carried back in the ambulance to the laager. On Sunday a truce was
usually observed, and the snipers who had exchanged rifle-shots all the
week met occasionally on that day with good-humoured chaff. Snyman,
the Boer General, showed none of that chivalry at Mafeking which
distinguished the gallant old Joubert at Ladysmith. Not only was
there no neutral camp for women or sick, but it is beyond all doubt or
question that the Boer guns were deliberately turned upon the
women's quarters inside Mafeking in order to bring pressure upon the
inhabitants. Many women and children were sacrificed to this brutal
policy, which must in fairness be set to the account of the savage
leader, and not of the rough but kindly folk with whom we were fighting.
In every race there are individual ruffians, and it would be a political
mistake to allow our action to be influenced or our feelings permanently
embittered by their crimes. It is from the man himself, and not from his
country, that an account should be exacted.

The garrison, in the face of increasing losses and decreasing food,
lost none of the high spirits which it reflected from its commander. The
programme of a single day of jubilee--Heaven only knows what they had to
hold jubilee over--shows a cricket match in the morning, sports in the
afternoon, a concert in the evening, and a dance, given by the bachelor
officers, to wind up. Baden-Powell himself seems to have descended from
the eyrie from which, like a captain on the bridge, he rang bells and
telephoned orders, to bring the house down with a comic song and a
humorous recitation. The ball went admirably, save that there was an
interval to repel an attack which disarranged the programme. Sports
were zealously cultivated, and the grimy inhabitants of casemates
and trenches were pitted against each other at cricket or football.
[Footnote: Sunday cricket so shocked Snyman that he threatened to fire
upon it if it were continued.] The monotony was broken by the occasional
visits of a postman, who appeared or vanished from the vast barren
lands to the west of the town, which could not all be guarded by the
besiegers. Sometimes a few words from home came to cheer the hearts of
the exiles, and could be returned by the same uncertain and expensive
means. The documents which found their way up were not always of an
essential or even of a welcome character. At least one man received an
unpaid bill from an angry tailor.

In one particular