er at Mafeking.

Colonel Baden-Powell did not look on my presence with great favour,
neither did he order me to leave, and I had a sort of presentiment that
I might be useful, considering that there were but three trained nurses
in the Victoria Hospital to minister to the needs of the whole garrison.
Therefore, though I talked of going South every day by one of the
overcrowded trains to Cape Town, in which the Government was offering
free tickets to any who wished to avail themselves of the opportunity, I
secretly hoped to be allowed to remain. We had taken a tiny cottage in
the town, and we had all our meals at Dixon's Hotel, where the food was
weird, but where certainly no depression of spirits reigned. I even
bought a white pony, called Dop,[22] from a Johannesburg polo-player,
and this pony, one of the best I have ever ridden, had later on some
curious experiences. One day Dr. Jameson arrived on his way to Rhodesia,
but he was hustled away with more haste than courtesy by General
Baden-Powell, who bluntly told him that if he meant to stay in the town
a battery of artillery would be required to defend it; and of
field-guns, in spite of urgent representations, not one had reached us
from Cape Town. We used to ride morning and evening on the flat country
which surrounds Mafeking, where no tree or hill obscures the view for
miles; and one then realized what a tiny place the seat of government of
the Bechuanaland Protectorate really was, a mere speck of corrugated
iron roofs on the brown expanse of the burnt-up veldt, far away from
everywhere. I think it was this very isolation that created the interest
in the siege at home, and one of the reasons why the Boers were so
anxious to reduce it was that this town was practically the jumping-off
place for the Jameson Raid. So passed the days till October 13, and then
the sword, which had been suspended by a hair, suddenly fell.

On that day Major Gould Adams received a wire from the High Commissioner
at Cape Town to the effect that the South African Republic had sent an
ultimatum to Her Majesty's Government, in which it demanded the removal
of all troops from the Transvaal borders, fixing five o'clock the
following evening as a limit for their withdrawal. I had delayed my
departure too long; it was extremely doubtful whether another train
would be allowed to pass South, and, even when started, it would stand a
great chance of being wrecked by the Boers tearing up the rails. Un