The blacks, indeed, suffered less than the whites. The latter were paying a guinea a day for very scant fare, while the Baralongs, who were earning from 1s. to 2s. 6d. a day, were able to sustain life on half their wages, and save the rest to buy luxuries, a wife possibly, when the stress of the siege was over. The young children suffered most of all, for malaria and unsuitable food played havoc in the women’s laager, and the graveyard was filled with small victims to the Imperial cause.
About the middle of the month the Boers became abnormally active, and for several days sounds of digging and picking suggested that they were throwing out new trenches beyond those they already manned in the region of the brickfields. The full significance of the activity was discovered by Sergeant-Major Taylor, who—in charge of three pits which formed the most advanced post—suddenly espied, some fifty yards in advance of the limit of the Boer trenches, a hostile figure! The apparition wore a German uniform, and Sergeant-Major Taylor was soon aware that the enemy were intending to sap the British position. Colonel Baden-Powell was informed of the impending danger, and at night a counter-sap extending 100 yards was thrown out, from which point it would be possible for the besieged to fire on the new work. The tension of the situation was extreme. Eighty yards only separated the combatants, and the enemy continued to burrow, approaching little by little, while the British continued to harass them in their labours by an active fusillade whenever a chance presented itself. But the operations continued, and every hour brought the Boers nearer. At last a night came when the enemy had almost reached his goal, and, moreover, had moved the Creusot gun to a position on the south-eastern heights so as to command the entire area. With due precaution the defenders tried to occupy the advanced posts, but the Boer firing was so correct and persistent that the position was rendered untenable. Sergeant-Major Taylor, a splendid fellow—who more than once had ventured eavesdropping to the edge of the Boer trenches—and four others were mown down in their gallant efforts to save the situation. The enemy, satisfied with his exertions in this direction, now began to turn his attention to the forts in the rear—a bad move, for while the Dutchmen hammered in that region the British rapidly seized the occasion to construct a traverse across the mouth of the sap. This, of course, was not carried forward without attracting the attention of the enemy, who fired fast and furiously. But the task was accomplished, after which the Boers and the British, worn out, rested from their hostilities. For a day and a night the Boers were in occupation of the advanced hole and the sap that had been carried from it, but it was soon recaptured, and the connection made with the Boer trenches blown up with dynamite.
On the 20th the Protectorate Regiment gave a dinner, which turned out to be quite a luxurious repast. Invitations were supplemented by the request to bring their own bread! Some of the officers shot a few locust-birds, small as quail, which, when carved judiciously, went round among the guests. Added to this there was a sucking pig, obtained none knew whence, but nevertheless most welcome.
On the 22nd, Sergeant-Major Looney of the Commissariat was sentenced to five years penal servitude for the misappropriation of comestibles and stores, which had been going on for some time. The Commissariat was reorganised by Captain Ryan (Army Service Corps) with untiring energy and economy. To the soup-kitchen went everything, scraps of meat, or hoof, meal, unsifted oats, bran, all were turned to account, and food of a sustaining, if not luxurious kind, was provided for every one. At this time the Boers were growing despondent, and began to doubt their chance of forcing the town to surrender. From a conversation overheard by some wary ones who had crept close to the enemy’s trenches, it appeared that President Steyn had urged Commandant Snyman to carry the town by storm, and afterwards to come to the rescue of the Free Staters with his force, but the Burghers had expressed their opinion that it was now too late to take Mafeking—they should have done so the first week.
The inhabitants were very pleased with their own ingenuity, and in their ordnance workshops the manufacture of shot and shell went on apace. The mechanics of the railway works, by a system which seemed to act on the lines of a conjuring trick, turned out from the shell-factory about fifty rounds a day. No waste was allowed. Even the fragments of the enemy’s shells were utilised. These and scraps of cast iron were purchased at twopence a pound for smelting, and twopence, it must be remembered, was now a magnificent disbursement, as money was growing more and more scarce. Curiously enough, the present foreman, Conolly, was at one time manager of the shell department of the ordnance factory at Pretoria, where he personally supervised the manufacture of the larger shells. He now necessarily took a parental interest in the shells flung into Mafeking by the Boers’ Creusot gun, and also in those new ones that were flung out of Mafeking as a result of his own and others’ inventive genius! A good deal of shelling took place, and that on the 23rd was said to be a salute in honour of Independence Day in the Orange Free State. The inhabitants of Mafeking would not have grudged their enemies the, to them, distressing attempt at festivity had they then known that four days later the death-blow of that independence would be struck, and the salute was destined to be the last in the history of the Republics!
Fare was growing more and more meagre. Horse-flesh was diversified by bread made from horse forage; water, to say the least of it, was becoming interesting only to bacteriologists. The native population for the most part starved; they now and then indulged in a raid and brought back fat fare, which for a day or two had a visible effect upon their ebon skeletons, but they brought it at the risk of their lives.
Uninterrupted deluges of rain made existence a perpetual misery, the trenches and also the bomb-proof shelters were flooded, and the hapless inhabitants, saturated, fled into the open, uncertain whether death by fire was not preferable to death by water. The first, at all events, promised to be expeditious, while the second offered prospects of prolonged sousing and exquisite tortures of enduring rheumatism. Daily the state of affairs became less tolerable. Typhoid and malaria stalked abroad, and in the children’s and women’s laager diphtheria had set in.
On the 25th a message was received from the Queen. Its effect was electrical. It was vastly heartening to feel and to know that the great Sovereign herself knew and sympathised with the history of the struggles and privations, the loyalty and pluck of this little hamlet in a remote corner of Her Majesty’s possessions. It seemed more possible now to starve patriotically, and, with every mouthful of nauseating mule or horse, to put aside personal discomfort and to remember the gracious fact that each individual was a symbol, a sorry and dilapidated one perhaps, but nevertheless a symbol of the majesty and might of Greater Britain. In addition to the royal message there came two days later the stimulating intelligence that Kimberley had been relieved, and that Lord Roberts was advancing on Bloemfontein!
On Majuba Day, all made sure that some sort of attack might be expected, and they prepared to welcome it with a salute from the new howitzer gun which had engaged the genius of the siege arsenal. The Boers, however, were quiet. A good deal of psalm-singing took place in the Boer camp, while the besieged put the big gun through his paces.
Ash Wednesday was observed without sackcloth and ashes. Mafeking had been enjoying Lenten abstinence for months past, and therefore when, at the service on the following Sabbath, the parson reminded them that it was the fast season, every one in the church enjoyed the joke so hugely that smiles were with difficulty suppressed. As one of the congregation afterwards suggested, they had had so much “Extra Special” fasting that they ought to be let off Lenten obligations for five years.