But how wearily the time passes; moreover we are still enduring the straits of a siege and the torments of a bombardment. For almost seven weeks we have defied an enemy who encircle us upon every side, and who has summoned to its aid, for the purposes of breaching our trivial earthworks, the finest guns from their arsenal in Pretoria. The Boers outnumber us in men and in artillery, and not a day has passed since the siege began that they have not thrown shrapnel and common shell, omitting minor projectiles, into the town. And still we live, with just sufficient spirit to jeer across our ramparts at the enemy. They Mauser us, and shell us; they cut our water off, and raid our cattle; they make life hell, and they can do so, so long as it may please them; but no one was ever so deluded if they think that by such means Mafeking surrenders. From time to time we have given them a taste of our quality, and if on occasion we have lost some few, it is a source of melancholy satisfaction to know that their loss has been the greater. It is not long since the Boers attempted to blow the town to atoms through the agency of dynamite, though, similia similibus curantur, they went to heaven prematurely by an undesirable explosion. It was night, and the town was just about to rest, when it was shaken to its foundations by a most deafening roar; sand and stones, fragments of trees came down as hail from the skies, the whole place being lighted with the lurid glow of blood-red flame. To the north of Mafeking, and so close to the cemetery that it might have been a pillar of fire coming to earth to claim its own, an immense arc of fire and smoke was ejected out of the ground. After it there came silence, broken here and there by the rattle of the débris upon the roofs of the houses, and by the shouts and shrieks of a town in the confusion of a panic. That night those who slept had dreams of the day of judgment, while those who lay awake were restless, quaking with an insidious terror. In the morning the cause explained itself, since barely half a mile up the line was an enormous rent in the ground, the line itself being strewn and scattered with the rubbish of an earthquake. The Boers, with much ingenuous enterprise, had despatched upon a purely friendly mission a trolly load of dynamite; unfortunately, where they had started their infernal machine the declivity of the line had precipitated the truck backwards toward their own camp, and having very foolishly lighted their time-fuse before they had surmounted the crest of the rise, they had not the courage to stop the progress of the somewhat novel engine of destruction. Apparently it had rolled slowly downwards, tracking the instigators of such a deed with very fatal persistence, until the time-fuse met the charge, and powder and dynamite went off together. Upon the morrow there was much sadness in the Boer camp, and much silence.
Dynamite has played a not unimportant rôle in the history of our siege. Cronje has heard from native spies, and from his friends in our camp, that Mafeking is set within a circle of dynamite mines, and he has protested against its use in civilised warfare. Since then, however, he has not only discharged dynamite by trolly loads into the town, but he has threatened, in his vague and shadowy fashion, to send to his capital for some dynamite guns. It would seem, then, that a warm time is coming to Mafeking; the pity of it being that we are kept so long and in such unnecessary suspense. If Cronje were the gallant warrior whose dignity he assumes in addressing the garrison, he would have either taken or abandoned Mafeking some weeks ago. As it is, however, with occasional letters of regret for such untimely procedure, he still elects to bombard an inoffensive and unoffending township. The other morning, after the usual series of dull days, the activity in the Boer camp suggested to us that the town was about to be attacked. From the south-west the big Creusot opened fire at intervals of twenty minutes, the intervening periods being pleasantly filled in with Mauser and Martini fire and shells from two nine-pound high-velocity Krupps. In a very short space of time the list of fatalities included a native dog, a commissariat mule, and many buildings. After such a bloodless bombardment the Boer legions gallantly rode round to the east with the apparent intention of attacking the town. Then we thought that, in that moment, our defence would be justified, but he is wisest who determines what is to be the nature of the Boer movement when that movement has taken place. Down the serried lines of armed Dutchmen old Piet Cronje, as his friends call him, or General Cronje, as a sycophantian Boer press describe him, rode. He was a gallant sight—albeit we could only just see him some two thousand yards distant. After a temporary and casual inspection of his force, General Cronje turned his head towards Mafeking, and waving violently one arm in the air, cantered with much solemn apprehension towards our trenches. He had covered in this desperate effort some thirty yards, when perhaps a natural superstition caused him to turn his head. Was there a man dismayed in the Boer lines? Not one; but nevertheless, they were not taking any such manœuvre just then. Cronje stopped and cantered back again, seeming to hold an indaba with his petty officers. They gathered round him, they talked to him, pointing towards their lines, and shouting at one another; but there it ended. In a little while we saw a silent figure, moody and taciturn, guarded by two orderlies, ride slowly around from the east front to the headquarters of the executive on the south-west. Thus Cronje failed, not through any fault of his, but because the idle braggarts who form his army have not the spirit of whipped curs. Since then Cronje has made no effort to storm Mafeking, and it is very much to be doubted whether until the siege be raised the attempt will be renewed.
One must sympathise a little with Cronje since he has not been able to sustain in his attack upon Mafeking the high reputation which he enjoys among his countrymen. Now that he has been recalled to Natal, we here hope that he may be able to find some opportunity to distinguish himself. His force without Mafeking is a raw, lawless body of Western Boers, the majority of whom have followed him on his march. We say Natal, but there is no very positive ground for believing that it is in that direction that the new field of his activity lies. It may be that he has gone South, and if such should happen to be the case, it will not be long before he will come in contact with men who will test his mettle to the utmost. There have been many rumours of reinforcements: some people, addicted with a greater faculty of imagination than power of veracity, have even seen the advanced outposts of the relief, which, of course, is ridiculous. They mistake some scattered party of Boers for advanced scouts. We do not think that there is much real chance of the siege of Mafeking being raised before the New Year, since such would be opposed to the stately and insular procedure of the Imperial and Colonial War Offices. Hitherto it has apparently ignored the claims of Mafeking. All conditions of people here united in their efforts to secure some more or less reliable armament from the Government, but the reason, above all others, which made this impossible was that the Imperial authorities at home, in their fatuity, could not bring themselves to believe that the war, which South Africa knew to be imminent, would come to pass. Nevertheless, in face of their neglect, we are snug in Mafeking, although our artillery be hopeless; and since the war began we have gradually added to our defences. After many days' bombardment a breach was effected in one only of the town's earthworks. That was very quickly repaired, so quickly indeed that before nightfall it had already been restored.
CHAPTER XV
SHELLS AND SLAUGHTER
November 30th, 1899.
The Boers continue to shell Mafeking daily, and to concentrate upon the streets of the town their customary rifle fire. At first we experienced a terror of the dangers of shell fire, but the daily and constant presence of exploding shells has brought about an unusual degree of familiarity with its attendant feeling of contempt; people now are too careless, seeming to rest under the delusion that, one and all, enjoy an absolute immunity. The folly of it is that occasionally the error of their way is illustrated by a longer list of fatalities through one shell claiming half a dozen victims. Europeans perhaps, are less careless of the consequences of shell fire than is the native population, and it is a pity that it has not been found possible to impress into the mind of the Kaffir a better appreciation of the possible result of their intrepidity. We have had many more natives killed than whites, and the element of tragedy in this becomes the greater and more acute since, as a rule, the native, employed in building bomb-proof shelters for the whites, lacks the energy to turn to his own profit his knowledge of the manner in which shell cover should be constructed. They lie about under tarpaulins, behind zinc palings, wooden boxes, and flimsy sheds of that description, and perhaps for days their shelter may escape the line of fire; but there comes a moment made hideous by the scream of shell as it bursts in some little gathering of dozing, half listless natives. At such a moment their bravery is extraordinary—is indeed the most fearful thing in the world. The native with his arm blown off, with his thigh shot away, or with his body disembowelled, is endowed with extreme fortitude and most stoical resolution. Unless he is seen, he lies where he is struck, not caring to take the trouble to make his wounds known to some one who could sympathise and assist him. When the gaze of the curious is turned upon his mangled and wounded form he attempts to laugh, makes every effort to assist himself, and even if he knows that his injuries be fatal, he makes no sign. There is thus much to admire in these natives, but for the most part, people are quite indifferent to their sufferings.
A few moments ago, indeed as I was writing the concluding words of the last sentence, a terrific explosion, a shower of gravel and leaden bullets upon my roof, foretold the fact that somewhere near at hand one of these untimely instruments of destruction had burst. As I went to the door a crowd of people could be seen running towards the Market Square, the air was filled with the strong perfume of the bursting charge. I ran with the throng to where the shell had first struck in Market Square before delivering its full effect upon the windows of the local chemist. Amid the splintered glass and the consequent disorder of the chemist's shop lay the writhing figure of an unhappy native. As an illustration of the appalling wounds which these shells inflict, I am purposely dilating upon this very pitiful scene. As the shell rebounded from the ground leaving a hole many feet long, narrow, and arrow-headed, it had come in contact with a native before it wrecked the apothecary's store. Mingled with the fragments of glass and the contents of the shop were shreds of cloth and infinitesimal strips of flesh, while the entire environment of the scene was splashed with blood. The poor native had lost an arm, a foot lay a few yards from him, and his other leg was hanging by a few shreds of skin. In an angle of the wall formed by the junction of the shop-front of the chemist and the tin protrusion of his neighbour's building, something was sticking. For the moment it had escaped the gaze of the sordid few, who, drawn by idle curiosity, were standing about without the inclination to help, or even a smattering of the first aid to the injured. When the bleeding body was put upon a stretcher, and the mangled extremities gathered together, the Hospital Orderly caught sight of the bunch which was clinging to the recess in the wall. As he went forward to seize it, the trickling streams of fluid which escaped from it revealed only too plainly its true character. So great was the force of the shell, and so near had its unfortunate victim been to the galvanised iron wall, that as body and shell met, the terrible violence of the impact had wrenched away the lump to hurl it, in the same moment, through the exterior wall of the adjacent premises. Despite his fearful injuries, which were beyond the scope of human power to aid, he was not dead, feebly exclaiming as they put him in the stretcher, "Boss, Boss, me hurt." The ruin of the building had scarcely been realised, and the vapour of chemicals from the shell, mingling with the scattered perfumes of the shop, with the scent of the ploughed-up earth, and with that curious, insidious scent of a wounded body dissipated—when a second shell screaming its passage through the air hurled itself with a terrible velocity against the other window of the same building. In effect it added a little more to the ruin of the premises, escaping by a miracle five men who had been standing in the interior of the premises, but killing an unfortunate corporal, who had gone from the scene of the death of the native to get a "pick-me-up" from the adjoining bar in Riesle's Hotel. In such a manner does the death roll pile itself up—with the impending slowness of a juggernaut and the haunting persistency of fate. If these were the actual numbers of the killed upon this date, there were also two who were wounded, one of whom has since died, thus giving to one day a terrible trio. With such a sad lesson before one it would seem that, beyond those who were compelled to be out and about, no one would venture in the streets under shell fire, much less employ their leisure in endeavouring to unload those of the enemy's shells that might have fallen into the town, yet, but two days ago a local wheelwright blew himself and two other men to an untimely end by the explosion of a shell from which, with a steel drill, he was endeavouring to extract the charge. One of these men was killed almost instantaneously, another had his leg blown off, while the third sustained terrible wounds upon his body. There is not a day now without fresh victims being claimed in different parts of the town. Almost the first question asked as the shell bursts is for the name of the unfortunate owner of the wrecked house, and the number of the killed and wounded. In the early part of the siege when people were thoroughly scared by the introduction of this new element of destruction, bomb-proof shelters became quite popular, but lately with the good luck which the people in town have enjoyed, the shelters have been rather abandoned, but there is no doubt now, that the number who have been killed in this past week has somewhat unnerved the town. If it induces people to stay beneath their shelters, from out of the fearful misfortunes which have fallen upon the few, may be derived almost universal salvation.
EFFECTS OF SHELL FIRE.
1. BEFORE.