hilltop (with the Field-Marshal's baton already in his hand)
incontinently began to harry him effectively from the rear.

The end of it was that Wedza's warriors were completely bluffed by the
resourceful B.-P.; they were driven out of their stronghold, and the
stronghold itself blown into smithereens. During this attack
Baden-Powell narrowly escaped death, a small party he was with being
fired upon at close range by a number of the enemy hidden behind a
ridge of rocks. "My hat," says B.-P., "was violently struck from my
head as if with a stick."

This reminds me of the service rendered by Baden-Powell as a doctor.
"Three times in this campaign have I taken out to the field with me a
few bandages and dressings in my holster, and on each occasion I have
found full use for them." Once he doctored some Matabele women and
children who had been hit by stray bullets while lying in the long
grass. On this occasion he invented what he calls a perfect form of
field syringe: "Take an ordinary native girl, tell her to go and get
some lukewarm water, and don't give her anything to get it in. She
will go to the stream, kneel, and fill her mouth, and so bring the
water; by the time she is back the water is lukewarm. You then tell
her to squirt it as you direct into the wound, while you prize around
with a feather."

After the breaking of Wedza there was work to be done in Mashonaland,
and then, when the rebellion had been crushed and the colonist was
able to search fearlessly among the charred beams of his homestead ere
setting about building anew, the gallant Baden-Powell turned his face
towards Old England. Before leaving South Africa, however, he spent
the Christmas Day of that memorable 1896 in Port Elizabeth. "After
breakfast," he writes in his diary, "to church. Everything exactly
ordered as if at home: the Christmas Day choral service with a good
choir and a fine organ. And as the anthem of peace and goodwill rolled
forth, it brought home to one the fact that a year of strife in savage
wilds had now been weathered to a peaceful close."

Then came the voyage across the 6000 odd miles of ocean with Cecil
Rhodes, Sir Frederick Carrington, and other interesting people. After
that the English coast, and the train to London. And, after that,
"through the roar of the sloppy, lamp-lit streets, to the comfort and
warmth--of Home."

CHAPTER XII

THE REGIMENTAL OFFICER

I hear you say that Baden-Powell has had glorious