But they have bethought them of a new engine of terror and death. All was dark outside, the good folk in Mafeking were going to bed in peace, when a deafening roar shook the town to its foundation of rock; a lurid glow of blood-red fire lit up square and street and veldt, while pattering down on roofs of corrugated iron dropped a hailstorm of sand and stones, and twigs broken from many trees. The frightened folk ran out to see what had happened, and they saw a huge column of fire and smoke rising from the ground to the north of Mafeking. After the great roar of explosion came a weird silence and then the rattle of falling fragments on roof after roof; and then the cry of terror, the shriek of those who had been aroused from sleep to face the great trumpet-call of the Day of Judgment: for this they imagined that awful phenomenon to portend.
It was not until the morning that they knew what had caused the alarm. About half a mile up the line the ground was rent and torn; the rails were bent and scattered and flung about as by an earthquake.
On inquiry, they found that the Boers had filled a trolley with dynamite, and were to impel it forwards towards Mafeking. They lit the time-fuse, and proceeded to push the trolley up a slight incline. A few yards further, and it would reach the down incline, and would run merrily into town without need of further aid from muscle of man.
But they gave over pushing a little too soon; the trolley began to run back, and it was so dark they did not realize it until it had gathered way; then they called to one another, and some pushed, but others remembered the time-fuse, and stood aloof with their mouths open.
Very soon the time-fuse met the charge, and the dynamite hastened to work all the evil it could, regardless of friend or foe.
Piet Cronje was in command of the Boers now; he was vexed by this unlucky accident, but threatened to send to Pretoria for dynamite guns, just to make this absurd veldt-city jump and squeal. Cronje was willing to ride up and storm Mafeking, but the idle braggarts who formed the greater part of his army dared not face the steel; yet there was more than one lady in the trenches able and ready to use her rifle. The natives had suffered more from shell-fire than the whites. It is not easy to impress the Kaffir mind with the peril of a bursting shell; though the Kaffir may have helped to build bomb-proof shelters for Europeans, yet for himself and his family he thinks a dug-out pit too costly, and will lie about under a tarpaulin or behind a wooden box, until the inevitable explosion some day sends him and his family into the air in fragments.
An Amazon at Mafeking
Mrs. Davies, the lady sharpshooter, in the British trenches.
One such victim was heard to murmur feebly as they put him on the stretcher, “Boss, boss, me hurt very.” They bear pain very stoically, and turn their brown pathetic eyes on those who come to help them, much as a faithful hound will look in his master’s face for sympathy when in the agony of death. There were so many shells that missed human life that the people grew careless and ventured out too often.