Everyone was worn out. Lorentz had been shot in two places at Zand River; Wrangel too was wounded. Everywhere where resistance had been necessary the Boers had not stood against a dozen shells.
The retreat continued to Vereeniging; we arrived there on the 14th. The most contradictory rumours were freely circulated. On the 12th, Mafeking was said to have been taken by the Boers; on the 13th the news was confirmed; on the 14th it was denied.
The town, it appeared, had very nearly been taken by a hundred foreigners; but getting no support from the Boers, they had failed in their attempt, and seventy-two of them had been killed.
On the morning of the 17th we were said to have captured eighteen guns at Mafeking. The following telegram, signed by General Snyman, had even been published:
'This morning I had the good fortune to take prisoner Baden-Powell and his 900 men.'
In the evening it was reported that we had suffered a check, and had lost ten guns.
The last report was, unhappily, the only true one.
Baden-Powell, whom Lord Roberts had asked in April to hold on till May 18, had been relieved on the 17th, after a siege of 118 days.
The last few days, it seems, had been very hard ones, for on April 22 the ration had been reduced to 120 grammes of meat and 240 grammes of bread a day.
The little garrison had been greatly tried, losing more than half of its numbers during this siege, the longest in modern times after those of Khartoum (341 days) and Sebastopol (327 days), though a trifling affair as compared with the ten years of Troy, or the twenty-nine years of Azoth recorded by Herodotus.