Then there was the bitterest work of all. The closing of suffering eyes that had grown so strangely dear during the hardships of such work as this; the saying of farewells to the men who had raced by one's side with Death at their heels for how many hard weeks. Of one of these Baden-Powell writes in his diary: "His death is to me like the snatching away of a pleasing book half read." And solemn as the funeral service ever is, one fancies how awe-inspiring, how poignant its impressiveness, when in the dark, "among the gleams of camp-fires and lanterns, with a storm of thunder and lightning gathering round," a few fighting Englishmen heard its message over the body of a fellow-soldier.

Baden-Powell's description of the day's work at this time gives one a good idea of the life of a patrol. This is what he wrote in his diary for his mother's eyes: "Our usual daily march goes thus: Reveille and stand to arms at 4.30, when Orion's belt is overhead. (The natives call this Ingolobu, the pig, the three big stars being three pigs, and the three little ones being the dogs running after them; this shows that Kaffirs, like other nations, see pictures in constellations.) We then feed horses—if we have anything to feed them with, which is not often; light fires and boil coffee; saddle-up, and march off at 5.15. We go on marching till about 9.30 or 10, when we off-saddle and lie up for the heat of the day, during which the horses are grazed, with a guard to look after them, and we go a-breakfasting, bathing, and in theory writing and sketching, but in practice sleeping, at least so far as the flies will allow. At 3.30 saddle-up and march till 5.30; off-saddle and supper; then we march on again, as far as necessary, in the cool hours of the early night. On arriving at the end of our march, we form our little laager; to do this we put our saddles down in a square, each man sleeping with his head in the saddle, and the horses inside the square, fastened in two lines on their 'built up' ropes. To go to bed we dig a small hole for our hip-joints to rest in, roll ourselves up in our horse-blanket, with our heads comfortably ensconced in the inside of the saddle, and we would not then exchange our couch for anything that Maple could try and tempt us with."

But after months of this hard work, the tireless B.-P. began to knock up. Fever and dysentery attacked him, and he said unkind things to people who bothered him—as witness the message sent to one of the patrolling columns: "If you let the men smoke on a night march, you might as well let the band play too." The justness of the gibe!

B.-P. relates a good story, by the way, of smoking while on guard. A Colonial volunteer officer, Captain Brown, in times of peace Butcher Brown, ordered a sentry found smoking to consider himself a prisoner. "What!" exclaimed the volunteer soldier, "not smoke on sentry? Then where the —— am I to smoke?" The dignified Captain only reiterated his first remark. Then did the sentry take his pipe from his mouth and confidentially tap his officer upon the shoulder. "Now, look here, Brown," said he, "don't go and make a —— fool of yourself. If you do, I'll go elsewhere for my meat."

To return. B.-P., having lived straight and hard, soon fought down the fever, and in little more than a week was back again at work. It is nice to know that during the time of his being on the sick-list Sir Frederick Carrington went regularly to his bedside and sat for a long time, retailing all the cheerful news of the campaign. Sir Frederick and Baden-Powell, by the bye, are probably the two Imperial officers who know most about South Africa.

During his illness Major Ridley had started off with a column to make war upon the Somabula, and when B.-P. got about again he was ordered to go in search of this force, with three troopers as an escort, and to take command of it. "I could picture nothing more to my taste," he says, "than a ride of from eighty to one hundred miles in a wild country, with three good men, and plenty of excitement in having to keep a good look-out for the enemy, enjoying splendid weather, shirt-sleeves, and a reviving feeling of health and freedom." So the man who had only just got off a sick-bed started for a ride into the forest after Ridley's column, and during the ride the twentieth anniversary of his joining Her Majesty's Service came round and brought its reflections for the diary. "I always think more of this anniversary than of that of my birth, and I could not picture a more enjoyable way of spending it. I am here, out in the wilds, with three troopers.... We are nearly eighty miles from Buluwayo and thirty from the nearest troops. I have rigged up a shelter from the sun with my blanket, a rock, and a thorn-bush; thirteen thousand flies are, unfortunately, staying with me, and are awfully attentive.... I am looking out on the yellow veldt and the blue sky; the veldt with its grey hazy clumps of thorn-bush is shimmering in the heat, and its vast expanse is only broken by the gleaming white sand of the river-bed and the green reeds and bushes which fringe its banks." How could a man feel unhappy with the whole of his wardrobe packed away in one wallet of the saddle, and his larder in the other? Be sure that Lucullus never enjoyed a banquet with the same sharpness of delight as Baden-Powell squatting amid the yellow grass of the veldt with his cocoa and rice.

But there were anxious moments coming for the man who kept on the open veldt the twentieth anniversary of his joining Her Majesty's army with gladness in his heart. After he had found the column and had got into the Lilliputian forest with its stunted, bushy trees and its sandy soil, he was brought face to face with the greatest enemy that can harass, fret, and wear down nerves of steel—absence of water. A commander whose mind is racked by the difficulty, perhaps the impossibility, of finding water for his troops is like the man haunted day and night, waking and sleeping, by debt. "This was our menu," says Baden-Powell: "weak tea (can't afford it strong), no sugar (we are out of it), a little bread (we have half a pound a day), Irish stew (consisting of slab of horse boiled in muddy water with a pinch of rice and half a pinch of pea-flour), salt, none. For a plate I use one of my gaiters, it is marked 'Tautz & Sons, No. 3031'; it is a far cry from veldt and horseflesh to Tautz and Oxford Street!" But this was at a time when B.-P. wrote in his diary: "Nothing like looking at the cheery side of things." The morrow came when he could see nothing but arid miles of sand, when his eyes ached as they ranged the pitiless desert for water; there is no cheery side to that view. Halting his party to give them a rest, he and an American scout named Gielgud started off to make one grand effort to find river or puddle. Hill after hill was climbed to find only a valley of dead, baked grass beyond, and at last, broken-hearted and weary, the two riders turned their horses' heads back to camp. Soon after this the American's head began to bob till the chin rested on the chest, and he forgot the quest of water in the fairyland of dreams. But B.-P. could not sleep, and those keen eyes of his were ranging the desolate country every dreary minute of that ride. And at last he noticed on the ground certain marks which he knew to be those of a buck that had scratched in the sand for water. Overjoyed he got down from the saddle and continued the work of the buck, digging and digging with his lean sunburnt fingers till he came to damp earth, and then—to water. At that moment he saw two pigeons get up from behind a rock some little way off, and leaving his oozing water in the sand he hastened there and discovered to his supreme joy the salvation of his party—a little pool of water.

On this expedition you will be interested to hear that a man who lent valuable assistance to Baden-Powell was your hero of the cricket-field—Major Poore. In the days of the Matabele campaign he had not slogged Richardson out of the Oval, nor driven Hearne distracted to the ropes at Lord's; he was there as Captain Poore of the 7th Hussars, working like a nigger, brave as a Briton, and quite delighted to be soldiering under the peerless Baden-Powell. His fame came afterwards.

During this expedition Baden-Powell gave brilliant evidence of his capacity as a general. He had drawn up a plan for an attack by his own and another column upon a great chief named Wedza, who lived with his warriors in a mountain consisting of six rocky peaks ranging from eight hundred to a thousand feet high. On the top of these peaks were perched the kraals, while the mountain itself, nearly three miles long, resembled nothing so much as a rabbit-warren, being a network of caves held by the burrowing rebels. Wedza's stronghold was steep, and its sides were strewn with bush and boulders; only by narrow and difficult paths was it accessible, and these paths had been fortified by the Matabele with stockades and breastworks. This important and well-nigh impregnable stronghold was held by something like sixteen hundred Matabele—six or seven hundred of whom were real fighting men. Baden-Powell, nevertheless, drew up his plan for the attack, and sat down to wait for the other column which was to act with him. That column never came; only a letter arrived by runner saying that it would be unable to join in the attack after all. "The only thing we could do," says Baden-Powell, "was to try and bluff the enemy out of the place."

So he arranged to win the battle by cunning of the brain. Sending five-and-twenty men to climb a hill which commanded a part of the stronghold, with instructions to act as if they were two hundred and fifty, and giving small parties of Hussars similar instructions regarding the left flank and rear of the enemy, Baden-Powell got his artillery ready to bombard the central position. Just as the five-and-twenty reached the summit of their hill, however, they were observed by the enemy and instantly fired upon. From hilltop to hilltop rang the call to arms, and B.-P. watched through his telescope the yelling savages rushing with their rifles and assegais to massacre his gallant little force of five-and-twenty men under a lieutenant. To create a diversion, Baden-Powell galloped off with seven men to the left rear of the stronghold, crossing a river on the way, and opened fire upon a village on the side of the mountain. By continually moving about in the grass and using magazine fire, B.-P. with his seven men gave the enemy the impression that he had a large army there, and soon the strain was taken off the five-and-twenty on the hilltop. Then Hussars and Artillery joined the five-and-twenty, while a 7-pounder flung deadly shells at every important point of the mountain. Soon after this the enemy made a backward move, and the lieutenant on the hilltop (with the Field-Marshal's baton already in his hand) incontinently began to harry him effectively from the rear.

The end of it was that Wedza's warriors were completely bluffed by the resourceful B.-P.; they were driven out of their stronghold, and the stronghold itself blown into smithereens. During this attack Baden-Powell narrowly escaped death, a small party he was with being fired upon at close range by a number of the enemy hidden behind a ridge of rocks. "My hat," says B.-P., "was violently struck from my head as if with a stick."

This reminds me of the service rendered by Baden-Powell as a doctor. "Three times in this campaign have I taken out to the field with me a few bandages and dressings in my holster, and on each occasion I have found full use for them." Once he doctored some Matabele women and children who had been hit by stray bullets while lying in the long grass. On this occasion he invented what he calls a perfect form of field syringe: "Take an ordinary native girl, tell her to go and get some lukewarm water, and don't give her anything to get it in. She will go to the stream, kneel, and fill her mouth, and so bring the water; by the time she is back the water is lukewarm. You then tell her to squirt it as you direct into the wound, while you prize around with a feather."

After the breaking of Wedza there was work to be done in Mashonaland, and then, when the rebellion had been crushed and the colonist was able to search fearlessly among the charred beams of his homestead ere setting about building anew, the gallant Baden-Powell turned his face towards Old England. Before leaving South Africa, however, he spent the Christmas Day of that memorable 1896 in Port Elizabeth. "After breakfast," he writes in his diary, "to church. Everything exactly ordered as if at home: the Christmas Day choral service with a good choir and a fine organ. And as the anthem of peace and goodwill rolled forth, it brought home to one the fact that a year of strife in savage wilds had now been weathered to a peaceful close."

Then came the voyage across the 6000 odd miles of ocean with Cecil Rhodes, Sir Frederick Carrington, and other interesting people. After that the English coast, and the train to London. And, after that, "through the roar of the sloppy, lamp-lit streets, to the comfort and warmth—of Home."



CHAPTER XII

THE REGIMENTAL OFFICER

I hear you say that Baden-Powell has had glorious chances, that the lot of most officers is humdrum, and that with so much talk about Arbitration and Universal Millennium, you cannot go up for Sandhurst with any certainty that your career will contain a single opportunity for gaining honour and renown. My dear Smith major, believe me, a man may distinguish himself in a barrack square as well as in African mountains or a besieged township. General popularity, it is true, does not come that way; but the opportunity for honour is there all the same, and the distinction one earns on that field has its appreciation in the right quarter. Long before the world of London paraded its streets with portrait badges of Baden-Powell on its heart, or thereabouts, he was a marked and famous man, and before he had drawn sword on a field of battle, or fired a revolver into the yellow grass of the veldt, he was known throughout the British Cavalry as a first-rate, if not the ideal, soldier. It is not a bad ambition, I promise you, to try and be a perfect regimental officer.

A party of sergeants in Baden-Powell's old regiment were once asked by a civilian whether the men liked him. There was a silence for a minute or two, and at last one of the sergeants replied, hesitatingly, "Well, no, I shouldn't say they like him"; then in a burst—"why, they worship him!" Let me tell you how Baden-Powell has earned their love.

In the first place, he entered the Army with no mischievous ideas about the manliness and dash of a fast, raking life. That is a great start, for if the soldier despises one type of officer more than another it is the young sprig who affects to consider soldiering a bore, and comes on parade with the evidence of last night's folly and dissipation in his drawn face and dull eyes. Baden-Powell was keen about his work from the first, and never posed as a drawling Silenus in gold lace. In the second place, Baden-Powell, who always possessed a great deal of sound common sense, took an interest in his men, treated them as intelligent beings, and never for once mistook the drunken, devil-may-care Private of fiction for the soldier who goes anywhere and does anything. It is a literary "dodge" to reach the reader's sympathies by drawing the blackguard in order to find the hero; one good deed in that world of unreality wipes out all the unworthiness of a lifetime, and the reader puts down the tale with a longing to fall on the neck and wring the hand of the very next hiccupping Tommy he encounters. As Bishop Blougram says:—

Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things, The honest thief, the tender murderer, The superstitious atheist, demireps That love and save their souls in new French books— We watch while these in equilibrium keep The giddy line midway: one step aside, They're classed and done with.

This is all very well in fiction, but I protest it is a little hard on the soldier, and it is certainly a dangerous belief for the future officer to grow up in.

The following letter, which appeared recently in the Daily Graphic, is well and truly written: "Having served as chaplain of one of the largest recruiting depots in England, may I thank you for your article on the Heroic Blackguard style of literature in vogue just now. Soldiers have often remarked to me that they were represented as 'drunken roughs who couldn't speak the Queen's English.' As a matter of fact, a steadier, better behaved, better mannered class it would be difficult to find. There are exceptions, but not popular exceptions. Blackguardism and heroism very seldom go together, Bret Harte and other writers notwithstanding. The pluckiest and most reliable soldiers are not animated beer barrels, but sober, keen-eyed, sensible fellows, and of such the British Army chiefly consists."

When you are most inclined to think the Private an irresponsible good-for-nothing, look hard at the next Commissionaire you meet on the street. That smart, clean, well-brushed man, with his bronzed face, his bright keen eyes, and general look of self-respect, was once a soldier, and indeed it is soldiering that has made him what you see. Look hard, honoured sir, at the next Commissionaire who comes across your path, and you will never again be disposed to regard the soldier as an insensate good-for-nothing.

"Tommy Atkins," says Baden-Powell, "is not the childish boy that the British Public are too apt to think him, to be ignored in peace and petted in war. He is, on the contrary, a man who reads and thinks for himself, and he is keen on any instruction in really practical soldiering, especially if it promises a spice of the dash and adventure which is so dear to a Briton." It was just because Baden-Powell acted on this assumption in the 13th Hussars that the men learned to "worship" him. The few regular bad-lots that are to be found, I suppose, in every regiment, are certainly no heroes among the rest of the soldiers. The corner in the canteen where they foregather is not crowded, and I have seen them from that unsplendid isolation looking wistfully at the fresh, clean, merry-voiced troopers buying "luxuries" at the bar,—men who are keen soldiers, anxious to excel, and who do not "nurse the canteen."

But bad officers may ruin the best men, and the popularity of the Army with the classes from which its ranks are drawn depends very largely upon the behaviour of our subalterns and captains. No one likes to be neglected, and the great mistake made by so many officers, but never by Baden-Powell, is their apparent indifference to the soldier's welfare "out of hours." In a cavalry regiment, for instance, for the greater part of the year the men have practically nothing to do from dinner-time till the bugle rings for evening stables. Will you believe it, that the commonest way of spending the afternoon in cavalry regiments is by going to bed? Immediately after dinner is over, down go the beds with a clatter, the strap that holds the mattress doubled-up is unbuckled, and under the thick sheets and the dark blankets, minus his boots, the trooper smokes his pipe until he falls asleep. Their officer is with them in the morning, to see that they brush the scurf out of their horses' manes and put the burnisher over the backs of the buckles; he puts his nose into their room at dinner-time to ask if there are any complaints, and withdraws it almost before it is recognised by the men, as if the odour of the Irish stew disagreed with him. After that, unless he walks through the stables in the evening, his men do not see him. Now, how can an officer who soldiers in this dull, stupid fashion ever gain the affection of his men? And, more important question, how can men with such an officer ever grow enthusiastic about soldiering, or even content with their lot?

Baden-Powell devoted himself to the men in his troop, and, when he was adjutant, to the whole regiment. He would get them out of their rooms in the afternoon for sports of some kind, he would encourage them to take up flag-wagging or scouting, and he would work like a slave to provide them with an alternative for public-house and canteen. There is a story about him, which shows how popular he is with the men, and, also, that it is possible for soldiers to take an intelligent interest in practical soldiering. Baden-Powell was delivering a course of lectures, I think on scouting, and every lecture had been attended by a large audience which completely filled the room. Men used to wait outside the door in order to get a seat, just as people stand patiently for hours at the pit-door of a theatre. Among this audience there was one young sergeant who had shown a singularly keen interest in the lectures; he was one of the smartest and cleanest-living men in the station, and had never been charged with drunkenness in his life. At one of the lectures B.-P. was surprised to find the young soldier absent, and he was still more surprised on the following day to find that this irreproachable sergeant was up on a charge of drunkenness. "What on earth made you go and get drunk?" asked B.-P. "Well, sir," said the sergeant doggedly, "I was late yesterday and couldn't get in to your lecture, so of course I had to go and get drunk." He said this perfectly seriously, and there was a very world of meaning in his argumentative "of course."



Baden-Powell was as assiduous in his attentions to his men as any knight to his lady. He wooed them and won them. He did not win by playing to the gallery, asking if they were quite comfortable in their room, and giving them little coddling presents. He won as a man wins a love that is worth winning, by treating the object of his devotion with respect and perfect trust. His work at Malta, when he was acting as Assistant Military Secretary to the Governor, secured for him the affection of hundreds of soldiers and, I am glad to add, sailors too. He was the life and soul of the place, indefatigable in getting up sports and theatricals for the men, and building a permanent club for their use, which effectually prevented the weaker men, or shall we say the more generous hearted? from spending too much money in public-houses. It was a sight to see the gymnasium, in which the theatricals were held, during one of Baden-Powell's performances. The vast floor of the building was crowded with soldiers packed as tightly as sardines, and the rafters running from wall to wall were all bestridden by sailors as happy and as comfortable there as the Governor and his party sitting in the front row in their splendid chairs from the palace. And when B.-P. appeared in the wings a shout such as might have brought down the walls of Jericho shook the great building, and soldier and sailor vied with each other to see who could keep that roar of welcome going the longest. And over and over again did Baden-Powell apply for leave to shirk some great social function in the palace because the hour of such entertainment clashed with the time he spent among Tommy and Jack in the gymnasium or the club.

His opinion of the soldier is a high one, and that is the secret of his success. He loves to recount instances which have come in his long experience, showing the soldier in the best light, revealing his pluck, his love of little children, his chivalrous championing of the weak, his handiness, his humour, his cheerfulness in depressing circumstances, his self-respect, and his honesty. What was it that struck his attention most about the tempting work of searching Prempeh's palace for treasure? That the work which was entrusted to a company of British soldiers "was done most honestly and well, without a single case of looting. Here was a man with an armful of gold-hilted swords, there one with a box full of gold trinkets and rings, another with a spirit-case full of bottles of brandy, yet in no instance was there any attempt at looting." And, eating out his own heart, on that bitter march back from Kumassi to Cape Coast Castle, he had eyes for the splendid doggedness of the British soldier: "In truth, that march down was in its way as fine an exhibition of British stamina and pluck as any that has been seen of late years. For the casual reader in England this is difficult to realise, but to one who has himself wearily tramped that interminable path, heart-sick and foot-sore, the sight of those dogged British 'Tommies,' heavily accoutred as they were, still defying fever in the sweltering heat, and ever pressing on, was one which opened one's eyes and one's heart as well. There was no malingering there; each man went on until he dropped. It showed more than any fight could have done, more than any investment in a fort, or surprise in camp, what stern and sterling stuff our men are made of, notwithstanding all that cavillers will say against our modern army system and its soldiers." During that bitter march Baden-Powell asked a young soldier, gripped by fever but manfully plodding on with the rest, whether his kit was not too heavy for him, whereat, says Baden-Powell, he replied, with tight-drawn smile and quavering voice, "It ain't the kit, sir; it's only these extra rounds that I feel the weight of." "These extra rounds" being those intended for the fight which never came.

In the Matabele campaign he was quick to notice the manner in which private soldiers tended some wounded nigger children. "It did one good," he says, "to see one or two of the Hussars, fresh from nigger-fighting, giving their help in binding up the youngsters, and tenderly dabbing the wounded limbs with bits of their own shirts wetted." During that haunting march with the Shangani Patrol, when the rice was cut down to a spoonful, and a horse had been killed to supply the men with food, Baden-Powell found time to note that "the men are singing and chaffing away as cheerfully as possible while they scoop the muddy water from the sand-hole for their tea." And he loves the soldier for all his little oddities. How he laughed over the man who carried skates in his kit through India, and the man in the African desert with a lot of fish-hooks in his wallet! And how he likes to chaff them out of their failings. At Aldershot one of his most popular pieces as an entertainer is that in which he impersonates the barrack-room lawyer. While the audience is waiting for the next singer, there is a noise heard in the wings, and then a loud voice cries, "I tell yer I will go on. It's no use of you a-stoppin' of me, I'm agoin' to tell 'em all about it, I am," and then with a great clatter a private soldier comes bungling on the stage, tunic open, hair all over the place, and cap at the back of his head. "Beg parding, sir," he says to the officer in the front row, "but these here manoeuvres has all been conducted wrong, they have, and I warn't to tell the company how they ought to have been managed. Now if I had had the runnin' of this concern, and not the Field-Marshal, I should have first of all"—etc. etc. The audience yells with delight, and if Baden-Powell really should show up, in his own inimitable fashion, the mistakes of a general (which, by the way, he is quite capable of doing), the audience and the general too, if he is there, laugh all the more.

Men go to him with their private cares and troubles. They know that the man who can make them laugh till the tears stream down their faces, can at the right moment show a serious face, and give ear to the humblest tale of trouble. He makes it his business—and surely it is part of an officer's business—to know all about his men's lives, their families, their favourite sports, their objects in life, and the way in which they spend their leave. When he was in the 13th Hussars he was always a favourite with the children in the married quarters, and if you could pick out an apple-cheeked urchin playing in the dust of the barracks who did not grin from ear to ear when you asked if he knew Baden-Powell, you had stumbled upon a young gentleman the guest of the regiment.

Baden-Powell even got to learn the names men gave their horses. There was in the 13th Hussars some years ago a handsome little black horse whose regimental number was, I think, A18. To the men he was Smut, and no one ever thought of calling him anything else. One day at stables the squad was called to attention, and the young soldier standing at the head of A18 was mightily surprised to hear a civilian walking side by side with the captain of his troop remark, as he passed up the stable, "Why, there's old Smut!" When the officer and civilian had passed out he turned to the next man, and asked who the deuce the bloke was in the brown hat. "Why, that's Captain Baden-Powell," said the man; and then he added with great pride, "I was his batman once." The young soldier had heard of Baden-Powell before, and was furious that he had not looked longer at him as he passed. An odd circumstance, by the way, concerning the ex-batman. He was a terrible fellow in many ways, always on the look-out for a fight, and in his cups had disabled more than one policeman in the cities where the 13th sojourned. But he kept in his box a little faded red book of quotations, filled with serious and religious thoughts, and he was particularly fond of two of these apothegms: the one, "A prayer is merely a wish turned Godward"; and the other, "A grave wherever found preaches a short and pithy sermon to the soul." He would quote them over and over again in his confidential moments, and, though he might pick out others as he turned the well-thumbed pages of that tiny book, it was always to these two that he returned as perfect specimens of great sayings. And that book, unless I am mistaken, was given to him by Baden-Powell. "If I had been with him right along," he would say, regretting some escapade, "I should have been a sergeant by this time."

Baden-Powell's familiarity with the names of his men's horses reminds one of his difficulty in swallowing horse-flesh during the hungry days with the Shangani Patrol: "It is one thing to say, 'I'll trouble you to pass the horse, please,' but quite another to say, 'Give me another chunk of D15.'" He is a man who can grow very nearly as fond of his troop's horses as of his own.

A good description of Baden-Powell is that versatile officer's own sketch of a man with whom he soldiered on one of his campaigns: "He has all the qualifications that go to make an officer above the ruck of them. Endowed with all the dash, pluck, and attractive force that make a born leader of men, he is also steeped in common sense, is careful in arrangement of details, and possesses a temperament that can sing 'Wait till the clouds roll by' in crises where other men are tearing their hair." The public in the light of recent events will be quick to recognise B.-P. in the latter part of this portrait; I can assure them that the rest is equally accurate. As a regimental officer he exhibits all these good qualities. He can show the men dash and pluck in every sport they care for, his common sense makes him the friend of Tommy Atkins as well as his officer, and the affairs of his regiment are so admirably managed that there is no enervating air of slackness about the barracks from the first monitory note of "Reveille" to the last wailing sound of "Lights Out."

And while Baden-Powell is loved in the barrack-room he is ever the most popular figure in the Officers' Mess. There is nothing of the namby-pamby, I mean, in his solicitude for the soldier's welfare, nothing to make him unpopular with his brother officers, nothing that makes even the youngest subaltern a little contemptuous. Tout au contraire. The place he holds in the affections of his brother officers may, perhaps, be seen in a quotation from the letter of an officer in the 13th Hussars, which I received during the most anxious days of the siege of Mafeking. After saying that relief ought to have been sent before, my Hussar says, "Poor dear chap, he must be severely tried. As I eat my dinner at night I always wish I could hand it over to him." Could a Briton do more?

Such then is Baden-Powell's character as a regimental officer. Beloved by the little fashionable world of the Officers' Mess, adored by the men who eat and sleep and clean sword, carbine, and boots in the one room, he presents to the gaze of the schoolboy whose whole thoughts are set upon Sandhurst the beau-ideal of a regimental officer.

To reach that ideal there are five great essentials—keenness, courage, high-mindedness, self-abnegation, humour. Ability to mix freely with private soldiers without loss of dignity is, I take it, the natural gift of a gentleman; and if the officer who devotes himself to his men is high-minded and courageous, always ready to ignore self, with the saving virtue of humour, he will earn not only their respect and admiration, but their loyal and unswerving love.



CHAPTER XIII

GOAL-KEEPER

Baden-Powell was at Henley, preparing to enjoy the festivities of the 1899 Regatta in one of the pleasantest houses on the river, when a telegram arrived calling him to the War Office. This was on Wednesday, and the business the state of things in the Transvaal. On Saturday he was on the sea, sailing away from the coast of England.

As we have said before, Baden-Powell keeps a khaki kit in perfect readiness for emergencies ("he is terribly methodical," says one of his brothers), and, therefore, when Lord Wolseley asked him how soon it would be before he could start, the delighted B.-P. answered with a very enthusiastic "Immediately." But ships are not kept in such easy readiness as kits, and two whole days had to elapse before our hero could set sail for the land where war was brewing. Those two days he spent with his family and in paying farewell visits to his friends. The Old Carthusian naturally bent his steps towards Charterhouse, and sought out Dr. Haig-Brown in the Master's Lodge. "I hope they'll give me a warm corner," he said, gripping the Doctor's hand. And then in a few weeks this Old Boy was in his African corner, enjoying its Avernus-like warmth.

The story of the siege of Mafeking is one of the most interesting an Englishman can read about. One may truthfully say that it is the story of a single man—our hero, B.-P. Good men he has had under him, skilful officers and valorous troops; but all the daring, all the gallantry, all the heroism would have been powerless in such a situation without the unlimited resourcefulness of the intrepid Goal-Keeper. With a handful of men he has held at bay in a small and very exposed town as many as 6000 Boers, commanded at one time by the dogged and unscrupulous Cronje. And not only this. With his small force he has kept the enemy on tenterhooks all the weary weeks of the siege, sallying out at night to fling his gallant men upon their trenches, storming them in their lines by day, and actually giving the large army besieging his little garrison a taste of cold steel.

In years to come, I suppose, only the imagination will be able to realise the effect on the stoical British mind of Baden-Powell's brisk and witty telegrams. England at that time, let it be known, was in a state of sullen wonderment. Every dispatch brought consternation to our minds. Here were our troops pouring into South Africa, soldiers of renown at their head, regiments famous throughout the world, representing our courage and prestige, and yet check after check, reverse after reverse—no progress, no sign of progress. In the midst of this national gloom came telegrams full of cheery optimism from little Mafeking—a name hardly known then to the man in the street, now as familiar as Edinburgh and Dublin. Who, for instance, can forget the famous message which ran: "October 21st. All well. Four hours' bombardment. One dog killed"? In an instant the gloom was dispelled. In 'bus and tram and railway carriage men chuckled over the exquisite humour of that telegram. Leader writers, unbending, referred to it decorously. The funny men on newspaper staffs made jests about it, and the "Oldest Evening Paper" enshrined it in verse:—

Four long, long hours they pounded hard, Whizz! went the screaming shell— Of reeking tube and iron shard There was an awful smell.

On us they wasted all their lead, On us who stood at bay, And with our guns (forgive it, Stead!) Popped quietly away.

They could not make the city burn, However hard they tried. Not one of us is dead, but learn A dog it was that died.

The reaction was extraordinary. The almost unknown Colonel Baden-Powell instantly became "B.-P." to the general public, and in the twinkling of an eye his photograph appeared in the shop-windows beside those of Sir Redvers Buller, Sir George White, and Lord Methuen. Everybody was cracking jokes about the war, and the Boers seemed to be already under the heel of the conqueror. When men opened their newspapers in the railway carriage it was with the remark, "How's old B.-P. getting along?" The doings of other soldiers in more important positions lost much of their interest, and the public mind became riveted on Mafeking. Here was a light-hearted cavalry-officer locked up in a little frontier town with seven hundred Irregular cavalry, a few score volunteers, six machine-guns and two 7-pounders; against whom was pitted the redoubtable Cronje with one 10-pounder, five 7-pounders, two Krupp 12-pounders, and one Krupp 94-pounder, and probably an army of something like 6000 wily Boers. And yet the Goal-Keeper, 870 miles from English Cape Town and only 150 miles from Boer Pretoria, was as light-hearted and optimistic as a general leading an overwhelming army against a baffled and disorganised foe. Englishmen were quick to recognise the virtue of the man who solemnly sent the death of a dog to be recorded in the archives of the War Office; quick to appreciate the peril of his position; and I do not think I am screwing my string too tight when I say that the safety of Baden-Powell from that moment became a personal matter to thousands of Englishmen all the world over. Miss Baden-Powell at this time was travelling in Scotland, and at some out-of-the-way station she and her boxes detrained. The station-master passing along the platform noticed the name of Baden-Powell on the trunks, and instantly rushed towards her, with beaming face and extended hand,—"Gie me the honour, ma'am," he cried, "o' shakin' your hand." And from this time gifts and letters poured in ceaselessly upon Mrs. Baden-Powell in London, letters from all classes of the nation, costly gifts, humble gifts—all testifying to the giver's love and admiration of her gallant son in Mafeking. One of these presents took the form of a large portrait of B.-P. worked in coloured silks, another a little modest book-marker. And in the streets gutter-merchants were doing a roaring trade in brooches and badges with B.-P.'s face smiling on the enamel as contentedly as if immortalised on a La Creevy miniature. Finally, to complete this apotheosis, Madame Tussaud announced on flaming placards that Baden-Powell had been added to the number of her Immortals.

This, then, was the sudden fate of the man who had returned to England from wandering alone within a stone's throw of the Matabele bivouac fires unknown and unhonoured by the public. I wonder if Baden-Powell had a presentiment of what was to be when, in the early days of the siege, he corrected the proofs of Aids to Scouting, and came upon his own words towards the end of that manual: "Remember always that you are helping your side to win, and not merely getting glory for yourself or your regiment—that will come of itself."

The wit of Baden-Powell in some measure obscured from the popular view the grimness of his task. Like the true Briton that he is, he considered it part of his duty to make light of his difficulties. But the holding of Mafeking was stern work. The Boers themselves never dreamed the defence would be seriously maintained, and in the early days of the siege they sent in a messenger under a flag of truce offering terms of surrender. Baden-Powell gave the messenger a sumptuous lunch, himself the most delightful of hosts, and sent him back with word to the accommodating Boers that he would be sure and let them know immediately he was ready to yield the town. And to Cronje's humanitarian plea that Baden-Powell should surrender in order to avoid further bloodshed, the Goal-Keeper made answer, one can see his eyes twinkling, "Certainly, but when will the bloodshed begin?" A little later he got in with a still more irritating piece of irony, addressing a letter to the burghers asking them if they seriously thought that they could take the town by sitting down and looking at it.

But this was at a time when Baden-Powell, in common with the rest of us, believed that the triumphant British Army would soon be coming up to Mafeking, and he himself able to sally out and strike a crushing blow at the besieging force. Weeks passed and the hope died. The Boers cut off the water-supply, and, with contrary ideas of logic, thought that such an action would damp the spirits of Baden-Powell. But that thoughtful and resourceful commander had seen that all the old wells were cleaned, and well filled, so that Mafeking was as secure from a water-famine as it was from the entrance of the Boers. Besides this, Baden-Powell had constructed bomb-proof shelters everywhere, and a boy stood ready with bell-rope in hand to ring immediate warning of a shell's approach. Trenches were dug giving cover and leading from every portion of the town. So perfect indeed were Baden-Powell's defences that it was possible to walk entirely round the little town without being exposed to the Boer fire. Telephones, too, were established between the headquarter bomb-proofs of outlying posts and the headquarter bomb-proof where Baden-Powell and Lord Edward Cecil, D.S.O., laid their heads together and planned the town's defence. And to keep the enemy at a respectful distance, Baden-Powell continually sent out little forces to harass them and keep them in a state of nerves. The Matabele never knew when Impessa was coming, and the Boers could never lie down to sleep with the assurance that they would not be awakened by the rattle of British musketry and the dread "Reveille" of cold steel. Here is one instance. Knowing that the Boers fear the bayonet more than rifle bullets, Baden-Powell determined upon a sortie in which his men should get within striking distance of the large army closing round the town. One night he sent fifty-three men with orders to use only the bayonet, and this insignificant force crept silently to the enemy's trenches in the darkness, and scattered six hundred Boers from their laager. So close to the town were the assaulted trenches of the enemy that the officer's sudden and thrilling "Charge" rang out distinctly on the night to the ears of those anxiously waiting the result of the sortie in Mafeking. This gallant attack completely "funked" the Boers, and at two o'clock in the morning, long after the little force had returned triumphantly to the town, they began another fusillade, firing furiously at nothing for a whole hour. Fight after fight ensued. Whenever the enemy occupied a position likely to inconvenience the town, Baden-Powell took arms against them, and drove them out. After several experiences of this kind the Boer lost his temper, and with it all sense of honour. It is difficult to write without unbridled contempt of their inhuman bombardment of the women and children's laager in the gallant little town which neither their valour nor cunning could reduce. Baden-Powell loves children, and few incidents in the siege of Mafeking could be more distressing to those who know the stout-hearted Defender than these cruel bombardments. His sorrow over the killed and wounded children was of the most poignant character. One of the officers wrote to his mother during these dark days, saying how the whole garrison was touched to the heart by seeing their Commander nursing terrified children in his arms, and soothing their little fears. If anything could have stirred that just and honest nature to unholy thoughts of vengeance it would have been the murder of these children; and I doubt not that he will hit the harder and the more relentlessly when he gets at close quarters with his enemy, fired by the thought of those mangled little bodies and the remembrance of their mothers' agony. And in addition to the murderous shells of the Boers, typhoid and malaria were at their fell work in the women's laager; the children's graveyard just outside the laager extended its sad bounds week by week, and the cheerfulness that marked the beginning of the siege died in men's hearts.



The cheerfulness, but not the determination. Baden-Powell wrote home in December, after some two months of the siege, saying that they were all a little tired of it, but just as determined as ever never to submit. And in order to keep up the spirits of the garrison in the hour when it seemed to many Englishmen that Mafeking was to be another Khartoum and he a second Gordon, Baden-Powell began to plan all manner of entertainments for the amusement of the women and children. The special correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazette in Mafeking, who sent to his journal some of the most interesting letters received during the siege, bore witness to Baden-Powell's efforts in this direction. In one of his letters he said: "The Colonel does all in his power to keep up the spirits of the people. To-day we have quite a big programme of events—the distribution of flags in the morning, cricket afterwards, general field sports, plain and fancy cycle races, a concert in the afternoon, and in the evening a dance given by the bachelor officers of the garrison. We have no Crystal Palace or monster variety hall, but nevertheless we manage to enjoy ourselves on truce days, and it goes without saying that the institution of sports and pastimes has done wondrous things in the way of relieving the tension on the public mind, and keeping up the health of the population. It may shock the mind of some cranks to hear that we so spend our Sundays; but if such persons wish to test the worth and the wisdom of a rational Sabbath, transfer them here, and let them have a week of shell-fire. They will speedily become converts." During the Matabele campaign, it may be remarked, Baden-Powell always held divine service on Sunday, and even to those whose training makes them regard the playing of innocent games on Sunday an offence, this holiday of Sunday in Mafeking must surely be regarded as a holy-day, pleasing to the Father of men. The love of Baden-Powell for children, his intense eagerness to keep alive the flame of joy in their young hearts, and the spark of hope still burning in the hearts of their defenders, could not, we may be very certain, inspire any decision displeasing to high Heaven.

Baden-Powell's dauntless courage, his brisk unchanging hopefulness, and his unflinching determination to "stick it out," were the inspiration of the splendid little garrison. To many of them surrender would have meant nothing more than release from a diet of horse-flesh and the irritating confinement of a siege; but no man and no woman in Mafeking even breathed the suggestion that Baden-Powell should haul down his flag; and on the hundredth day of the siege Mafeking sent a telegram of loyal devotion to the Queen, whose anxiety for their safety was not concealed from the world. A hundred days have long since passed, and if the request of Lord Roberts that Baden-Powell should hold out to the middle of May turns out to be history, the siege will have lasted considerably over two hundred days. And during these long, long days men have been in the trenches night and day, children crying to their mothers to be taken away from the pitiless rain of Boer bullets and the terrifying scream of Boer shells; day by day fever has crept in to lessen the number of brave men whose faith in the Old Carthusian never once wavered, and to rob poor mothers of their little ones. And with all these distressing experiences to wear him down and sicken his heart, our hero found himself further hampered by treachery in his own camp.

Treachery it was that frustrated Baden-Powell's great effort to break the cordon pressing so relentlessly upon little Mafeking, and by that means open up communication with those marching to his relief. The battle of Game Tree fort, as it is called, is one of those events which thrill the heart with pride, and then at the conclusion bring tears into the eyes with the reflection that so much skill in the planning, so much valour in the execution, should be defeated by base treachery.

Baden-Powell's plans for the taking of this fort were perfectly understood by his officers. The little force entrusted with the work of carrying Game Tree moved out of the town in the dusk of early morning, and in a few minutes the roar of artillery announced the beginning of a desperate fight. The scream of the engine of the armoured train told the men at the guns to cease firing, meaning that Captain Vernon was ready to rush the position with the bayonet. The scene that followed was magnificent. Waving their hats and cheering like schoolboys after a football match, our men started to run through the scrub towards the silent fort. And then as they went, a pitiless fire suddenly poured in upon them, a hail of bullets tore up the ground at their feet, swept down their gallant ranks, like grass before the scythe, and the men realised amid that enclosing and remorseless fire that treachery had forewarned the Boers, that Game Tree was impregnable. But did they waver or turn back? Not them. They were many yards from the fort, and their orders were to storm it. On they rushed, the officers well in front, waving their swords in the air and shouting cheerfully to their men to follow. Three officers, Vernon, Sandford, and Paton, seem to have made a race of it. Through that terrible zone of fire these young Englishmen rushed forward with all the zeal of men striving to be first to touch the tape. Captain Vernon fell ten yards from the thundering fort, and Sandford and Paton were left to fight out that splendid race alone. With a shout from his parched lips, Paton leaped upon the redoubt, caught with his strong hand the corner of a sandbag, jerked it out of position, thrust his revolver through the loophole, and, panting like a man spent, fired into the enemy's midst till he fell, shot through his gallant heart. Sandford, too, had run a great race, and had almost tied with Paton on the post. He flung himself upon the piled wall that could only be broken by heavy artillery, and fell shot through, with his breast almost against the muzzles of the enemy's guns. Nor were the non-commissioned officers and men far behind their valiant leaders; one intrepid sergeant, who was twice wounded, and at some distance from the redoubt, continued the race across the bullet-swept scrub and reached the sandbags almost on the heels of Paton. The men went forward shouting and cheering, unafraid to look death in the face, afraid only to turn back with their faces from the sandbags where the smoke drifted, and from whence the hail of bullets rained. There was no coward among their ranks, and even when the gallant souls realised that the position was impregnable, there was not a single man among them who wavered, or dropped back in the race. From the moment when the order to charge had been given, the attack was an eagerly contested race, with Death sitting on the flaming fort with the crown of glory for their prize.

When an aide-de-camp from the officer commanding the operations galloped up to Baden-Powell with the woeful intelligence that Captain Vernon had been repulsed, the Goal-Keeper hesitated, and the bystanders saw that he was taking counsel with himself as to whether a second attack should be made upon Game Tree fort. But his decision was soon reached, and in a quiet voice he said, "Let the ambulance go out." And that was the way in which Baden-Powell took the defeat of his great plan for breaking the tightening cordon round Mafeking.

In history are recorded sieges of a more thrilling character than that of Mafeking, but if you consider the story of this little town's defence you will find, I believe, that in few other cases have difficulties of so oppressive a character been borne with greater fortitude and courage. In a large town a siege is not so wearing to the nerves as it is in a little village the size of Mafeking; and in the case of this miniature garrison the troublesomeness has been doubled by the small number of men to share the burden of days and nights spent in the trenches, now blistered by the sun's rays, now drenched to the skin with rain that converted the ditches into small rivers. It is not our purpose to magnify Baden-Powell's defence, but it is necessary to caution you against the natural course of following his example and treating the Boer bombardment as a joke. It was no joke; and, if it had been, even the best of jokes pall when repeated through days and weeks and weary months. But the garrison would never let anybody dream that they were doing heroic things, never send imploring messages for help to men already occupied with the enemy in other parts of South Africa. To the question, "How long can you hold out?" Baden-Powell had only one answer, "As long as the food lasts."

And so we take leave of our friend the Old Carthusian defending his warm corner. As the last page is turned we see him walking through the streets of Mafeking, now glancing with hard steely eye to the forts which throw their coward shells into the women's laager, now turning to give an order with clenched hands and locked jaws, and now stooping down to lift a child into his arms and caress away its little fears. On his mind weighs the safety of that town with its handful of brave lives, the prestige of England, which suffers if the flag once set above the roofs of any town, whatever the size, falls before the assault of the Queen's enemies, and the thought that far away in distant London the mother who made him what he is, waits on the rack for his delivery. Be sure that never a thought of adding to his own reputation enters the mind of Baden-Powell in little Mafeking, that never does bitterness for tardy release enter his soul, and that all his labour has but one great all-embracing end—the victory of his side. "Play the game; play that your side may win. Don't think of your own glorification or your own risks—your side are backing you up. Play up and make the best of every chance you get."

FINIS



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