In one respect only Baden-Powell had the advantage over Kekewich at Kimberley.  His burden was not increased by discord within the lines.  The civilians behaved with exemplary composure and put themselves unreservedly into his hands.

An archaic but effective simplicity characterized the methods of the defence.  Baden-Powell eked out his slender stock of men and instruments with tricks and devices that might have been employed at the siege of Troy, but which none the less deceived and confounded the slow-witted besiegers, whom he scandalized with gibes and taunting messages.  When asked to surrender to avoid further bloodshed, he replied that the only blood hitherto shed was the blood of a chicken in a compound; and on another occasion he reproved Cronje for inactivity.  Many of the incidents read like passages from the Iliad.  The besiegers were allured into determined attacks upon dummy trenches; deceived by bogus orders shouted for their information through a megaphone; alarmed by the sudden appearance of cavalry within the lines, for did they not see the glint of lances?  The lances were weapons that had been forged in the railway workshops, and carried round, as it were in a parade before the footlights by a body of supers making a gallant show upon the stage.

What should be done in a besieged place with such an embarrassing asset as ten tons of dynamite?  Buller would have handed them over to his second in command for disposal, and then if any accident occurred would have disclaimed responsibility for it.  Gatacre would have taken the chances, but would not have hesitated to pitch his tent if necessary beside them.  Colvile would have searched his orders for instructions.  Baden-Powell, not being able to rid himself of the explosive by firing it, arranged that it should be fired by the enemy.  He loaded it on railway trucks, which he propelled a few miles out of the town and then abandoned.  There was no Laocoon to warn the Boers, and they rushed at what they thought was an armoured train in trouble.  In the skirmish the dynamite exploded, and although no one was hurt the enemy was terribly scared, and the resisting powers of the garrison virtually augmented.

Baden-Powell thoroughly understood the Boer temperament.  Many generations’ isolation from the progressive European world had rendered it peculiarly liable to be ensnared by simple expedients.  It was not wanting in “slimness,” but it was the “slimness” or cunning of a primitive race, and was easily gulled by wiles that might have been employed against a tribe of Red Indians.  Baden-Powell alone of all the British leaders was aware of this, and he owed much of his success to the knowledge.  With but one man to defend each ten yards of his perimeter of seven miles he hypnotized Cronje, a dull man bewildered by a resourceful.  His versatility instantly found a way out of each difficulty that beset him.  Before he sent out a party detailed for a night attack that might easily go astray, he bethought himself of the device by which a ship is often guided into her haven, and hung up two lamps in the town as leading lights across the veld.