The Siege of Mafeking (1900)

THE COLONEL AT WORK.
J. ANGUS HAMILTON
WITH FIFTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS AND TWO PLANS
METHUEN & CO. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON 1900
I have to acknowledge gratefully permission to publish in this book certain articles contributed before and during the siege of Mafeking to The Times and Black and White . To the editor of the latter paper I am indebted also for leave to reproduce photographs taken by myself and published, from time to time, in that journal.
I would acknowledge, too, in anticipation, any kindly toleration my readers may extend to me for the many shortcomings, of which I am dismally conscious, arising from the hasty preparation of this volume. When I explain that between the date of my return to England and this date—when I start for China—barely a fortnight has elapsed, I shall make good, perhaps, some small claim upon the indulgence of the critics and the public.
J. A. H.
July 21, 1900
R.M.S. Dunvegan Castle , September 16th, 1899 .
A breeze was freshening, tufting the heaving billows with white crests and driving showers of spray and clots of foam upon the decks of the Dunvegan . Passengers stood in strained attitudes about the ship, fidgeting with the desire to be ill and the wish to appear comfortable—even dignified. In the end, however, circumstances were too strong for the passengers, transforming them, from a state of calm despair, into a condition of sickness and temporary dejection. Every one was perturbed, and those delicate attentions which the sea-sick demand were being offered by a much-worried deck steward. Here and there groups of more hardy voyagers were spending their feeble wit in unseasonable jokes; here and there bedraggled people, wet with spray and racked by the anguish of an aching void, were clutching at the possibility of gaining the privacy of their cabins before their feelings quite overpowered them. In this mad rush, not unlike the scramble of a shuttlecock to escape the buffetings of the battledore, I also joined, fetching my berth with much unfortunate sensation. Alas! I am a wretched sailor, and travelling far and near these many years, crossing strange seas to distant lands at oft-recurring periods, has not even tutored me to stand the stress of the ocean wave. I cannot endure the sea.