st breastworks and redoubts and little forts,
until we pulled up at the door of the headquarters' mess.

Ah, the narrative is helpless here. No art could describe the
handshaking and the welcome and the smiles on the faces of these
tired-looking men; how they looked with rapt faces at us commonplace
people from the outer world as though we were angels, how we all tried
to speak at once, and only succeeded in gazing at each other and in
saying, "By Jove!" "Well, I'm hanged!" and the like senseless
expressions that sometimes mean much to Englishmen. One man tried to
speak; then he swore; then he buried his face in his arms and sobbed.
We all gulped at nothing, until someone brought in cocoa and we gulped
that instead; then Baden-Powell came in, and one could only gaze at him,
and search in vain on his jolly face for the traces of seven months'
anxiety and strain.

After an hour we went out and found the column safely encamped just
outside the town. Everyone was dog-tired, and although it was half-past
five in the morning and the moon was sinking we lay down and were
immediately asleep--in Mafeking.

We did not know it, but we were in a besieged town. Officially the
relief did not take place until ten o'clock that morning, when the Boers
hurried away with their last gun. I was awakened at eight by the sound
of heavy firing, and as soon as my horse was ready rode away to the
north-east corner of the town (we had entered from the north-west), to
where the greater part of our column was in action. Through glasses one
could see something being drawn up the purple slope of a hill six miles
away--the last gun of the besiegers. Earlier in the morning our troops
had advanced on all the Boer positions which were still occupied (only
the eastern ones were then held), and had shelled the enemy in the
midst of his preparations for flight. It was only a rear-guard action;
indeed the engagement was practically limited to the artillery; and all
I was in time to see was the flight. It was a good sight, the mounted
men galloping in open order up the hillside which the morning sun was
throwing into a thousand patches of light and shade. They were soon out
of range, and we stood watching the disappearing specks of black crawl
like flies up the furthest ridges, here in groups of a dozen, there in
twos and threes, until the last one had vanished from our view; and thus
the siege of Mafeking came to an end.

There was joy in the camps of th