The Story of Baden-Powell: 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps'

by Harold Begbie

Baden-Powell now had what one might term a roving commission. He was sent by Colonel Plumer in charge of a patrol to wander over the vast country covered by the rebellion and see what he could of the enemy, and when found make a note of. It was exactly the work B.-P. liked above all others. There was romance in the dangers of it, and intellectual joy in its difficulties. There was freedom in it, and the glorious feeling that every step he took he was carrying his life in his hand. And not only was life menaced by the bullets and assegais of Matabele lurking in the tall yellow grass, but there was considerable danger, though of a more humorous order, even in the taking of a bath, as B.-P. discovered in going down to a pool and spotting just in time a leering crocodile in the reeds. Lions, too, were stumbled upon in clumps, just as in peaceful England one walks upon a covey of partridges. Then, lying down one day after dinner for a nap, B.-P. discovered on awaking that a snake had selected precisely the same spot for its own siesta. The charm of night marches, too, was occasionally broken by the growling of a bloodthirsty hyæna, following and snarling at the heels of the horses. These were dangers, however, that added the few touches necessary to complete the picture of our smart adjutant of Hussars in cowboy hat, grey flannel shirt, breeches and gaiters, with a face as brown as a Kaffir's, wandering over the South African veldt. During these expeditions, by the way, Baden-Powell's wardrobe came to ignominious grief, and under the tattered breeches, the stained shirt, and the split boots, he was a mere network of holes. The ankles of his socks remained true to the end, but the rest of them, in B.-P.'s euphemistic phrase, were most delicate lace. The one drawback to the tub in the river, leaving out the chance of a stray crocodile, was the difficulty he experienced in getting back into these delicate open-work socks, and the only way of surmounting this difficulty was by bathing—socks and all!

The marches, too, had their intervals of fighting, and the little patrol was frequently so in touch with the enemy that Tommy Atkins and Master Matabele could exchange compliments. "Sleep well to-night," the grinning savages would shout from the hills; "to-morrow we will have your livers fried for breakfast!" And the compliments became sterner whenever the Matabele recognised in the little force of whites the dread "Wolf that never Sleeps." "Wolf! Wolf!" they shrieked with savage ferocity, and if Baden-Powell had the nerves of some of us he must have had many a bad night after hearing that yell, and marking the gleaming eyes and the frothing lips that twitched with lust for his destruction.

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: Reveillé 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.