of major in
December 1884, and from that year till 1889 was a major of the 9th
Lancers, when he was transferred to the 5th Lancers. He was Military
Secretary to Lord Connemara when Governor of Madras from 1888 to 1891. He
reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel in August 1894, and that of colonel
on August 12, 1898.

[4] Commander Egerton was a nephew of the Duke of Devonshire and of the
first Earl of Ellesmere. He was the son of the late Admiral the Hon.
Francis Egerton, M.P. for East Derbyshire, 1868-86. Commander Egerton, who
was in his thirty-first year, entered the navy seventeen years ago. He
became a lieutenant in 1891, and in 1897 he was appointed gunnery officer
in the cruiser _Powerful_, having specially qualified in gunnery. He
possessed honorary certificates from the Royal Naval College, but he had
had no previous experience of war service.

CHAPTER II

THE SIEGE OF MAFEKING

President Kruger's Ultimatum having been accepted in its full
significance, General Cronje crossed the border and the telegraph wires
to Mafeking were cut. Mafeking is a smart little town on the
Bechuanaland Railway. It stands about eight miles from the Transvaal
border, about 200 miles north of Kimberley, and some 875 miles from Cape
Town. It is the headquarters of the Bechuanaland Border Police, a crack
corps, whose every member is thoroughly wide-awake and well versed in
the niceties of the guerilla style of warfare favoured of the Boers. In
the town is the "Surrey Hotel" and others; English, Dutch, and Wesleyan
churches; a cricket-ground and a racecourse. Its supplies, in time of
peace, are drawn from Dutch farms situated in the Marico Valley, while
its pure water is drawn from the springs at Rooi Grond in the Transvaal
territory.

Mafeking itself is less than a mile square. The railroad, running north
and south, takes a westerly bend as it crosses the Molopo River some 300
yards south of the town. In this westerly direction is a native Stadt, a
constellation of mushroom huts wherein the blacks congregate. To east,
north, and west the surrounding country is flat; elsewhere it rises and
affords a certain amount of cover. Towards the south-east is Sir Charles
Warren's old fort, named Cannon Kopje, which was viewed as the key of
the position and promptly rendered impregnable. In the north-west corner
of the town was the railway station, now useless; on the north-east,