As we have said before, Baden-Powell keeps a khaki kit in perfect readiness for emergencies ("he is terribly methodical,” says one of his brothers), and, therefore, when Lord Wolseley asked him how soon it would be before he could start, the delighted B.-P. answered with a very enthusiastic “Immediately.”  But ships are not kept in such easy readiness as kits, and two whole days had to elapse before our hero could set sail for the land where war was brewing.  Those two days he spent with his family and in paying farewell visits to his friends.  The Old Carthusian naturally bent his steps towards Charterhouse, and sought out Dr. Haig-Brown in the Master’s Lodge.  “I hope they’ll give me a warm corner,” he said, gripping the Doctor’s hand.  And then in a few weeks this Old Boy was in his African corner, enjoying its Avernus-like warmth.

The story of the siege of Mafeking is one of the most interesting an Englishman can read about.  One may truthfully say that it is the story of a single man—­our hero, B.-P.  Good men he has had under him, skilful officers and valorous troops; but all the daring, all the gallantry, all the heroism would have been powerless in such a situation without the unlimited resourcefulness of the intrepid Goal-Keeper.  With a handful of men he has held at bay in a small and very exposed town as many as 6000 Boers, commanded at one time by the dogged and unscrupulous Cronje.  And not only this.  With his small force he has kept the enemy on tenterhooks all the weary weeks of the siege, sallying out at night to fling his gallant men upon their trenches, storming them in their lines by day, and actually giving the large army besieging his little garrison a taste of cold steel.

In years to come, I suppose, only the imagination will be able to realise the effect on the stoical British mind of Baden-Powell’s brisk and witty telegrams.  England at that time, let it be known, was in a state of sullen wonderment.  Every dispatch brought consternation to our minds.  Here were our troops pouring into South Africa, soldiers of renown at their head, regiments famous throughout the world, representing our courage and prestige, and yet check after check, reverse after reverse—­no progress, no sign of progress.  In the midst of this national gloom came telegrams full of cheery optimism from little Mafeking—­a name hardly known then to the man in the street, now as familiar as Edinburgh and Dublin.  Who, for instance, can forget the famous message which ran:  “October 21st.  All well.  Four hours’ bombardment.  One dog killed”?  In an instant the gloom was dispelled.  In ’bus and tram and railway carriage men chuckled over the exquisite humour of that telegram.  Leader writers, unbending, referred to it decorously.  The funny men on newspaper staffs made jests about it, and the “Oldest Evening Paper” enshrined it in verse:—­

    Four long, long hours they pounded hard,
      Whizz! went the screaming shell—­
    Of reeking tube and iron shard
      There was an awful smell.