields and trim hedges of civilisation; he is for ever trying to get face to face with nature, living the untrammelled romantic life of a hunter, independent of slaughterman, market-gardener, and tax-collector. In his boyhood, as we saw, he loved few things more than "exploring," and now he has but exchanged the woods of Tunbridge Wells for the Indian Jungle and the Welsh mountains for the Matopos.

Happy the man who carries with him into middle-age the zest and aims of a clean boyhood. There is something invigorating, almost inspiring, in the contemplation of Baden-Powell's meridian of life. The fifties which gave him birth seem now to belong to a remote and benighted era; and the blindest of his unknown adorers, if she has bought a hatless photograph, cannot deny that Time's effacing fingers have something roughly swept the brow where she could wish his hair still lingered,—and yet at forty-three, Baden-Powell, Colonel of Dragoons, goes wandering into bush and prairie, striding by stream and striking up mountain, with all the eagerness, all the keenness, all the abandonment of the gummy-fingered boy seeking butterflies and birds' eggs. For him life is as good now as it was with big brother Warington. He is up with the lark, his senses clear and awake from the moment the cold water goes streaming over his head; there is no "lazing" with him, no beefy-mindedness, no affectation and effeminacy. And I cannot help thinking that if the decadents of our day—for whose distress of soul only the stony-hearted could express contempt—would but for a week or two lay aside their fine linen, donning in its place the magic flannel shirt of Baden-Powell, they would find not only a happy issue to their jaundice, but even discover that the world is a good place for a man to spend his days in—if he but live like a man.

Hear Baden-Powell on this subject, and get a glimpse of his serious side, which so seldom peeps out for the world to see: "Old Oliver Wendell Holmes," he says, "is only too true when he says that most of us are 'boys all our lives'; we have our toys, and will play with them with as much zest at eighty as at eight, that in their company we can never grow old. I can't help it if my toys take the form of all that has to do with veldt life, and if they remain my toys till I drop.

"Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its grey, The stars of its winter, the dews of its May; And when we have done with our life-lasting toys, Dear Father, take care of Thy children, the boys.

"May it not be that our toys are the various media adapted to individual tastes through which men may know their God? As Ramakrishna Paramahansa writes: 'Many are the names of God, and infinite the forms that lead us to know of Him. In whatsoever name or form you desire to know Him, in that very name and form you will know Him.'"



CHAPTER IX

ROAD-MAKER AND BUILDER

King Prempeh was the first celebrity to receive the attention of B.-P. In his capital of Kumassi, which being interpreted is "the death-place," this miserable barbarian had been practising the most odious cruelties for many years, ignoring British remonstrances, and failing, like another African potentate, to keep his word to successive British Governments. Among the Ashantis at this time (1895) the blood-lust had got complete dominion, and the sacrifice of human life in the capital of their kingdom was so appalling that England was at last obliged to buckle on her armour. To quote B.-P. in a characteristic utterance: "To the Ashanti an execution was as attractive an entertainment as is a bull-fight to a Spaniard, or a football match to an Englishman." 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. The late king went every quarter to pay his devotions to the shades of his ancestors at Bantama, and this demanded the deaths of twenty men over the great bowl on each occasion. On the death of any great personage, two of the household slaves were at once killed on the threshold of the door, in order to attend their master immediately in his new life, and his grave was afterwards lined with the bodies of more slaves, who were to form his retinue in the next world. It was thought better if, during the burial, one of the attendant mourners could be stunned by a club and dropped, still breathing, into the grave before it was filled in.... Indeed, if the king desired an execution at any time, he did not look far for an excuse. It is even said that on one occasion he preferred a richer colour in the red stucco on the walls of the palace, and that for this purpose the blood of four hundred virgins was used."

The expedition to bring Mr. Prempeh to his senses was under the command of Sir Francis Scott, and Baden-Powell received the pink flimsy bearing the magic words, "You are selected to proceed on active service," with a gush of elation, which, he tells us, a flimsy of another kind and of a more tangible value would fail to evoke. Of course he was keen to go. The expedition suggested romance, and it assured experience. To plunge into the Gold Coast Hinterland is to find oneself in a world different from anything the imagination can conceive; civilisation is left an infinite number of miles behind, and the Londoner is brought face to face with what Thoreau calls the wild unhandselled globe. The message was received by Baden-Powell on the 14th of November 1895, and on the 13th of December he was walking through the streets of Cape Coast Castle, and had noted how well trodden was the grave of the writer L.E.L., who lies buried in the courtyard of the castle.

It was the business of B.-P. to raise a force of natives, and to proceed with this little army as soon as possible in front of the expedition, acting as a covering force. That is to say, the work of these undrilled, stupid, and not over-brave natives was scouting, a duty which while it is the most fascinating part of a soldier's life is also one of the most difficult. This then was an undertaking of which many a man might have felt shy, but Baden-Powell (the army is full of Baden-Powells) went at it cheerfully enough. On the arid desert outside the castle, which is called the parade ground, B.-P. and Captain Graham, D.S.O., taught these negroes, under a blazing sun, the rudiments of soldiering. In one part of their drill a few simple whistle-signals were substituted for the usual words of command, such as "Halt" and "Rally," and a red fez was served out to the Levy (which in the end amounted to 860 men) as a British uniform. The glory of this "kit," however, was somewhat obscured by a commissariat load which each warrior carried on his head; but there was no heart under those shiny ebon skins which did not beat quicker for the possession of the red fez. The Levy, of course, had its band—a few men who made a tremendous din on elephant-hide drums, and a few more who produced two heart-breaking notes on elephants' hollowed tusks garnished with human jaw-bones. At the head of this force B.-P. and Captain Graham set out on their journey from Cape Coast to Kumassi, a distance of nearly 150 miles, on the 21st of December.

Soon after leaving the coast the little expedition plunged into the bush, and then amid the giant ferns and palms began to appear "the solemn, shady miles of forest giants, whose upper parts gleam far above the dense undergrowth in white pillars against the grey-blue sky." The Levy had now reached the regular forest, the beautiful, awe-inspiring, but, alas, evil-smelling forest. Here it was found by Baden-Powell that, in addition to scouting, his force would have to play the arduous part of road-makers, and, therefore, whenever he came upon a village such tools as felling-axes, hatchets, spades, and picks were requisitioned. But it was no easy task teaching the negroes to perform this labour. The man who was given a felling-axe immediately set about scraping up weeds, while the grinning warrior armed with a spade incontinently hacked at a hoary tree with Gladstonian ardour. "The stupid inertness of the puzzled negro," says B.-P., "is duller than that of an ox; a dog would grasp your meaning in one-half the time." But B.-P. did not despair of his men, neither did he ill-treat them. For three days he worked hard at tree-felling himself, and he only desisted from this labour on the discovery that the sight of his hunting-crop brought more trees to the ground than all his strokes with the axe. This hunting-crop was called "Volapuek," because every tribe understood its meaning, and during the march Baden-Powell found it of inestimable value. "But, though often shown," he says, "it was never used." The men might be stupid, they might be idle, but B.-P. can get work out of the worst men without bullying and without continual punishments.

It is men like Baden-Powell who exercise the greatest power over the negro's mind. When he condemns them for cruelty or stupidity he is quick to protest against the assumption that he is "a regular nigger hater." Here is the secret: "I have met lots of good friends among them—especially among the Zulus. But, however good they may be, they must, as a people, be ruled with a hand of iron in a velvet glove; and if they writhe under it, and don't understand the force of it, it is of no use to add more padding—you must take off the glove for a moment and show them the hand. They will then understand and obey." British rule is only imperilled when men in authority discard the velvet glove altogether, or—what is probably worse still—wear only the velvet glove, much padded, over their flaccid hands.

Just as he encourages Tommy Atkins to learn scouting and the more intelligent parts of soldiering, so he encouraged these negroes, duller than oxen, and made them useful pioneers. Here is his own simple record of the way he got to the hearts of the Levy: "How they enjoy the palaver in which I tell them that 'they are the eyes to the body of the snake which is crawling up the bush-path from the coast, and coiling for its spring! The eyes are hungry, but they will soon have meat; and the main body of white men, armed with the best of weapons, will help them win the day, and get their country back again, to enjoy in peace for ever.' Then I show them my own little repeating rifle, and firing one shot after another, slowly at first, then faster and faster, till the fourteen rounds roll off in a roar, I quite bring down the house. They crowd round, jabbering and yelling, every man bent on shaking hands with the performer."

But Baden-Powell, while humane and nothing of a bully, knows the value of strictness, as we have shown, and he admits that sometimes it is even necessary to shoot one's own men in order to maintain discipline. He is, however, careful to remark that an extreme step of this kind "should be the result only of deliberate and fair consideration of the case." "Strict justice," he adds, "goes a very long way towards bringing natives under discipline."

By these methods B.-P. won the confidence of his troops, and under him these rough tribesmen, half-devil and half-child, manfully fought their way through the jungle of forest, cheered by his encouragement, awed by "Volapuek," and gradually growing to respect the dauntless courage of the white man who managed them so nicely. A description of an average day's work will give you an idea of Baden-Powell's task, and the way in which his negroes worked.

Early in the morning, while the thick white mist is still hanging athwart the forest, a drummer is kicked out of bed by a white foot and bidden to sound "Reveille." Then there is a din of elephant-tusk horns and the clatter of the elephant-hide drums. The camp is astir, and it all seems as if the men are as smart and as disciplined as their brother warriors in Aldershot or Shorncliffe. But the negroes have only risen thus readily in order to light their fires and settle down to a lusty breakfast of plantains. After his tub, his quinine and tea, Baden-Powell sends for King Matikoli and demands to know why his three hundred Krobo are not on parade. His Majesty smiles and explains to the white chief that he is suffering from rheumatism in the shoulder, and therefore he, and consequently his tribe, cannot march that day. Baden-Powell, with his contradictory smile, solemnly produces a Cockle's pill (Colonel Burnaby's vade mecum), hands it to the monarch, and remarks that if his tribe are not on the march in five minutes he will be fined an entire shilling. "The luxury," exclaims B.-P., "of fining a real, live king to the extent of one shilling." The king goes away for five minutes, and then returns with the intelligence that if the white chief will provide his men with some salt to eat with their "chop" (food) he really thinks they will be able to march that day. B.-P. expresses a feverish desire to oblige His Majesty, and proceeds with great alacrity to cut a beautifully lithe and whippy cane. In an instant that tribe is marching forward with their commissariat loads upon their heads. But there are others still to be dealt with. The captains of one tribe are discussing the situation, and would like Baden-Powell to hear their views. Baden-Powell treats them as Lord Salisbury, say, would no doubt like to treat the deputations that sometimes come to give him the benefit of their opinions; he looks to his repeating rifle, talks about fourteen corpses blocking the way of retirement, and hey presto! the other tribe is swinging down the forest-path laughing, singing, and chattering, like children released from school.

On they march through the heavy forest, a long twisting line of men, until the halt is made at mid-day for two hours' chop and parade. Then tools are served out and every company is set to work. One clears the bush, another cuts stockade posts, a third cuts palm-leaf wattle, a fourth digs stockade holes, and a fifth is set to keep guard over the camp and prevent men from hiding in huts. By sunset some seven or eight acres are cleared of bush, large palm-thatched sheds are to be seen in long regular lines, while in the centre stands a fort with its earth rampart bound up by stockade and wattle, and having in its interior two huts, one for hospital and one for storehouse. Besides this the natives bridged innumerable streams and dug and drained roads wherever necessary.

This work can only be seen in its true perspective when the character of the country is borne in mind. For nearly all of its 150 miles the road from Cape Coast to Kumassi leads through heavy primeval forest. "The thick foliage of the trees, interlaced high overhead, causes a deep, dank gloom, through which the sun seldom penetrates. The path winds among the tree stems and bush, now through mud and morass, now over steep ascent or deep ravine." And, in addition to the difficulties of locomotion, there was the haunting menace of the heavy dews and mists which come at night laden with the poison of malaria.

But all these difficulties were met with cheerful courage, and though Captain Graham and two other officers subsequently attached to the covering force were incapacitated by fever, the Native Levy fought its way to Kumassi, and won the admiration of all military authorities. It was at Kumassi on 17th January, and though no actual fighting had taken place, the march may be reckoned an achievement of which all Englishmen can be proud.

One incident of the march will have a romantic attraction for those who have sons and brothers doing the Empire's work in distant lands. As the Native Levy with its two white officers journeyed through the bush they came now and then upon bridges over streams and causeways over swamps, all in course of construction at the hands of natives under the direction of a few ever-travelling, hard-worked white superintendents. "Here we meet one gaunt and yellow. Surely we have seen that eye and brow before, although the beard and solar topee do much to disguise the man. His necktie of faded 'Old Carthusian' colours makes suspicion a certainty, and once again old school-fellows are flung together for an hour to talk in an African swamp of old times in English playing-fields." For an hour in an African swamp! and then on again through the never-ending dark green aisles towards the savages smitten with the blood-lust in "the death-place."

The Ashantis did not show fight, and King Prempeh, sucking a huge nut, surrounded by court-criers and fly-catchers, with three dwarfs dancing in front of his throne, consented humbly and meekly to receive the soldiers of the Queen. After Sir Francis Scott had presented Prempeh with his ultimatum the meeting broke up for the night, but the "Wolf that never Sleeps" was on the look-out with his Native Levy for a possible surprise, or for His Majesty's escape. You can imagine how "Sherlock Holmes," as Burnham the American scout calls our hero, enjoyed that work. In the quiet night, under the white stars, a council was being held in the savage king's palace, and B.-P. "shadowed" that regal hut with eyes and ears alive. At three o'clock in the morning a white light streamed out of the palace doorway, and through the clinging mist went a string of white-robed figures, one of them the queen-mother. This little company passed within twenty yards of B.-P., and it was followed stealthily by him until the queen's residence, not hitherto known, was marked down. Then the watchers returned to their ambush outside the palace, and caught a councillor who was stealing away in the night. Almost immediately after this gentleman had been made prisoner two fast-footed men came upon the scene. They evidently suspected something, for they suddenly pulled up and stood listening intently. One of them was within arm's length of Baden-Powell. Quietly B.-P. stood up. The man did not move. A moment's pause, and then, quick as a flash of lightning, Baden-Powell had gripped him, and had, moreover, got hold of the gun he was carrying. Then the patrol came up, the Ashanti was pinned, and, as B.-P. concludes the narrative, "a handsome knife in a leopard-skin scabbard was added to our spoil."

After the palace had been searched and the whole of the fetish village had been burned to the ground, Prempeh, with B.-P. to look after him, set out for Cape Coast Castle. The bitterness to a soldier of that return journey, without a shot having been fired, can hardly be imagined by a civilian, and would certainly be strongly reprehended by those who regard the justest war with horror and aversion. The soldiers had set out on that dreadful march through swamp, and bush, and forest, to fight and bring to the dust a cruel bloodthirsty nation of savages, contemptuously described by Baden-Powell as "the bully tribe" of the Gold Coast Hinterland. Instead of finding the bully as willing to fight as Cuff was willing to face dear old Dobbin, B.-P. found a cowering, cringing enemy, willing to lick the dust and abase himself in any manner the ingenious white man might suggest. So it was with no feelings of elation that the man who had received the pink flimsy ordering him on active service, who had raised and organised the Native Levy, who had cut a road through the bush and forest, draining roads and bridging streams,—turned his back on Kumassi, and marched King Prempeh to the Cape coast. This march of 150 miles was accomplished in seven days. Of this expedition B.-P. recalls "ten minutes' genuine fun,"—that was when a doctor was cutting out from under his toe-nail the eggs of an insect called the jigger, rude enough to make a nest of B.-P.'s big toe. It is such incidents as these that live in the soldier's mind after a hard campaign.

During the whole of these tiresome operations B.-P. of course was hard at work sketching and keeping his diary. He added to his wonderful store of experiences, and had the rare delight of seeing the King of Bekwai "oblige with a few steps"—specially in his honour. But the story of his work—and it is the same with all the quiet work done by servants of the Queen in every part of the Empire—attracted little public notice, and the man-in-the-street had no more idea of B.-P.'s service than the man-in-the-moon. At that time, indeed, few people outside official circles had ever heard of his name, and certainly no stationer would have been mad enough to stick B.-P.'s photograph in his window. Whether Baden-Powell, when he awakes to it, will prefer his present fame to the happy obscurity of those distant days, is a subject for speculation. I could say definitely, if I chose, which condition is preferred by the proud mother of as gallant a son as ever rode horse into the African desert.



CHAPTER X

PUTTING OUT FIRE

A Brevet-Colonelcy was conferred upon Baden-Powell for his work on the Gold Coast,—he was then eight-and-thirty,—and in the same year he was back at regimental work in Ireland. Hardworking as ever, and keen on making his men practical soldiers, B.-P. was settling down to what is called the dull part of soldiering when the gods, in the shape of the heads of the War Office, again interfered with the even tenor of his way. A telegram from Sir Frederick Carrington arrived at Belfast towards the end of April telling our hero that there was to be fighting in Matabeleland, and that there would be room for him on the staff. B.-P. was attending that day the funeral of a man in his squadron who had been killed by a fall from his horse, and after the service he rushed back to barracks, changed his kit, arranged about selling his horses, dogs, and furniture, and just when the English world sits down to its most excellent meal of the day, that oasis of the afternoon desert, he was in a train rushing as fast as an Irish train can rush towards the steamer that sailed for England.

At twelve o'clock next day B.-P. was saying good-bye to Sir Frederick Carrington, who sailed before him, and that done he spent a few miserable days in constant dread that he would be bowled over by a hansom, or catch scarlet fever, and thus be prevented from sharing in the hardships and glory of a campaign. But nothing contrary happened to him, and after affectionate farewells to his family he embarked for Cape Town on board the Tantallon Castle on 2nd May. One of his first labours was to begin an illustrated diary for his mother's delectation, a diary that was afterwards published by Messrs. Methuen in book form under the title of "The Matabele Campaign—1896." The keeping of this diary had its good uses for B.-P.; in what manner he explains in the preface, addressed to his mother,—"Firstly, because the pleasures of new impressions are doubled if they are shared with some appreciative friend (and you are always more than appreciative). Secondly, because it has served as a kind of short talk with you every day." That is the way in which British soldiers go forth to war.

The voyage was uneventful. Drill in pyjamas every morning prevented B.-P. from putting on flesh, and that drill, especially "Knees Up!" seems to have been of a pretty severe kind, for it draws from Baden-Powell the exclamation, "I'd like to kill him who invented it—but it does us all a power of good." That is the saying of the old soldier. In the barrack-room it is considered the right thing to grumble, or "grouse" as it is called, while one is working hardest. Thus the man with a jack-boot on his left arm and a polishing brush in his right hand—going like lightning,—the sweat running down his red face, is the man who swears he ain't goin' to bother about his blooming boots any more, dashed if he is; and after the brushing proceeds to "bone" them violently. The first part of B.-P.'s exclamation reminds me of a friend who says that ever since he arrived at years of discretion he has been searching for the man who invented work on purpose to murder him. He is, of course, the hardest of hard workers.

There were pleasures as well as drill on board: athletic sports, tableaux, concerts, and a grand fancy dress ball. At this ball a lady with a Roman nose appeared as Britannia, but as the peak of the helmet threatened to bore a hole through the bridge of her nose she was obliged to wear her war-hat (as the Hussar calls his busby) the wrong way round. It was probably B.-P. himself who said to the good lady of her helmet, "That is not the rule, Britannia."

On the 19th May B.-P. looked from his port and saw "the long, flat top of grand old Table Mountain" looming darkly against the glittering stars, its base twinkling with electric lights that glinted on the water. That day was of course a busy one for B.-P. as Chief of the Staff, and the first news received by the Man of Mafeking (how odd it seems now!) was that Sir Frederick Carrington had gone up to Mafeking, and that he was to follow. In three days Baden-Powell was in Mafeking, the guest of Mr. Julius Weil, who gave an anxious England as much important news of the gallant little Mafeking garrison during the Boer war as the universal Reuter himself. Odd, too, it seems that while in Mafeking in 1896 B.-P. should write in his diary that "Plumer's force, specially raised here in the South, had got within touch of Buluwayo." Names how much more familiar in 1900!

Buluwayo was the town selected by the Matabele for their first blow, and accordingly with Sir Frederick Carrington and two other officers B.-P. set out from Mafeking on the 23rd May in a ramshackle coach, drawn by ten mules, on a drive of ten days and nights to Buluwayo. On this journey the officers encountered the celebrated King Khama, and it interested B.-P. to find that Khama knew him as the brother of Sir George Baden-Powell, and that he inquired after Sir George's little girl, just as a lady in the Park asks if one's baby has got over the measles. This (if we leave out a dinner at a wayside "hotel," where the waiter smoked as he served our officers) was the one picturesque incident of that jolting, clattering drive of nearly 560 miles, and, therefore, while our hero is groaning in the coach or travelling afield after partridges and guinea-fowl for dinner, we will take leave to look hastily for the reason of his presence in South Africa.

Matabeleland, let us say at the beginning, is included in Rhodesia, a country 750,000 miles in extent, or, so that the size may jump to the eye, let us say as big as France, Italy, and Spain lumped together. This vast country was under the administration of the British Government, but the Matabele, who had been but partially beaten in the taking of their country in 1893, were only waiting their opportunity to throw off the white man's yoke. The opportunity came when the deplorable Jameson raid emptied the country of troops, and left our brave hard-working colonists at the mercy of these savages. But there were other causes contributory to the rebellion. Rinderpest was slaying the cattle of the Matabele by thousands, and the white man's order that, to prevent the scourge from spreading, healthy beasts as well as diseased should be killed was, not unnaturally, quite unintelligible to the Matabele. The rumour spread that the hated white man was killing the cattle in order that the tribes should perish of starvation. The fact, too, that raiding weaker tribes for food was punished by the British further aggravated this "offence." The priests encouraged the spirit of rebellion, and the oracle-deity, the M'limo, promised through the priests that if the Matabele would make war upon the white man his bullets in their flight should be changed to water, and his cannon shells become eggs. Horrible murders followed upon this encouragement, too horrible, indeed, to repeat; but a general idea of the blood-lust which now possessed the Matabele may be gathered from the fact of over a hundred and fifty English people (scattered, of course, in outlying districts) being killed within a week of the M'limo's call to battle. Only a swift blow, then, could prevent the loss of civilisation to South Africa for many years; only a terrible lesson could teach the Matabele that the white man was his lord and master.

Buluwayo, prior to the time of Sir Frederick Carrington's arrival, contained about seven hundred women and children and some eight hundred men. The women and children were accommodated in a laager of waggons built up with sacks full of earth, and further protected from assault by a twenty or thirty yards' entanglement of barbed wire with a sprinkling of broken bottles on the ground. The eight hundred men were organised in troops, and were armed and horsed in an incredibly short space of time.

Outside the town, on the north, south, and east, lay more than seven thousand Matabele, two thousand of whom were armed with Martini-Henry rifles, while the others possessed Lee-Metfords, elephant guns, Tower muskets, and blunderbusses, besides their own native assegais, knobkerries, and battle-axes. This formidable force was further strengthened by the desertion of a hundred Native Police, who took with them to the enemy their Winchester repeaters. Thus it will be seen that all the odds were in favour of the Matabele, but it is only when the odds are overwhelming against him that the Englishman feels he must buck up, and Buluwayo was fortunate enough to possess men of the true breed. Among these let us make special mention of the Hon. Maurice Gifford, who lost an arm in a gallant dash upon the besiegers[1]—a man "for whom rough miners and impetuous cowboys work like well-broken hounds"; Mr. F.C. Selous, hunter and explorer; Colonel Napier, and Captain MacFarlane. These men gave the enemy no rest, and by repeated attacks at last rid the town of any immediate danger of being rushed by the blacks.

Baden-Powell's work when he arrived was almost entirely confined to the office; and working at a desk from early morning to late at night, with no prospect of an early closing movement, began to tell upon his spirits. He became convinced that "our force is far too small adequately to cope with so numerous and fairly well-armed an enemy, with well-nigh impregnable strongholds to fall back on.... Our force, bold as it is, is far too small, and yet we cannot increase it by a man, for the simple reason that if we did we could not find the wherewithal to feed it." If this sort of thing had gone on much longer B.-P. might have learned to look glum for an entire five minutes; but one night at ten o'clock, when he and Sir Frederick Carrington were putting up the shutters of office, into the town rode Burnham, the famous American scout, with news of a large impi of the enemy about three miles outside Buluwayo. This necessitated action, and B.-P. was himself again. With a police-trooper as a guide he rode out to find for himself how matters stood, and, after a hard and refreshing ride, in the early dawn he was able to see the enemy. There they were on the opposite bank of the Umgusa river, their fires crackling merrily, and they themselves apparently as happy as bean-feasters in Epping Forest. Not long after he had caught sight of these fires and the Matabele going backwards and forwards from the water, Baden-Powell was at the head of two hundred and fifty men riding towards the Umgusa. Under the impression, conveyed to them by their sorry old humbug of an oracle, that the waters of the Umgusa would open its jaws and swallow up the wicked white man, the Matebele allowed Baden-Powell to get his force across the stream without firing a shot; but when they found that not only did the waters fail to overwhelm their enemies, but that these same enemies were riding hard towards them, the Matabele took to their heels in order to find cover in some thicker bush. Then the air began to scream and whistle. Bullets flew by the ears of the charging English with a phit, phit! and, when they ricocheted off the ground, with a wh-e-e-e-w! Up and down bobbed the black heads in the long rank grass, and bang, bang, bang went the guns. Some of Baden-Powell's force wanted to dismount and return the fire, but B.-P., without a sword among his men, sang out, "Make a cavalry fight of it. Forward! Gallop!" Then, as the horses raced snorting forward, and the English gave a shout of battle, the Matabele, 1200 against 250, poured an irregular volley into their enemies. The next minute the horses were in among them, flashing by with the lather on their necks, while their riders' revolvers barked angrily in every quarter of the field. The Matabele ran. As hard as they could lick, they bolted like rabbits to their holes, but faster behind them came the avenging English with the velvet glove flung aside and the iron hand visible to their terror-stricken eyes. In the general rout, the mere act of punishment, there were many instances of coolness and bravery. One man got detached from the rest, and suddenly found himself confronted by eight of the enemy. In an instant his horse was shot under him, but almost in the same instant he was standing in front of the eight with his rifle to his shoulder. Before they could close on him with their knobkerries and assegais, or before they could shoot him down, he had used his magazine fire with such deadly effect that four of his enemy were dead and the other four were sprinting for dear life. Baden-Powell had two pretty adventures in this engagement. Having emptied his Colt's repeater, he threw it carefully under a peculiar tree, so that he might find it when business was done; then he went to work with his revolver. As he rode forward he came upon an open stretch of ground, and the first object that struck his attention was a well-knit Kaffir on one knee covering his body with a Martini-Henry. The distance was about eighty yards, and Baden-Powell, telling the story, says that he felt so indignant at the fellow's rudeness that he rode at him as hard as he could gallop, calling him every name under the sun. But the Kaffir was not to be moved even by the best-bred abuse, and he remained kneeling with the rifle pointed at B.-P., until that horseman, with locked jaws and gleaming eyes (those who know him will understand), was only ten yards off. Then he fired, and B.-P. says he felt quite relieved "when I realised he had clean missed me." That nigger was shot immediately afterwards by one of Baden-Powell's men, who was riding to his help from behind.

The other close shave will make the nervous turn cold to think of it. B.-P. had ridden to the help of two men kept at bay by a nigger under a tree, and when the nigger had been killed, he was standing for a moment under the tree, when something moving above him made him look up. It was a gun-barrel taking aim at him. The man behind the gun, standing on a branch, was so jammed against the trunk of the tree as to look part of it, and while B.-P. was making a note of this fact for his next lecture on scouting, bang went the gun, and the ground in front of his toes was as if a small earthquake had struck it. That nigger's knobkerrie and photograph are now in the Baden-Powell museum—a museum which began with butterflies and birds' eggs, and now includes mementos of nearly every tribe and animal on the face of the earth.

After the fight Baden-Powell got back to Buluwayo in time for late lunch, and—"made up for lost time in the office." From now it was a case of office for many weary weeks, and Baden-Powell could only at rare intervals steal away for exercise, which he took in the form of hard scouting, sometimes by himself, sometimes with Burnham—"a most delightful companion." His rides with the famous American gave him great pleasure, and each man, both born scouts, learned something from the other. While he was enjoying these expeditions as relaxation from the cramping work of office, he was at the same time picking up valuable information concerning the enemy. During this grind at the office B.-P. used to long for the lunch hour; "it sounds greedy," he says, "but it is for the glimpse of sunlight that I look forward, not the lunch." On one occasion his work as Chief of the Staff was so severe that he was unable to leave the office for four days. He was feeling "over-boiled," and got rid of this stuffiness of mind in his own characteristic way. After dinner on the fourth day he saddled up and rode off to the Matopos, spent the night there, and was back in the office by 10.30 on the following day, "all the better for a night out."

All this time the office work increased, and the anxiety of the General and his staff was doubled by reports of rebellion in Mashonaland. The fire of lawlessness was spreading its evil flames in all directions, till reports of murder and outrage covered an area of one hundred thousand square miles, and about 2000 whites found arrayed against them an army of some 20,000 maddened savages.

Fortunately for B.-P. he had in Sir Frederick Carrington a chief who never wastes a man. Excellent as Baden-Powell was in the office (and Tim Linkinwater would not have feared, I believe, to hand the precious Cherryble ledgers over to his keeping) he could render much more valuable service in the field. In the middle of July the reward came for all his independent scouting; he was chosen by Sir Frederick Carrington, as a man who knew the Matopos country and the whereabouts of the enemy, to act as guide to Colonel Plumer—the officer chosen for the immediate direction of operations in the Matopos. With joy B.-P. flung down the pen and took up the sword.

His first move was towards Babyan's stronghold, Babyan being one of the great Matabele chiefs—a chief great in the glorious days of Lobengula—and who now occupied the central and important impi in the Matopos. This work was well done, the enemy's exact whereabouts were ascertained, and the scouting ended in a glorious gallop back to camp after emptying a few guns into a party of savages attempting to cut off Baden-Powell's party. After this came battle.

In the moonlight of the 19th July the little force, nearly a thousand strong, moved out into the Matopos, Baden-Powell going on alone as guide. He went alone because he feared to have his attention distracted by a companion, thereby losing his bearings. There was something of a weird and delightful feeling, he says, in mouching along alone, with a dark, silent square of men and horses looming behind one. So they marched forward, the one incident, and that a sad one, being the killing with an assegai of a dog who had followed the force, and had endangered the success of its movement by barking at a startled buck. The only noise in the column marching behind the lithe, wiry guide was the occasional muffled cough of a man and the sharp snort of an excited horse. When the force was within a mile of Babyan's impi a halt was called, and the men lay down to sleep in the freezing cold night. It was not a long sleep, for an hour before dawn they were in the saddle again, and moving through the darkness as silently as before towards the enemy's stronghold. When the pass was reached which led into the valley held by Babyan the column was prepared for attack, the advance force being under the command of Baden-Powell.

The guide almost jumped with joy, he says, when he spotted the enemy's fires. The fight was to begin. The guns were got up, and in a few minutes they were volleying and thundering, flinging their whirring shells into the masses of Matabele, whose assegai blades glistened in the morning sun. While this opening cannonade was proceeding Baden-Powell found useful work to do. With a few native scouts he started off on his own account and soon found a large body of the enemy elsewhere enjoying a bombastic war-dance, which plainly portended the staggering of humanity and the driving of the British into the sea. Thinking that Colonel Plumer ought not to miss this performance, Baden-Powell sent back word of it, and calling together the Native Levy proceeded to attack the dancers. Their sound of revelry died away, or changed to something more dismal, when Baden-Powell and his men came clambering up the rocky height, leaping over boulders, dodging behind crags, and pouring lead into their astonished midst. With very little delay the Matabele went to earth, tumbling pell-mell into their caves and holes, from whence the rattle of their musketry soon rolled, and where they fancied themselves as safe as a rabbit in its burrow from the attack of an eagle. To add to Baden-Powell's difficulty his Native Levy began to show the white feather, getting behind rocks and wasting their ammunition on the desert crags. Had the Matabele come out of their caves, given one war-whoop, and made a show of descending upon the besiegers, those precious friendlies would assuredly have turned tail and bolted. But the Matabele in the security of their caves made no such sign, and Baden-Powell called up the Cape Boys and the Maxims in the nick of time. In a few minutes the guns were in position on what looked like inaccessible crags, and the Cape Boys shouting and cheering were floundering through bogs, leaping over boulders, and firing with firm hand wherever firing was of use. The fight was now begun in earnest, and B.-P., on a rock directing the movements of his force, was surrounded by the deafening roar of artillery. In nearly every cave on those hills savages lay with rifle to shoulder, finger on trigger, waiting to pick off the besiegers as they came bounding over the rocks towards them. The Cape Boys never wavered; up they dashed, panting and sweating, to the very mouths of the caves, fired their rifles into the darkness, charged in, to reissue in a few minutes, jabbering to each other, and then rushing off to "do ditto" wherever these man-holes existed. Now they were creeping stealthily round rocks "like stage assassins," now leaping forward through the long yellow grass like men in a paper-chase,—always fighting well and pluckily, lifting up their wounded and carrying them to places of safety, and then again joining in the battle, charging without fear upon their maddened enemy, parrying the thrust of sudden assegai with the bayonet that kills almost in the instant that it guards. And while this work was going on, a sudden corner revealed another string of rebels running down a path. "For a moment," writes B.-P., "the thought crosses one's mind, shall we stop to fire or go for them? but before the thought has time to fashion itself, we find ourselves going for them." Again there was the cheering rush, the rattle of rifles, and hard fighting till the enemy was scattered. So the battle went on, and it did not cease until the stronghold was completely cleared. Then the "flag-waggers" signalled back to the main body for stretchers.[2] During this pause Baden-Powell wrote an account of the fighting (illustrated), to be sent home to his mother.

In this manner Babyan was beaten, and the victors went back to camp satisfied with their day's work. On the following morning it was discovered that a column sent by the General to attack the enemy on the Inugu Mountain had not returned, and Baden-Powell with a patrol of a hundred men was ordered to go in search. When the sun was up the little body moved off towards the mountains, and after passing through much difficult country, parts of which were actually in the occupation of the enemy, they struck the spoor of the missing column, and to Baden-Powell's great joy found that the marks were quite fresh and leading outwards from the mountains—showing that the missing men were safe. Very soon after that the patrol was further cheered by seeing the gleam of the column's camp-fires, and after an exchange of events Baden-Powell hurried back to camp to acquaint the General with the good news.

The next morning, forgetting that he had had another night out, Baden-Powell started off for solitary exercise in the mountains, his purpose being to "investigate some signs I had noted two days before of an impi camped in a new place," and to select a position for the building of a fort to command the Matopos. Returning to camp he drew his design and plan for the fort, and in the evening was back in the mountains again with a number of Cape Boys, ready to begin the business of building.

One of Baden-Powell's little relaxations when fighting slackened was the "rounding off" of cattle, a sport almost as exciting as chasing a solitary boar, especially when the cattle are being driven into the mountains for "home consumption" by bloodthirsty and hungry Matabele. On one of these occasions Baden-Powell was wounded. Having rounded off some cattle he was riding towards a party of niggers when he felt a sharp blow on his thigh as though Thor had given him a playful tap with his big hammer. He was bowled over, and thinking that he must have charged into the stump of a tree turned round to have a look at it; but there was no tree. Then he realised that he had only been struck with a lead-covered stone fired from a big-bore gun, and so hopped off like a man who has been kicked on the shins in a football match, to continue the game. No blood was drawn by this bullet, but our hero's thigh was black and blue for many days afterwards.

This was the kind of life Baden-Powell lived at this time as Chief of the Staff. An officer who knows him very well tells me that it is impossible to wear him out; "Baden-Powell," he says, "is tireless." He is keen to be given the most risky and the most solitary work; he can go for days without food and never complains of broken nights. He has an enthusiasm for hard work, and when that work demands cunning of the brain as well as quickness of the hand, as in scouting, B.-P. is as much lost in the labour as a wolf in search of food for its young. Never throughout the Matabele campaign was Sir Frederick Carrington better served than when the young Englishman slunk away into the darkness, and wandered alone and unprotected into the rocky mountains held by the murderous Matabele. And never were those savages more disquieted than when news was brought to them in the morning that the Wolf had been in the mountains during the night.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[1] After the arm was amputated at the shoulder Mr. Gifford used to feel the pain as if it were in his hand.

[2] Let it not be thought that B.-P. had neglected to bring stretchers. They were brought, but the friendlies who carried them, like the hen that laid the rotten egg, were nervous, and had dropped them in the river, they themselves taking up positions of safety till the fighting was over.



CHAPTER XI

IN RAGS AND TATTERS

Baden-Powell now had what one might term a roving commission. He was sent by Colonel Plumer in charge of a patrol to wander over the vast country covered by the rebellion and see what he could of the enemy, and when found make a note of. It was exactly the work B.-P. liked above all others. There was romance in the dangers of it, and intellectual joy in its difficulties. There was freedom in it, and the glorious feeling that every step he took he was carrying his life in his hand. And not only was life menaced by the bullets and assegais of Matabele lurking in the tall yellow grass, but there was considerable danger, though of a more humorous order, even in the taking of a bath, as B.-P. discovered in going down to a pool and spotting just in time a leering crocodile in the reeds. Lions, too, were stumbled upon in clumps, just as in peaceful England one walks upon a covey of partridges. Then, lying down one day after dinner for a nap, B.-P. discovered on awaking that a snake had selected precisely the same spot for its own siesta. The charm of night marches, too, was occasionally broken by the growling of a bloodthirsty hyaena, following and snarling at the heels of the horses. These were dangers, however, that added the few touches necessary to complete the picture of our smart adjutant of Hussars in cowboy hat, grey flannel shirt, breeches and gaiters, with a face as brown as a Kaffir's, wandering over the South African veldt. 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. The one drawback to the tub in the river, leaving out the chance of a stray crocodile, was the difficulty he experienced in getting back into these delicate open-work socks, and the only way of surmounting this difficulty was by bathing—socks and all!

The marches, too, had their intervals of fighting, and the little patrol was frequently so in touch with the enemy that Tommy Atkins and Master Matabele could exchange compliments. "Sleep well to-night," the grinning savages would shout from the hills; "to-morrow we will have your livers fried for breakfast!" And the compliments became sterner whenever the Matabele recognised in the little force of whites the dread "Wolf that never Sleeps." "Wolf! Wolf!" they shrieked with savage ferocity, and if Baden-Powell had the nerves of some of us he must have had many a bad night after hearing that yell, and marking the gleaming eyes and the frothing lips that twitched with lust for his destruction.