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Title: The Story of Baden-Powell
'The Wolf That Never Sleeps'
Author: Harold Begbie
Release Date: December 13, 2005 [EBook #17300]
Language: English
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THE STORY
OF
BADEN-POWELL
'The Wolf that never Sleeps'
BY
HAROLD BEGBIE
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
_Vestigia nulla retrorsum_
LONDON
GRANT RICHARDS
1900
"... A name and an example, which are at this hour
inspiring hundreds of the youth of England...."
Southey's _Life of Nelson_.
_First printed May 1900. Reprinted May 1900_
To SMITH MAJOR
HONOURED SIR,
If amid the storm and stress of your academic career you find an
hour's relaxation in perusing the pages of this book, all the travail
that I have suffered in the making of it will be repaid a
thousandfold. Throughout the quiet hours of many nights, when Morpheus
has mercifully muzzled my youngest (a fine child, sir, but a female),
I have bent over my littered desk driving a jibbing pen, comforted and
encouraged simply and solely by the vision of my labour's object and
attainment. I have seen at such moments the brink of a river, warm
with the sun's rays, though sheltered in part by the rustling leaves
of an alder, and thereon, sprawling at great ease, chin in the cups of
the hand, stomach to earth, and toes tapping the sweet-smelling sod,
your illustrious self--deep engrossed in my book. For this alone I
have written. If, then, it was the prospect of thus pleasing you that
sustained me in my task, to whom else can I more fittingly inscribe
the fruits of my labour? Accept then, honoured sir, this work of your
devoted servant, assured that, if the book wins your affection and
leaves an ideal or two in the mind when you come regretfully upon
"Finis," I shall smoke my pipe o' nights with greater pleasure and
contentment than ever I have done since I ventured the task of
sketching my gallant hero's adventurous career.
I have the honour to be, sir,
Your most humble and obedient servant,
THE AUTHOR.
WEYBRIDGE, _April 1900._
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
AN INTRODUCTORY FRAGMENT 1
CHAPTER II
THE FAMILY 6
CHAPTER III
HOME LIFE AND HOLIDAYS 16
CHAPTER IV
CARTHUSIAN 37
CHAPTER V
THE DASHING HUSSAR 55
CHAPTER VI
HUNTER 73
CHAPTER VII
SCOUT 90
CHAPTER VIII
THE FLANNEL-SHIRT LIFE 103
CHAPTER IX
ROAD-MAKER AND BUILDER 119
CHAPTER X
PUTTING OUT FIRE 135
CHAPTER XI
IN RAGS AND TATTERS 158
CHAPTER XII
THE REGIMENTAL OFFICER 172
CHAPTER XIII
GOAL-KEEPER 192
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Major-General R.S.S. Baden-Powell _Frontispiece_
Professor Baden Powell 7
Mrs. Baden-Powell 11
B.-P. reflecting on the After-deck of the _Pearl_ 21
Rev. William Haig-Brown, LL.D. 41
The Dashing Hussar (B.-P. at 21) 61
"Beetle" 79
The Family on Board the _Pearl_ 107
"_Viret in Æternum_" 179
Goal-Keeper 201
CHAPTER I
AN INTRODUCTORY FRAGMENT ON NO ACCOUNT TO BE SKIPPED
You will be the first to grant me, honoured sir, that after
earnestness of purpose, that is to say "keenness," there is no quality
of the mind so essential to the even-balance as humour. The
schoolmaster without this humanising virtue never yet won your love
and admiration, and to miss your affection and loyalty is to lose one
of life's chiefest delights. You are as quick to detect the humbug who
hides his mediocrity behind an affectation of dignity as was dear old
Yorick, of whom you will read when you have got to know the sweetness
of Catullus. This Yorick it was who declared that the Frenchman's
epigram describing gravity as "a mysterious carriage of the body to
cover the defects of the mind," deserved "to be wrote in letters of
gold"; and I make no doubt that had there been a greater recognition
of the extreme value and importance of humour in the early ages of the
world, our history books would record fewer blunders on the part of
kings, counsellors, and princes, and the great churches would not have
alienated the sympathy of so many goodly people at the most important
moment in their existence--the beginning of their proselytism.
This erudite reflection is to prepare you for the introduction of my
hero, Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell. I introduce him to you as
a hero--and as a humourist. To me he appears the ideal English
schoolboy, and the ideal British officer; but if I had blurted this
out at the beginning of my story you might perhaps have flung the book
into an ink-stained corner, thinking you were in for a dull lecture.
It is the misfortune of goodness to be generally treated with
superstitious awe, as though it were a visitant from heaven, instead
of being part and parcel of our own composition. So I begin by
assuring you that if ever there was a light-hearted, jovial creature
it is my hero, and by promising you that he shall not bore you with
moral disquisitions, nor shock your natural and untainted mind with
impossible precepts.
He is a hero in the best sense of the word, living cleanly, despising
viciousness equally with effeminacy, and striving after the
development of his talents, just as a wise painter labours at the
perfecting of his picture. Permit me here to quote the words of a
sagacious Florentine gentleman named Guicciardini: "Men," says he,
"are all by nature more inclined to do good than ill; nor is there
anybody who, where he is not by some strong consideration pulled the
other way, would not more willingly do good than ill."
Goodness, then, is a part of our being; therefore when you are
behaving yourself like a true man, do not flatter yourself that you
are doing any superhuman feat. And do not, as some do, have a sort of
stupid contempt for people who respect truth, honesty, and purity,
people who work hard at school, never insult their masters, and try to
get on in the world without soiling their fingers and draggling their
skirts in the mire. But see you cultivate humour as you go along.
Without that there is danger in the other.
It is useful to reflect that no man without the moral idea ever
wrought our country lasting service or won himself a place in the
hearts of mankind. On the other hand, most of the men whose names are
associated in your mind with courage and heroism are those who keenly
appreciated the value of Conduct, and strove valiantly to keep
themselves above the demoralising and vulgarising influences of the
world.
Baden-Powell, then, is a hero, but no prodigy. He is a hero, and
human. A ripple of laughter runs through his life, the fresh wind
blows about him as he comes smiling before our eyes; and if he be too
full of fun and good spirits to play the part of King Arthur in your
imagination, be sure that no knight of old was ever more chivalrous
towards women, more tender to children, and more resolved upon walking
cleanly through our difficult world.
Ask those who know him best what manner of man he is, and the
immediate answer, made with merry eyes and a deep chuckle, is this:
"He's the funniest beggar on earth." And then when you have listened
to many stories of B.-P.'s pranks, your informant will grow suddenly
serious and tell you what a "straight" fellow he is, what a loyal
friend, what an enthusiastic soldier. But it is ever his fun first.
One word more. Against such a work as this it is sometimes urged that
there is a certain indelicacy in revealing the virtues of a living man
to whomsoever has a shilling in his pocket to purchase a book. My
answer to such a charge may be given in a few lines. In writing about
Baden-Powell your humble servant has hardly considered the feelings of
Baden-Powell at all. B.-P. has outlived a goodly number of absurd
newspaper biographies, and he will survive this. Of you, and you
alone, most honoured sir, has the present historian thought, and so
long as you are pleased, it matters little to him if the
hypersensitive lift up lean hands, turn pale eyes to Heaven, and
squeak "Indecent!" till they are hoarse. And now, with as little
moralising as possible, and no more cautions, let us get along with
our story.
CHAPTER II
THE FAMILY
Baden-Powell had certain advantages in birth. We will not violently
uproot the family tree, nor will we go trudging over the broad acres
of early progenitors. I refer to the fact that his father was a
clergyman. To be a parson's son is the natural beginning of an
adventurous career; and, if we owe no greater debt to the Church of
our fathers, there is always this argument in favour of the
Establishment, that most of the men who have done something for our
Empire have first opened eyes on this planet in some sleepy old
rectory where roses bloom and rooks are blown about the sky.
[Illustration: Professor Baden Powell.
From a Painting by Hartmann.]
Mr. Baden-Powell, the father of our hero, was a man of great powers.
He was a renowned professor at Oxford, celebrated for his attainments
in theology and in physical science. But the peace-loving man of
letters died ere his boys had grown to youth, and, alas, the memory of
him is blurred and indistinct in their minds. They remember a quiet,
soft-voiced, tender-hearted man who was tall and of goodly frame, yet
had the scholar's air, about whose knees they would cluster and hear
enchanting tales, the plots of which have long since got tangled in
the red tape of life. He had, what all fathers should surely have, a
great love of natural history, and on his country walks would beguile
his boys with talk of animals, birds, and flowers, implanting in their
minds a love of the open and a study of field geology which has since
stood them in excellent stead. I like to picture this learned
professor, who was attacked by the narrow-minded Hebraists of his day
for showing, as one obituary notice remarked, that the progress of
modern scientific discovery, although necessitating modifications in
many of the still prevailing ideas with which the Christian religion
became encrusted in the times of ignorance and superstition, is in no
way incompatible with a sincere and practical acceptance of its great
and fundamental truths,--I like, I say, to picture this Oxford
professor on one of his walks bending over pebbles, birds' eggs, and
plants, with a troop of bright-eyed boys at his side. One begins to
think of the scent of the hedgerow, the shimmering gossamer on the
sweet meadows, the song of the invisible lark, the goodly savour of
the rich earth, and then to the mind's eye, in the midst of it all,
there springs the picture of the genial parson, tall and spare,
surrounded by his olive-branches, and perhaps with our hero, as one of
the late shoots, riding triumphant on his shoulder. It was his habit,
too, when composing profound papers to read before the Royal Society,
to let his children amuse themselves in his book-lined study, and who
cannot see the beaming face turned often from the written sheets to
look lovingly on his happy children? But, as I say, the memory of this
lovable man is blurred for his children, and the clearest of their
early memories are associated with their mother, into whose hands
their training came while our hero was still in frocks.
[Illustration: Mrs. Baden-Powell.
From a Painting by Hartmann.]
Mrs. Baden-Powell's maiden name was Henrietta Grace Smyth. Her father
was a sturdy seaman, Admiral W.H. Smyth, K.S.F., and fortunately for
her children she was trained in a school where neither Murdstone
rigour nor sentimental coddling was regarded as an essential. She was
the kind of mother that rears brave men and true. For discipline she
relied solely on her children's sense of honour, and for the
maintenance of her influence on their character she was content to
trust to a never-wavering interest in all their sports, occupations,
and hobbies. Her children were encouraged to bear pain manfully, but
they were not taught to crush their finer feelings. A simple form of
religion was inculcated, while the boys' natural love for humour was
encouraged and developed. In a word, the children were allowed to grow
up naturally, and the influence brought to bear upon them by this wise
mother was as quiet and as imperceptible as Nature intended it to be.
Dean Stanley, Ruskin, Jowett, Tyndall, and Browning were among those
who were wont to come and ply Mrs. Baden-Powell with questions as to
how she managed to keep in such excellent control half-a-dozen boys
filled to the brim with animal spirits. The truth is, the boys were
unconscious of any controlling influence in their lives, and how could
they have anything but a huge respect for a mother whose knowledge of
science and natural history enabled her to tell them things which
they did not know? In those days mothers were not content to commit
the formation of their children's minds to nursemaids and governesses.
The eldest boy became a Chief Judge in India, and lived to write what
the _Times_ described as "three monumental volumes on the Land Systems
of British India." The second boy, Warington, of whom we shall have
more to say in the next chapter, went into the Navy, but left that
gallant Service to practise at the Bar, and now is as breezy a Q.C. as
ever brought the smack of salt-water into the Admiralty Court. The
third son, Sir George Baden-Powell, sometime member of Parliament for
Liverpool, had already entered upon a distinguished career when, to
the regret of all who had marked his untiring devotion to Imperial
affairs, his early death robbed the country of a loyal son. The other
brothers of our hero are Frank Baden-Powell, who took Honours at
Balliol, and is a barrister of the Inner Temple, as well as a noted
painter, and Baden F.S. Baden-Powell, Major in the Scots Guards, whose
war-kites at Modder River enabled Marconi's staff to establish
wireless telegraphy across a hundred miles of South Africa. Among
this family of young lions there was one little girl, Agnes, as keen
about natural history as the rest, to whom her brothers were as
earnestly and as passionately devoted as ever was Don Quixote to his
Dulcinea.
And now to little Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell in
knickerbockers and Holland jerkin.
CHAPTER III
HOME LIFE AND HOLIDAYS
Baden-Powell is now called either "B.-P." or "Bathing Towel." To his
family he has always been Ste. This name, a contraction of Stephenson,
was found for him by his big brothers in the days when home-made
soldiers and birds'-nesting were life's main business.
Ste, who we must record was born at 6 Stanhope Street, London, on the
22nd February 1857, and had the engineer Robert Stephenson for one of
his godfathers, was educated at home until he was eleven years of age.
His parents had a great dread of overtaxing young brains, and lessons
were never made irksome to any of their children. Ste learned to
straddle a pony very soon after he had mastered the difficult business
of walking, and with long hours spent in the open in the lively
companionship of his brothers he grew up in vigorous and healthy
boyhood. He had an enquiring mind, and never seemed to look upon
lessons as a "fag." He was always "wanting to know," and there was
almost as much eagerness on the little chap's part to be able to
decline _mensa_ and conjugate _amo_ as he evinced in competing with
his brothers in their sports and games. Such was his gentle, placid
nature that the tutor who looked after his work loved to talk with
people about his charge, never tiring in reciting little instances of
the boy's delicacy of feeling and his intense eagerness to learn. Mark
well, Smith minor, that this is no little Paul Dombey of whom you are
reading. B.-P., so far as I can discover, never heard in the tumbling
of foam-crested waves on the level sands of the sea-shore any
mysterious message to his individual soul from the spirit world. He
was full of fun, full of the joy of life, and as "keen as mustard" on
adventures of any kind. His fun, however, was of the innocent order.
He was not like Cruel Frederick in _Struwwelpeter_, who (the little
beast!) delighted in tearing the wings from flies and hurling
brickbats at starving cats. Baden-Powell would have kicked Master
Frederick rather severely if he had caught him at any such mean
business. No, his fun took quite another form. He was fond of what you
call "playing the fool," singing comic songs, learning to play tunes
on every odd musical instrument he could find, and delighting his
brothers by "taking off" people of their acquaintance. B.-P., you must
know, is a first-rate actor, and in his boyhood it was one of his
chief delights to write plays for himself and his brothers to act.
Some of these plays were moderately clever, but all of them contained
a screamingly funny part for the low comedian of the company--our
friend Ste himself.
Another of his amusements at this time was sketching. He got into the
habit of holding his pencil or paint-brush in the left hand, and his
watchful mother was troubled in her mind as to the wisdom of allowing
a possible Botticelli to play pranks with his art. One day Ruskin
called when this doubt was in her mind, and to him the question was
propounded. Without a moment's reflection he counselled the mother to
let the boy draw in whatsoever manner he listed, and together they
went to find the young artist at his work. In the play-room they
discovered one brother reading hard at astronomy, and Ste with a
penny box of water-colours painting for dear life--with his left hand.
"Now I'll show you how to paint a picture," said Ruskin, and with a
piece of paper on the top of his hat and B.-P.'s penny box of paints
at his side he set to work, taking a little china vase for a model.
Both the vase and the picture are now in the drawing-room of Mrs.
Baden-Powell's London house. The result of Ruskin's advice was that
B.-P. continued to draw with his left hand, and now in making sketches
he finds no difficulty in drawing with his left hand and shading in at
the same time with his right.
There is an incident of his childhood which I must not forget to
record. At a dinner-party at the Baden-Powells', when Ste was not yet
three years old, the guests being all learned and distinguished men,
such as Buckle and Whewell, Thackeray was handing Mrs. Baden-Powell
into dinner when he noticed that one of the little children was
following behind. This was the future scout of the British Army, and
the young gentleman, according to his wont, was just scrambling into a
chair when Thackeray, fumbling in his pocket, produced a new
shilling, and said in his caressing voice, "There, little one, you
shall have this shilling if you are good and run away." Ste quietly
looked up at his mother, and not until she told him that he might go
up to the nursery did he shift his ground. But he carried that
shilling with him, and now it is one of his most treasured
possessions.
While he was doing lessons at home Baden-Powell gave evidence of his
bent. He was fond of geography, and few things pleased him more than
the order to draw a map. His maps, by the way, were always drawn with
his left hand, and were astonishingly neat and accurate. Then in his
spare hours, with scissors and paper, he would cut out striking
resemblances of the most noted animals in the Zoo, and
these--elephants and tigers, monkeys and bears--were "hung" by his
admiring brothers with due honour on a large looking-glass in the
schoolroom, there to amuse the juvenile friends of the family. He had
the knack, too, of closely imitating the various sounds made by
animals and birds, and one of his infant jokes was to steal behind a
person's chair and suddenly break forth "with conspuent doodle-doo."
And, again, when he was a little older, living at Rosenheim, I.W.,
there was surely the future defender of Mafeking in the little chap in
brown Holland on the sands of Bonchurch digging scientific trenches
with wooden spade, and demonstrating to his governess the
impregnability of his sand fortress. With his sister and brother,
little Ste was once out with this governess on a country ramble near
Tunbridge Wells, when the governess discovered that she had walked
farther than she intended and was in strange country. Ste was elated.
But enquiry elicited the information that the party was not lost, and
that they could return home by a shorter route; then was Baden-Powell
miserable and cast down. He protested that he wanted the party to get
lost so that he could find the way home for them.
[Illustration: B.-P. reflecting on the After-deck of the _Pearl_]
A favourite holiday haunt was Tunbridge Wells, where Ste's grandfather
owned a spacious and a fair demesne. Here, with miles of wood for
exploration, brothers and sister were in their element. They would
climb into the highest chestnut trees in the woods, taking up hampers
and hay for the construction of nests, and at that exalted altitude
play all manner of wild and romantic games. And yet they would also
take up books into those cool branches and do lessons! Of Ste at this
period his governess remarks, "It gave him great pleasure to enter a
new rule in arithmetic"--an illuminative sentence, in which one sees
the governess as well as the child.
It was here in Tunbridge Wells that Ste, with little Baden, now
Guardsman and inventor of war-kites, spent laborious days in
constructing a really serviceable dam in the river, digging there a
deep hole in order to make themselves a luxurious bathing-place. From
early infancy they had been taught to do for themselves. Master B.-P.
could dress and undress himself before he was three years old, and at
three he could speak tolerably well in German as well as English. The
children were encouraged to get knowledge as some other children are
encouraged to get bumptiousness; their parents delighted, and showed
the children their delight, whenever a child did something sensible
and clever; there was no unintelligent admiration of precocity.
The boys dug their own gardens, and from five years of age each child
kept a most careful book of his expenditure by double entry. Their
pennies went chiefly in books and presents, and omnibuses for long
excursions out of London. There was no prohibition as to sweets, but
never a penny of these earnest young double-entry bookkeepers found
its way to the tuck-shop. However, a joke among the brothers was the
following constant entry in the book of one of them: "Orange, £0:0:1."
But no chaff was strong enough to correct that healthy appetite, and
"Orange, £0:0:1" went on through the happy years.
At eleven years of age, Ste was packed off to a small private school,
and here he distinguished himself in the same manner, though of course
on a smaller scale, as Mr. Gladstone did at Eton. His moral courage,
coupled with his athletic prowess, made him the darling of the little
school, and the headmaster sorrowfully told his mother when the boy's
two years' schooling were over that he would thankfully keep him there
without fee of any kind, because by force of character the plucky
little fellow had raised the entire moral tone of the school.
And now we come to what I regard as the most important part of our
hero's life. In the last chapter I said we should have to say
something about B.-P.'s big brother, the sailor, Warington, named
after his grandmother, who was a Warington of Waddon Park. The very
name Warington, even though it be spelled with a single 'r,' has an
inspiring sound, and while Thackeray lives will ever be linked with
all that is true and straightforward in the human heart. Imagine the
reverence felt for Warington by the young brothers when he came home
from a sea voyage! Not only were there the broad square shoulders, the
deep chest, and the bronzed face to compel admiration; but a masterful
and commanding manner withal, a stern eye and a rousing voice--and the
overwhelming and crushing fact that he was a British Naval officer!
Warington had been born ten years before Ste, and it is a mighty good
thing for B.-P. (and he would be the first to admit it) that this was
the case. For I believe that the resourcefulness of Baden-Powell is
the result of the early training which he received at the hands of
Warington; without that training he would have grown up a delightful
and an amusing fellow, but, I suspect, as so many delightful and
amusing people are, ineffective. And that is just what B.-P. is not.
You must know that in the spring holidays the boys spent their days in
ranging field and copse "collecting," riding ponies, often with their
faces towards the tail-end, attending to their innumerable pets, and
doing a certain amount of reading of their own free will. Ste's study
was mainly history and geology, and it was his custom to embellish the
pages of the books he was reading with suitable illustrations as he
went along. With these amusements, and always a good many productions
of Ste's original comedies, the spring holidays slipped away
pleasantly enough. But in the summer holidays came Warington fresh
from the sea, with abounding energy and indomitable will, and
recreation then was of a sterner kind.
Warington had designed a yacht, a smart 5-tonner, and in supreme
command of this little craft, with his brothers for the crew, and only
one hired hand for the dirty work, he took the schoolboys away from
the ease and comforts of home life to rough it at sea. They shipped as
seamen, and as seamen they lived. It was a case of "lights out" soon
after dusk, and then up again with the sun. This rule, however, was
not followed with comfortable regularity, for sometimes stress of
weather would find the little chaps tumbling out of their hammocks in
the dead of night, and clambering upon deck with knuckles rubbing the
sleep out of their eyes. All the work usually performed by seamen,
with the sole exception of cooking, was done by these little chaps,
and under the eagle eye of Warington it was well and truly done. Not
that they showed any disposition to shirk. On the contrary, a keener
crew was never shipped, but there was something in their knowledge
that the skipper's word was law, that there was no arguing about
orders, which must have given a certain polish to their work.
Warington, of course, was no petty tyrant, lording it over young
brothers, and swaggering in the undisputed character of his sway. Like
the rest he is a humourist, and when a gale was not blowing or the
yacht was not contesting a race, he was as full of merriment and good
spirits as the rest. His opinion of Ste at this time was a high one.
He was always, says he, "most dependable." Receiving his orders, the
future defender of Mafeking would stand as stiff and silent as a
rock, showing scarce a sign that he understood them, but the orders
were always carried out to the letter, and in a thoroughly finished
and seamanlike manner. Ste was always the tallest of his brothers, and
at this time he was singularly lithe and wiry. A tall slight boy with
quite fair hair, a brown skin, and sharp brown eyes, he possessed
extraordinary powers of endurance, and could always outlast the rest
of the brothers. He was quick to perceive the reason of an order, and
always quick to carry it out; he was just as brisk in organising
cruises on his own account, when, with the leave of Skipper Warington,
he would take command of the yacht's dinghy and go off on fishing
expeditions with Baden and Frank. It was a dinghy that moved quickly
with a sail, but in all their cruises up creeks and round about the
hulks of Portsmouth Harbour they never came to grief, and always
returned with a good catch of bass and mullet.
Danger did come to the yacht itself, however, on more than one
occasion, and but for the courage and skill of Warington, the world
might never have heard of B.-P. and the other brothers. Once, in the
_Koh-i-noor_ (a 10-tonner with about eighteen tons displacement),
which was the second yacht designed by Warington, the boys were
cruising about the south coast, when, towards evening, just off
Torquay, a gale got up, and the sea began to get uncommon rough. As
the gale increased almost to a hurricane and the waves dashed a larger
amount of spray over the gunwale of the gallant little yacht,
Warington decided to change his course and run back to Weymouth. The
night was getting dark, and the storm increased. To add to the
anxieties of the skipper his crew of boys, though showing no funk,
began to grow green about the gills, and presently Warington found
himself in command of an entirely sea-sick crew. He was unable to
leave the helm, and for over thirty-one hours he stood there, giving
his orders in a cheerful voice to the groaning youngsters who were
more than once driven to the ship's drenched and dripping side.
Fortunately Warington knew the coast well, for it was much too dark to
see a chart, and so, despite the raging tempest, the 10-tonner fought
her way through the waves while the sea broke continually over her
side, drenching the shivering boys, who stuck to their posts, and
every now and then shouted to each other with chattering teeth that it
was "awful fun."
As showing the resourcefulness of the crew, I may narrate another
yachting story. One Saturday, off Yarmouth, when the Baden-Powells
were thinking of a race for which they were entered on the following
Monday, a storm suddenly came on, which played such havoc with the
rigging that the mast was snapped in two, and the whole racing kit
went overboard. With clenched teeth the youngsters set to work and,
with many a long pull and a strong pull, got all the wreck on board.
Then with axes they slashed away at the wire-rigging, and set to work
to rig up a jury-mast. All Sunday they toiled--the spars on an
18-tonner are no child's play--and at last they were able to rig up a
jury-mast which would carry the mainsail with four reefs, while the
foresail was able to catch the wind of heaven with only two. On Monday
morning the yacht sailed out of Yarmouth fully rigged, and made off to
the regatta with as cheerful a crew as ever braved the elements. The
result of this labour was that the Baden-Powells, with a jury rig, won
a second prize, and came in for the warm commendation of wondering
and admiring sailors.
As I have said, in these expeditions the boys did seamen's work. They
learned how to set sails, how to splice, how to reeve gear, how to
moor a ship, and make all ready for scrubbing the bottom. It was a
fine sight to see the healthy younkers, with trousers rolled over the
knee, ankles well under slate-coloured oozing mud, scrubbing away at
the bottom of the ship, and laughing and singing among themselves,
while the reflective Warington, pipe in mouth, looked on and
encouraged the toilers.
All round the English coast sailed the Baden-Powells, fighting their
way to glory in regattas, and enjoying themselves from sunrise to
sunset. On racing days it was a case of "strictly to business," and
each boy had his proper station and knew well how to pull or slack out
ropes. On other days it was a case of fun and frolic, and here, of
course, B.-P. was the life and soul of the party. There were no
squabbles, no petty jealousies; never did the brothers throughout
their boyhood come to fisticuffs. But while there was perfect equality
among them and no favouritism was ever shown, Ste was regarded as the
prime comedian, and there was never any question that when theatricals
were the order of the day he should reign in supreme command.
One of the houses taken by Mrs. Baden-Powell for the holidays was
Llandogo Falls, a most romantic place on the Wye, the property of Mr.
Gallenga, the Italian correspondent of the _Times_, who had previously
got mixed up in a deep political plot in Italy, whereby he gained many
useful secrets, but whereby, at the same time, he was obliged to flee
out of Italy and return to England. We fancy this story in its full
details must have appealed strongly to the imagination of
Baden-Powell, whose after-life, could it be fully written, would
satisfy the keenest appetite for daring, excitement, and romance. But
to return to Llandogo Falls. Mrs. Baden-Powell, her daughter, and all
the servants made the journey from London by means of the railway; but
to the boys the fastest of express trains would have seemed slow, and
accordingly Warington made ready his collapsible boat, and, rowing by
day and sleeping on board by night, these indefatigable youngsters
left London behind them, crossed the Severn, and, pulling up the Wye,
arrived at Llandogo Falls, the first intimation of their arrival to
Mrs. Baden-Powell being the sight of them dragging the boat over the
lawn to the stables. This feat succeeded in endearing them to the
Welsh people in the neighbourhood, who were greatly struck by the
courage of the boys in crossing the Severn in a collapsible boat.
Here, at Llandogo Falls, the boys spent a great deal of time in riding
practically wild ponies, and even in those days Ste was famous for his
graceful seat, his quiet patience with an untractable steed, and his
daring in attempting difficult jumps. Besides riding, the boys were
fond of wandering about the country, making friends with the natives,
shooting birds to be presently stuffed by themselves and put in the
family museum, collecting rare insects, examining old ruins, and
rowing up the Wye to spend the afternoon in bathing or in fishing,
sometimes in both.
In this simple, healthy, and thoroughly English fashion the
Baden-Powells spent their holidays, and in their home-life grew up
devoted to each other, and to the mother whose controlling influence
was over all their sports and occupations. It is interesting to note,
ere we leave the subject of early training, that no infliction of
punishment in any shape or form was permitted by Mrs. Baden-Powell.
Whether such a rule would work for good in all families is a question
that I for one, as a father of a young family, will never imperil my
reputation for consistency by answering with a dogmatic affirmative.
Nevertheless, one recognises the truth of Nietzsche's warning, "Beware
of him in whom the impulse to punish is powerful." In the case of the
Baden-Powells the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and you will
get none of them to say that their childhood was not a joyous period,
while Mrs. Baden-Powell will contend with any mother under Heaven that
never before were such honourable, straightforward, and gentle-minded
children. This home-life has never lost its charm, and though the sons
may be scattered over the world on the Queen's service, they come back
to exchange memories with each other under their mother's roof as
often as the exigencies of their professions will allow. And when
B.-P. is in the house, though his hair begins to flourish less
willingly on his brow, he is just like the boy of old, springing up
the stairs three steps at a time, and whistling as he goes with a
heartiness and a joyousness that astonishes the decorous ten-year-old
sparrow Timothy as he flits about the house after Miss Baden-Powell.
I have in my possession a copy of Mr. Russell's monograph on Mr.
Gladstone, which had fallen into the hands of a grand old Tory parson.
The margins of those pages bristle with the vehement annotations of my
old friend. Against the statement that Mr. Gladstone had "a nature
completely unspoilt by success and prominence and praise," there is a
vigorous "OH!" Where it is recorded how in 1874 Mr. Gladstone promised
to repeal the income-tax, I find a pencil line and the contemptuous
comment, "A bribe for power!" Mr. Forster's resignation of office in
1882 is hailed with a joyful "Bravo, Forster!" and so on throughout
Mr. Russell's interesting book. But on the last page of all there are
three pencil lines marking a sentence, and by the side of the lines
the concession, "Yes--true." The sentence is this: "But the noblest
natures are those which are seen at their best in the close communion
of the home."
CHAPTER IV
CARTHUSIAN
A gentleman once wrote to the late headmaster of Charterhouse, Dr.
William Haig-Brown, saying that he wished to have his son "interred"
at that school. The headmaster wrote back immediately saying he would
be glad to "undertake" the boy. The same headmaster being shown over a
model farm remarked of the ornamental piggery, built after the manner
of a Chinese Pagoda, that if there was Pagoda outside there was
certainly pig odour inside.
Such a man as this is sure to have been impressed by the personality
of Master Ste, who, in 1870, came to him in the old Charterhouse, that
hoary, venerable pile which seems to shrink into itself, as if to shut
out the unpoetic and modern atmosphere of Smithfield Meat Market.
B.-P. went to Charterhouse as a gown boy, nominated by the Duke of
Marlborough, and owing to the ease with which his infant studies had
been conducted, was obliged to enter by a low form. But he had, as we
have already said, an enquiring mind. He had also a clear brain, all
the better for not having been crammed in childhood; and, therefore,
strong in body, full of health and good spirits, and just as keen to
get knowledge as to get a rare bird's egg, he began his school-days
with everything in his favour. The result was that 1874 found him in
the sixth, and one of the brilliant boys of his time.
Dr. Haig-Brown, as we have said, was sure to have been impressed by
B.-P., and there is no need for his assurance that he remembers the
boy perfectly. Of course, when one sits in his medieval study and asks
the Doctor to discourse of B.-P., he begins by recalling Ste's love of
fun; indeed, it is with no great willingness that he leaves that view
of his pupil. But the boy's inflexibility of purpose, his uprightness
and his eagerness to learn are as equally impressed upon the
headmaster's mind, and he likes to talk about the exhilarating effect
which B.-P.'s virile character had upon the moral tone of the school.
"I never doubted his word," Dr. Haig-Brown told me, and by the tone of
the headmaster's voice one realised that B.-P. was just one of those
boys whose word it is impossible to doubt. A clean, self-respecting
boy.
He was the life of the school in those entertainments for which
Charterhouse has always been famous, and his reputation as a wit
followed him from the stage into the playground. B.-P. was a keen
footballer, and whenever he kept goal there was always a knot of
grinning boys round the posts listening with huge delight to their
hero's facetiæ. He also had the habit, such were his animal spirits,
of giving the most nerve-fluttering war-whoop imaginable when rushing
the ball forward, and this cry is said to have been of so terrifying a
nature as to fling the opposing side into a state of fear not very far
removed from absolute panic. By the way, it is interesting in the
light of after-events to read in the school's _Football Annual_ (1876,
p. 30) that "R.S.S. B.-P. is a good goalkeeper, _keeping cool, and
always to be depended upon_."
But it was not only at football that Baden-Powell spent his time in
the playground, although it was only in football that he shone. Into
every game he threw himself with zest and earnestness, playing hard
for his side, and finding himself always regarded by his opponents as
an enemy to be treated with respect. That he continued to play
cricket, racquets, and fives, although not a great success, is
characteristic of his devotion to sports, and his habit of doing what
is the right thing to do. Then he was a faithful and lively
contributor to the school magazine, added his lusty young voice to the
chapel choir, and was for ever seeking out excuses for getting up
theatricals. Of one of his performances at the end of the Long Quarter
in 1872 it is interesting to note that the _Era_ of that time remarked
that it was "full of vivacity and mischief." He was always a great
success as an old woman, and we shall see that in later days he played
a woman's part with huge success in far Afghanistan. At one of these
school entertainments big brother Warington was present, and he
laughingly recalls how the vast audience of shiny-faced boys broke
into a great roar of delight directly B.-P. appeared in the
wings--before he had uttered a word or made a grimace. Dr. Haig-Brown
and the other masters who remember B.-P. like to recall scenes of
this kind, and it is no disparagement of Ste's other sterling
qualities that they seem to have been more impressed by his excellent
fooling than by any other of his good qualities. It is the greater
tribute to his genius for acting.
[Illustration: Rev. William Haig-Brown, LL.D.
Lombardi & Co., Photographers, 27, Sloane Street, S.W.]
So long as the world lasts, I suppose, the intelligent boy who works
hard at school will play the clown's part in popular fiction. Tom
Sawyer is the kind of youth we like to see given the chief part in a
novel, while George Washington, we are all agreed, is fit target for
our lofty scorn. But how few of the people we love to read about in
the airy realm of fiction, or the still airier realm of history,
really possess our hearts? Think over the heroes in novels who would
be drawn in with both hands to the fireside did they step out from
between covers and present themselves at our front door in flesh as
solid as the oak itself. And the good boy in fiction is anathema.
Shakespeare himself believed that
Love goes towards love, as schoolboys from their books;
and the man is regarded almost as un-English who would have the world
believe that there are British boys for whom the acquisition of
knowledge has almost the same attraction as for their heroes in
fiction has the acquisition of somebody's apples, or the tormenting of
helpless animals.
The fault is not with the world but with the silly writers of
goody-goody stories, who have so emasculated and effeminated the boy
who works hard and holds his head high that it is now well-nigh
impossible to hear of such an one in real life without instantly
setting him down as an intolerable prig. These writers have committed
the greatest crime against their creations that authors can
commit--they have made them non-human. If the stories about George
Washington had narrated how on one occasion he laughed uproariously,
or how he once ate too many mince-pies, he might have escaped the
lamentable and unjust reputation which seems likely to be his fate for
another æon or two. That boys can be good and human everybody knows,
and the man who loves Tom Sawyer and sneers at Eric would be the first
to flog and abuse his son if he bore a closer resemblance to the
former than to the latter.
Baden-Powell as a boy was delightful. A grin always hovered about his
face, and the Spirit of Fun herself looked out of his sharp, brown
eyes. He was for ever making "the other chaps" roar; keeping a
football field on the giggle; sending a concert-audience into fits.
But he was just the sort of schoolboy of whom there would be no
incidents to record. Men who knew him and lived with him in those days
remember him, perhaps, more distinctly than any other boy of their
time, and at the merest mention of his name their eyes twinkle with
delight. "Oh, old Bathing Towel. George! what a funny beggar he was.
Remember him? I should think I did. Stories about him? Well, I don't
remember any just now, but dear old Bathing Towel----!" and off they
go into another roar of laughter. All they can tell you is how he used
to act and recite, and play all manner of musical instruments, or, if
you drag them away from the stage, how he used to rend the air with
his terrible war-whoop at the critical moment in a football match.
But although this is how it strikes a contemporary, Baden-Powell was
in deadly earnest when it was a matter of books and ink-pots. He might
be the funny man of the school, but he was also one of the most
brilliant. He gave his masters the impression of a boy who really
delighted in getting on; who was really keen about mastering a
difficult subject. His vivacity and freshness, his energy and vigour,
helped him to take pleasure in work which to another boy, less
physically blessed, would have been an irksome toil; but though his
body may have projected him some distance upon his way, it was his
soul that really carried him triumphantly through. The spirit of
Baden-Powell in those days was what it is now--supremely intent upon
beating down obstacles in his path, and resolute to do well whatever
the moment's duty might be. So the boy who was setting a football
field on the roar at one moment, at the next would be sitting with
fixed eyes and knit brows, "hashing" at Latin verses, as serious as a
leader-writer hurling his bolts at the European Powers.
The master who best remembers B.-P. is Mr. Girdlestone, in whose house
our hero spent four years of his school-days. Looking back over the
past Mr. Girdlestone finds that what impressed him most in B.-P.
during his school-days was the boy's manner with his elders. He was
reserved, very reserved, and he never had any one close chum at
school; but apparently he was quite free of shyness, as he would
approach his masters without any trace of that timidity which too
often marks the commerce of boy with master. On an afternoon's walk,
for instance, B.-P. would not be found among the boys, but side by
side deep in conversation with his master. And these conversations, I
find, convinced his gubernators that he was very much above the
average cut of boy in intelligence; not (Heaven forbid!) that he made
parade of his little knowledge, but rather that he was eager to get
information in really useful subjects from his superiors, and not
above boldly declaring his eagerness. In those days Dr. Haig-Brown had
a great reputation for sternness, and it is said that even the masters
would sometimes quail when they entered his presence; but B.-P. was
perfectly at his ease and entirely self-possessed even in approaching
the presence of the great Doctor. He was never bashful in addressing a
master on new schemes for the benefit of the school, and it was solely
owing to his application to Mr. Girdlestone that Charterhouse first
started its string orchestra, which is now one of the best boys' bands
in the kingdom. Music, it seems, was one of his chief delights at
school, he played the violin really well; but while he loved that king
of instruments, he would stoop to baser, and oft delight his
contemporaries, holding them entranced, by spirited performances on
the mouth organ and the ocarina.
With no close friend Baden-Powell was a boy without an enemy, and his
popularity may be seen in many ways. Although, for instance, he was
not successful in athletics, he was a regular member of the Sports
Committee, and worked with intense enthusiasm for the success of
Sports-Day. And, another instance; as a memento of their favourite,
the butler of B.-P.'s house and his wife saved a part of the dress he
wore in his last theatrical performance. When the news came of the
relief of Ladysmith this garment was drawn forth from the back of a
drawer and used as a flag of rejoicing, and as I write it is being
jealously guarded to be hung out from the school windows when the
little boy who wore it is delivered from his glorious prison of
Mafeking.
This butler has a very vivid recollection of Baden-Powell. He
remembers him as a boy "up to mischief," but too much of a gentleman
ever to go beyond proper bounds. His mischief was of the harmless
nature, and he was never "shown up" for a row of any description. Many
a time did the observant butler come upon Baden-Powell in the House
Music Room practising his tunes; but not by any means in a dull and
unoriginal fashion. It was the boy's habit to take off his boots and
stockings, set a chair on a table, climb up to his perch, and from
thence draw forth melody of sorts with his ten toes. After this it is
surely a wonder that Baden-Powell in joining the army did not insist
upon doing Manual Exercise with his extremities.
There is a story about Master Ste which clearly shows, I think, the
estimation in which he was held by the other boys. Who but a general
favourite could have played the following part? On Shrove Tuesday at
Charterhouse there was of old time a custom called the Lemon Peel
Fight. With every pancake the boys were given a lemon, or half a
lemon, and these were never eaten, being jealously reserved for the
great fight on the green outside after the pancakes had
unmysteriously disappeared. On one occasion, when the sides were drawn
up in grim battle array, facing each other lemon in hand, every boy as
dauntless as Horatius, Herminius, and Spurius Lartius, and just when
the signal for the conflict was to be given,--suddenly upon the scene
appeared Baden-Powell, swathed from head to foot in tremendous
padding, with nothing to be seen of his little brown face save the
bright, mischievous eyes peeping out of two slits. Rushing between the
two lines with a fearsome war-whoop, this alarming apparition squatted
suddenly upon the grass, and looking first on one army and then on the
other, said in the most nonchalant tone of voice: "Let the battle
commence!"
From the battle-field one goes naturally to the butts. In some of the
newspaper articles concerning Baden-Powell it has been said that he
had nothing to do with the Rifle Corps. This is quite wrong. There was
nothing going on at Charterhouse into which Baden-Powell did not fling
himself with infinite zest, and shooting, of course, had special
attractions for a boy bred in the country and deep-learned in the
mysteries of field and covert. Not only did he take part in the
shooting, but he was an active member of the Shooting Committee. His
last score, shooting as a member of the School VIII. _versus_ the 6th
Regiment at Aldershot on 6th March 1876, was as follows:--
200 yards 500 yards Total
22 14 36
The school was beaten, and Sergeant B.-P. came out of the contest as
third best shot for Charterhouse. The day, says the historian, was
bitterly cold, and a violent and gusty wind blew across the range.
Seven shots were fired at each distance, class targets being used.
If there is interest in Baden-Powell's score as a schoolboy-marksman,
how much greater interest should there be in Baden-Powell's hit as
orator? It is not always the ready actor who makes the best polemical
speech, but Baden-Powell had a reputation at Charterhouse as a debater
as well as fame as a mimic. That the boy was more than ordinarily
intelligent may even be seen in the abbreviated report of one of his
speeches preserved in the school magazine. The subject of debate was
that "Marshal Bazaine was a traitor to his country," and Baden-Powell
spoke against the motion. The report says that he "appeared to be
firmly convinced that the French plan of the war was to get the
Prussians between Sedan and Metz, and play a kind of game of ball with
them. By surrendering, Bazaine saved lives which would be of use
against the Communists. As there was only a government _de facto_ in
Paris he was compelled to act for himself." But even eloquence of this
order was not sufficient to persuade Charterhouse that Bazaine
deserved no censure. The motion was carried by a majority of 1.
In those days, too, Baden-Powell was famous as an artist, and his
sketches, with the left hand, were admired and commented upon by
masters as well as boys. One can fancy with what great reverence B.-P.
the caricaturist must have looked upon Thackeray's pencil in the
Charterhouse Library--the pencil of the great man whose shilling he
was then hoarding with the jealousy of a miser.
Baden-Powell's quality as a schoolboy may be judged by his later life.
Few things are so pleasant about him as his intense loyalty to his
old school. Before leaving India for England in 1898, he wrote to Mr.
Girdlestone, asking his old House Master to send to his London address
a list of all the interesting fixtures at Charterhouse, so that he
might see what was going on directly he arrived in England. Whenever
he is in the old country he pays a visit to Godalming, and one of his
last acts before leaving for South Africa was to call on Dr.
Haig-Brown at the Charterhouse, where he first went to school, to bid
his old Head a brave and cheerful farewell. And what was more English,
what more typical of the public-school man, than the letter B.-P. sent
to England from bombarded Mafeking, saying that he had been looking up
old Carthusians to join him in a dinner on Founder's Day? In India he
never allowed the 12th of December to pass unhonoured, and whether he
be journeying through the bush of the Gold Coast Hinterland, or riding
across the South African veldt, he is always quick to recognise the
face of an old schoolboy, or the Carthusian colours in a necktie.
The estimation in which Charterhouse holds Baden-Powell may be seen in
the result of a "whip round" for the hero besieged in Mafeking--nearly
a hundred and forty cases of useful goods. These cases contained, among
other things, 962 lbs. of tobacco, 1200 cigars, 23,000 cigarettes, 640
pipes, 160 dozens of wine and spirits, seven cases of provisions, 490
shirts, 730 "helmets," 1350 pairs of socks, and 168 pairs of boots. In
addition to this over £1000 was raised by Old Carthusians to be sent
out in its own useful shape.
Popularity such as this has been justly earned. Baden-Powell's record
as a Carthusian will, as we have seen, bear looking into, and though
the old school may boast of more brilliant scholars and more
world-wide names on its roll, I do not think it has ever sent into the
world a more useful all-round man, a more intrepid soldier, a more
upright gentleman, and a more loyal son. And one knows that there is
no British cheer so likely to touch the heart of Baden-Powell when he
returns to England as the great roar which will assuredly go up in
Charterhouse when this Old Boy comes beaming into the Great Hall.
CHAPTER V
THE DASHING HUSSAR
When Baden-Powell turned his back on Charterhouse it was with the
intention of proceeding to Oxford. Professor Jowett, who, by the bye,
was the godfather of Baden, begged our hero to pay him a visit as soon
as he left school, and when on this visit the Master heard that B.-P.
could only spare two years for Oxford, he said, "Then Christ Church is
the college for you, because at Balliol I like each man to remain
three or four years, and go in for honours finally." So Ste made plans
for going to Christ Church, was examined, accepted for the following
term, and Dean Liddell arranged about rooms for him in the House. But
ere B.-P. went up, an Army examination came on, and, "just for fun,"
up went our indefatigable hero with a light heart and no other thought
in his mind than the determination to do his level best. The result
of this happy-go-lucky entrance for examination was the unlooked-for
success of our "unbruised youth with unstuffed brain," who passed
second out of seven hundred and eighteen candidates, among whom, by
the way, were twenty-eight University candidates. As a reward for his
brilliancy, B.-P. was informed by the Duke of Cambridge that his
commission would be ante-dated two years.
Until this memorable event Baden-Powell had expressed no special
predilection for soldiering. His chief desire had been to go in for
some profession that would take him abroad and show him the world. The
first service which seemed to attract him definitely at all was the
Indian Woods and Forests, and this chiefly on account of a burning
desire to roam about the gorgeous East. It was only when an elder
brother suggested that, if he wanted to see India and other countries
as well, he might be better suited in the Army, that this born soldier
gave any indication of his desire for a military career. And only with
the Army examination successfully conquered did he seriously begin to
think of uniforms and swords and the glamour of a soldier's life.
On the 11th September 1876 Baden-Powell joined the 13th Hussars in
India, and one of his first acts was to take from his baggage an
ocarina, and having assembled all the European children he could find
in the station, to march at their head through the streets of Lucknow,
playing with great feeling, which suffered, however, a little from his
all-comprehensive grin, "The Girl I Left Behind Me." In this manner he
signalised his arrival, earning the undying love of every English
mother in the place, and infusing into the gallant 13th Hussars
(_Viret in Æternum!_) fresh vigour and fresh spirit.
The 13th Hussars, Sir Baker Russell's old regiment, boasts a fine
record, and the songs in the canteen at night will tell you how the
regiment rode on the right of the line at Balaclava, when it was known
to fame as the 13th Light Dragoons. One of these songs begins:--
Six hundred stalwart warriors, of England's pride the best,
Did grasp the lance and sabre on Balaclava's crest,
And with their trusty leader, Lord Cardigan the brave,
Charged up to spike the Russian guns--or find a soldier's grave.
And the refrain, which every man present sings with a face as solemn
as my Lord Chancellor sitting on the Woolsack half an hour longer
than usual, runs in this fashion:--
Oh, 'tis a famous story; proclaim it far and wide,
And let your children's children re-echo it with pride,
How Cardigan the fearless his name immortal made,
When he crossed the Russian valley with his famous Light Brigade.
This is the great glory of the regiment, the knowledge of which makes
the recruit blow his chest out another inch and straightway purchase
out of his pay spurs that jingle more musically when he goes abroad
than the miserable things served out by an unromantic Government.
Other legends there are in this regiment, and once Baden-Powell and
his great friend, Captain MacLaren (known to the officers as "The
Boy," to the men as "The Little Prince"), set about compiling its
history; but for some reason or another that work has not yet
appeared, and since its inception B.-P. has deserted to the
Dragoons--_Vestigia nulla retrorsum!_
Baden-Powell became popular with his brother-officers directly he
joined. It was his freshness, his overflowing good spirits, his hearty
and unmistakable enjoyment of life, that first won their regard. The
boy suddenly dropped into their midst was no blasé youth, no mere
swaggering puppy. He was afire with the joy of existence, radiant with
happiness, excited--and not ashamed to show it--by all the newness and
fascination of Indian life. The Major screwed his eye-glass into his
eye and smiled encouragingly; the Adjutant measured him with peg to
his lip and knew he would do. Every one felt that the new sub was an
acquisition.
But it must not be supposed that there was any "bounce" about the new
boy. Apart from his breeding and training, which would effectually
prevent a man from committing the unpardonable sin of the social
world, Baden-Powell by nature was, and still is, a little bashful.
There are people who pooh-pooh the very idea of such a thing, and
declare that the man they have heard act and sing and play the fool is
no more nervous than a bishop among curates. Nevertheless they are
wrong; and your humble servant entirely right. B.-P., like the other
members of his family, suffers from nervousness, and when he goes on
the stage to act, and sits down at the piano to "vamp," it is a sheer
triumph of will over nerves. He is not nervous under the wide and
starry sky, not bashful when he pricks his horse into the long grass
of the veldt and bears down upon a bunch of bloodthirsty savages, not
nervous when he gets a child on his knee all by himself and tells her
delightful stories,--but nervous as a boy on his first day at school
when he finds himself being lionised in a drawing-room, or picked out
of the ruck of guests for any particular notice. And so when he joined
the 13th, behind the ebullient spirits was this innate bashfulness,
which, added to the natural modesty of a gentleman, kept his animal
spirits in a delightful simmer, and found favour for him in the eyes
of his superior officers. How they discovered B.-P.'s quality as a
humourist happened in this way. A day or two after he joined there was
an entertainment of some sort going on in barracks, and during a pause
Sir Baker Russell turned round to Baden-Powell, and said, "Here, young
'un, you can play a bit, I'm sure"; and up went Baden-Powell to the
piano, as if obeying an order. In a few minutes the whole place was in
a roar, and, as one of the officers told me, the regiment recognised
that in B.-P. they had got "a born buffoon, but a devilish clever
fellow."
[Illustration: The Dashing Hussar.
(B.-P. at 21.)]
Concerning B.-P. as an actor, it is characteristic of the
thoroughness with which he does everything that he always draws and
redraws any character he may be playing until he is perfectly
satisfied with the dress and make-up; some of these drawings have been
captured by his brother-officers, and are greatly treasured.
Soon after joining he began to show his quality as a sportsman. In
that regiment of fine riders it has always been hard to shine at polo
or tent-pegging, or heads-and-posts, but there was no mistaking the
perfect horseman in B.-P. when he got into the saddle, with the eyes
of the regiment upon him. Few men ride more gracefully. His seat, of
course, is entirely free from that ramrod stiffness which some of the
Irregular Cavalry cultivate with such painful assiduity; he sits
easily and gracefully, so easily that you might fancy a rough horse
would set him bobbing and slipping like a cockney astride a donkey on
the sands. But with all the ease and grace, there is strength there,
such as would wear down the nastiest of bad brutes. The leg that looks
so lightly and gracefully posed grips like steel, and the pressure
increases relentlessly the more the horse quarrels with his rider.
Many a time has Baden-Powell taken in hand young horses which have
defied the efforts of the rough-riding Sergeant-Major, and so far as I
can gather there was never a case of the horse beating the rider. His
skill as a breaker of horses deserves especial mention because of the
characteristic manner in which it is done. By simply sticking in the
saddle, and gripping with his legs, he wears down the horse's
opposition, silently matching his powers of endurance against the
tricks and tempers of the unruly member. Seldom does whip or spur come
into play when Baden-Powell is fighting for the mastery with an
undisciplined horse.
But while he was proving himself a good sportsman, B.-P. was getting
to know about soldiering, paying great attention to regimental work
and loyally working to please his captains. Not only did he devote
himself to the ordinary routine of regimental work, but in spare
moments he began to read up special subjects, and it seems only
natural that one of the first of these subjects should be Topography.
The result of this labour was that in 1878 Baden-Powell passed the
Garrison Class, taking a First Class and Extra Certificate (Star) for
Topography. During the lectures he distinguished himself by making
inimitable caricatures, for which he was sometimes taken to task by
the authorities. Also he could not help poking fun at the examiners in
the papers themselves. Asked, "Do you know why so-and-so, and
so-and-so?" Baden-Powell would write an interrogative "No."
After distinguishing himself in this way, B.-P. came back to England,
in order to go through the Musketry Course at Hythe. Here he did
equally well, taking a First Class Extra Certificate, and a year after
we find him as Musketry Instructor at Quetta. But this book is not
intended to be a "biography" of Baden-Powell, and I shall beg leave to
relate no chronological record of his military career. We are telling
his story as a story, hoping to interest every English schoolboy who
has arrived at years of discretion, hoping to make them keen on sport,
keen on exercise, keen on open-air life, and hoping, in addition, to
be of real practical use to those whose eyes are now set hungrily on
Sandhurst.
In a later chapter it will be seen how Baden-Powell interested himself
in his men's welfare, and how he encouraged them to become real
soldiers--learned in things other than mere boot-cleaning and
button-polishing. Here we behold him as the gay and dashing Hussar, a
bold sportsman, a keen soldier, and one of the most popular men in
India.
His popularity, it is only fair to say, was earned very largely by
that gift for acting which had won him fame as a schoolboy. Whispers
that he was going to act in the _Area Belle_, or one of Gilbert and
Sullivan's operas, travelled with amazing rapidity from station to
station in India, and every performance in which he took part was
attended by all the Europeans for miles round. Indeed his fame as an
actor travelled so far afield that the manager of a London theatre
wrote to him in India offering our astonished hero a position in his
company at a salary of ten pounds a week! There is never an occasion
when B.-P. is not willing to get up theatricals. A few months after
the siege of Kandahar he arranged for a performance of _The Pirates of
Penzance_ in that barbarous city, making himself responsible for the
entire management. The dresses were excellent, the stage and scenery
good, and the opera was received with intense enthusiasm; and yet
there was not a single European woman there; all the dresses and
costumes were the work of B.-P., who himself appeared in the character
of Ruth! On another occasion, when _Trial by Jury_ was to be given, it
was discovered at the last moment, to the consternation of every one
except B.-P., that there were no Royal arms. In a few hours he
produced what I am assured was the most splendid and gorgeous national
emblazonry that ever sparkled behind footlights. He had collected a
few crude paints from the natives of the district, and had painted the
arms with an old shaving-brush. Such is his resourcefulness. And what
of his enthusiasm? When he was home in England on sick-leave he sent
out to the 13th Hussars the book of _Les Cloches de Corneville_, with
excellent sketches of the dresses and hints as to its staging. Again,
he has been known to get off a sick-bed in India in order to take part
in some entertainment for the amusement of soldiers.
It was shortly after the successful performance of _The Pirates of
Penzance_, and after the evacuation of Kandahar, that Baden-Powell
very nearly succeeded in putting an end to himself. He was toying with
a pistol, in the firm conviction that it was unloaded, when, to his
intense indignation, the thing went off and planted a bullet in the
calf of his leg. It might have been a more romantically dangerous
wound, but it was quite sufficiently uncomfortable. Even now, on any
serious change in the weather, B.-P. is unpleasantly reminded of this
adventure in far Afghanistan by rebellious throbbing in the old wound.
On his return from Kandahar Baden-Powell was appointed Adjutant and
Musketry Inspector to his regiment, and he is spoken of by one who was
himself adjutant of this fine regiment for many years as one of the
best adjutants in the world. Shortly after this his uncle, General
Smyth, Commandant at Woolwich, offered him the tempting appointment of
A.D.C., but Baden-Powell preferred India and his regiment, and
declined. Life in India suited Master Ste. It provided him with a
great deal of real soldiering, much sport, and made him acquainted
with one of the most fascinating countries in the world. After he got
his troop, he became Brigade-Major to Sir Baker Russell's Cavalry
Brigade at Meerut Camp of Exercise, and was appointed Station
Staff-Officer and Cantonment Magistrate at Muttra. With all these
duties he found time for sketching and writing, publishing
_Reconnaissance and Scouting_, and sending many interesting sketches
to the _Graphic_. It may not be out of place here to mention that
Baden-Powell, among other parts, has played the War Correspondent,
working once in that character for the _Daily Chronicle_, and with
considerable success.
That Baden-Powell was a marked man early in his career is attested by
the fact of his being chosen as a member of the Board for formulating
Cavalry regulations at Simla in 1884. He was eminently a business-man,
a managing man, and all his work in the army has been marked by those
excellent qualities which go to the making of our great merchant
princes. He is shrewd, practical, and what he says is always to the
point. His despatches are admirable examples of what such documents
should be, never saying a word too much, and yet leaving his meaning
clear-cut and unmistakable. For such work he finds a model in the
despatch of Captain Walton, who, under Admiral Byng, destroyed the
entire Spanish fleet off Passaro: "Sir,--We have taken or destroyed all
the Spanish ships on this coast; number as per margin.--Respectfully
yours, G. Walton, _Captain_." Says Baden-Powell, "There is no
superfluous verbosity there."
But do not let us lose sight altogether of Baden-Powell as the
whimsical humourist. There are two stories in the regiment which
reveal him in this light very nicely. He was once walking with a
friend on the esplanade of some English seaside place, and the day was
piping hot. Suddenly, without explanation of any kind, B.-P. sat
himself down on the kerb, placed his billycock hat solemnly on his
knees, and buried his face in a flaming red handkerchief. This
unprecedented sight stirred the depths of the one and only policeman's
heart, and he strode valiantly across the road, prepared to do his
duty at all costs. Touching B.-P. upon the shoulder with his white
cotton glove, the constable demanded, in a deep voice, "Arnd, whaät's
the matter wi' you, eh?" Slowly removing the handkerchief from his
eyes, and with a perfectly solemn face, B.-P. explained that he had
just at that moment tumbled out of his nurse's arms and that the silly
woman had gone on without noticing it. And the other story: being told
rather rudely at a picture exhibition in Manchester that he must go
back to the hall and leave his stick with the porter, B.-P. walked
briskly away, but presently returned, with his stick, hobbling
painfully along--a man to whom a walking-stick was veritably a staff
of life. The rude official bit his lip and looked the other way.
When the regiment was at Muttra, Baden-Powell lived in a house which
boasted a very large compound, and this he dignified by the name of
"Bloater Park." At that time it was the habit to speak about men as
"this old bloater" and "that old bloater," and the expression so
tickled B.-P. that he adopted the name for his lordly compound.
Letters would actually reach him from England solemnly addressed to
Bloater Park.
Life at this time--if we except the 1887 operations against Dinizulu
in Africa, when B.-P. was Assistant Military Secretary, and commanded
a column in attack--was for the most part humdrum, and only enlivened
by theatricals and shooting expeditions. But B.-P. was ever interested
in his men, and planned sports and entertainments for them, which
always kept him fully occupied. A friend of his going to call on him
in Seaforth, where B.-P. was commanding a squadron, was astonished to
find a Maypole in the centre of the dingy barrack square, round which
mounted men rode merrily, each with a coloured ribbon in his hand. On
questioning the commander, the visitor discovered that there was a
deserving charity in Liverpool, and that B.-P. was getting up a
military display on its behalf.
Before leaving this subject, let us mention that Baden-Powell was
Brigade-Major to the Heavy Brigade at the Jubilee Review of 1887, that
he was sent by Lord Wolseley to arrange about machine guns for cavalry
use at Aldershot, that he was Secretary to the British Commission at
Swaziland in 1888, and in the same year was elected a member of the
United States Cavalry Association. One of his most important staff
appointments was that of Assistant Military Secretary to the Governor
of Malta, where his work for the amelioration of the soldiers' and
sailors' lives produced lasting benefits.
His work as a regimental officer will be more fully dealt with in a
later chapter.
CHAPTER VI
HUNTER
"The longest march seems short," says Baden-Powell, "when one is
hunting game." Many a time, when he has been marching either alone or
with troops, his clothes in tatters, his shoes soleless, and his mouth
as dry as a saucer licked by a cat, many and many a time has he got
out from under the impending shadow of depression, out into the open
sunlight with his rifle,--to forget all about hunger and thirst in
matching his wits against nature's. This kind of wild sport has an
absorbing interest for Baden-Powell. What he would say if invited to
hunt a tame deer, lifted by human arms out of a cart, kicked away from
playing with the hounds and pushed and beaten into an astonished and
bewildered gallop, neither you nor I must pretend to know; but for
that kind of "sport" it is very certain he would express no such
enthusiasm as he does for the keen, wild, dangerous sport of the
legitimate hunter. He will not seek the destruction of any quarry that
is not worthy of his steel; he likes to go against that quarry where
there are obstacles and dangers for him, and opportunities of escape
for the creature he pursues. He is a sportsman, not a butcher;
mole-catching never stirred the blood in his veins.
And while he is hunting animals he is educating himself as a scout.
His whole attention becomes riveted on the game he is pursuing; he
studies the spoor, takes account of the nature of the country, and
makes a note in his mind of any observations likely to be of service
during a campaign in that kind of country. It is not the work of
destruction itself that makes Baden-Powell a keen sportsman.
In the midst of the Matabele war, just as the weary, half-starved
horses which had carried his men eighty-seven miles drew near the
stronghold of Wedza, Baden-Powell was exhilarated by a meeting with a
lion. In his diary against that date he wrote: "To be marked with a
red mark when I can get a red pencil." The incident is well related
in his diary and is a characteristic of B.-P. It runs: "Jackson and a
native boy accompanied me scouting this morning; we three started off
at three in the morning, so that by dawn we were in sight of one of
the hills we expected might be occupied by Paget, and where we hoped
to see his fires. We saw none there; but on our way, in moving round
the hill which overlooks our camp, we saw a match struck high up near
the top of the mountain. This one little spark told us a great deal.
It showed that the enemy were there; that they were awake and alert (I
say 'they,' because one nigger would not be up there by himself in the
dark); and that they were aware of our force being at Possett's (as,
otherwise, they would not be occupying that hill). However, they could
not see anything of us, as it was then quite dark; and we went farther
on among the mountains. In the early morning light we crossed the deep
river-bed of the Umchingwe River, and, in doing so, we noticed the
fresh spoor of a lion in the sand. We went on, and had a good look at
the enemy's stronghold; and on our way back, as we approached this
river-bed, we agreed to go quietly, in case the lion should be moving
about in it. On looking down over the bank, my heart jumped into my
mouth when I saw a grand old brute just walking in behind a bush.
Jackson could not see him, but was off his horse as quick as I was,
and ready with his gun; too ready, indeed, for the moment that the
lion appeared, walking majestically out from behind the bush that had
hidden him, Jackson fired hurriedly, striking the ground under his
foot, and, as we afterwards discovered, knocking off one of his claws.
The lion tossed up his shaggy head and looked at us in dignified
surprise. Then I fired and hit him in the ribs with a leaden bullet
from my Lee-Metford. He reeled, sprang round, and staggered a few
paces, when Jackson, who was firing a Martini-Henry, let him have one
in the shoulder; this knocked him over sideways, and he turned about,
growling savagely. I could scarcely believe that we had actually got a
lion at last, but resolved to make sure of it; so, telling Jackson not
to fire unless it was necessary (for fear of spoiling the skin with
the larger bullet of the Martini), I got down closer to the beast, and
fired a shot at the back of his neck as he turned his head away from
me. This went through his spine, and came out through the lower jaw,
killing him dead."
It was during the Matabele campaign that Baden-Powell came across a
fine wild boar, which, he remarks, caused quite a flutter in his
breast. "'If I only had you in the open, my friend,' thought I. 'If
only you had a horse that was fit enough to come anywhere near me,'
grinned he. And so we parted." A graphic incident.
It is in hunting the wild boar that Baden-Powell has a universal
reputation as a sportsman. He is good, very good, at all sports, but
it is as a pig-sticker that he excels, and stands out clear-cut from
the rest. And pig-sticking is the sport of all sports which entail the
killing of animals in which we could wish him to excel. Hear Major
Moray Brown on the subject of fox _versus_ pig: "You cannot compare
the two sports together. To begin with, in fox-hunting you are
dependent on 'scent.' Granted the excitement of a fast burst over a
grass country, and that you are well carried by your horse, the
end--what is it? A poor little fox worried by at least forty times its
number of hounds. Has he a chance, bar his cunning, of baffling his
pursuers? No. Now, how different is the chase of the boar of India!
There you must depend on _yourself_ in every way, and at the end your
quarry meets you on nearly fair and equal terms." Let it be remembered
that the boar is an animal of great reputation among beasts. It is a
well-ascertained fact, says Baden-Powell, that of all animals the boar
does not fear to drink at the same pool with a tiger; nay, a case is
on record of his having taken his drink with a tiger on each side of
him. In his book on pig-sticking Baden-Powell quotes an exciting
description of a battle between a tiger and a boar, a battle which
will give English readers a vivid idea of the boar's pluck and
doggedness. The narrative is as follows: "When the boar saw the tiger
the latter roared. But the old boar did not seem to mind the roar so
very much as might have been anticipated. He actually repeated his
'hoo! hoo!' only in a, if possible, more aggressive, insulting, and
defiant manner. Nay, more, such was his temerity that he actually
advanced with a short, sharp rush in the direction of the striped
intruder. Intently peering through the indistinct light, we eagerly
watched the development of this strange _rencontre_. The tiger was
now crouching low, crawling stealthily round and round the boar, who
changed front with every movement of his lithe and sinewy adversary,
keeping his determined head and sharp, deadly tusks ever facing his
stealthy and treacherous foe. The bristles of the boar's back were up
at a right angle from the strong spine. The wedge-shaped head poised
on the strong neck and thick rampart of muscular shoulder was bent
low, and the whole attitude of the body betokened full alertness and
angry resoluteness. In their circlings the two brutes were now nearer
to each other and nearer to us, and thus we could mark every movement
with greater precision. The tiger was now growling and showing his
teeth; and all this, that takes such a time to tell, was but the work
of a few short minutes. Crouching now still lower, till he seemed
almost flat on the ground, and gathering his sinewy limbs beneath his
lithe, lean body, he suddenly startled the stillness with a loud roar,
and quick as lightning sprang upon the boar. For a brief minute the
struggle was thrilling in its intense excitement. With one swift,
dexterous sweep of the strong, ready paw, the tiger fetched the boar
a terrific slap right across the jaw, which made the strong beast
reel; but with a hoarse grunt of resolute defiance, with two or three
sharp digs of the strong head and neck, and swift, cutting blows of
the cruel, gashing tusks, he seemed to make a hole or two in the
tiger's coat, marking it with more stripes than Nature had ever
painted there; and presently both combatants were streaming with gore.
The tremendous buffet of the sharp claws had torn flesh and skin away
from off the boar's cheek and forehead, leaving a great ugly flap
hanging over his face and half blinding him. The pig was now on his
mettle. With another hoarse grunt he made straight for the tiger, who
very dexterously eluded the charge, and, lithe and quick as a cat
after a mouse, doubled almost on itself, and alighted clean on the
boar's back, inserting his teeth above the shoulders, tearing with his
claws, and biting out great mouthfuls of flesh from the quivering
carcase of his maddened antagonist. He seemed now to be having all the
best of it, so much so that the boar discreetly stumbled and fell
forward, whether by accident or design I know not, but the effect was
to bring the tiger clean over his head, sprawling clumsily on the
ground. I almost shouted 'Aha, now you have him!' for the tables were
turned. Getting his forefeet on the tiger's prostrate carcase, the
boar now gave two or three short, ripping gashes with his strong white
tusks, almost disembowelling his foe, and then exhausted seemingly by
the effort, apparently giddy and sick, he staggered aside and lay
down, panting and champing his tusks, but still defiant with his head
to the foe." But the tiger, too, was sick unto death, and the end of
this battle-royal was that he who saw it emptied the contents of both
his barrels into the two stricken belligerents, and put them out of
their agony.
[Illustration: "Beetle."]
It is against such a fierce, resolute, and well-armed enemy that
Baden-Powell loves to match his strength and cunning. Mounted on his
little fourteen-hand Waler, in pith solar topee, grey Norfolk jacket,
light cords, and brown blucher boots, and grasping in his hand his
deadly seventy-inch spear, he goes forth to slay the wild boar, with
all the feelings of romance and knightliness which some people think
vanished from the world when Excalibur sank in the Lake of Lyonnesse.
It is a battle whereof no man need be ashamed; in which only the
strong man can glory. Many a time has the wild boar hurled his great
head and mountainous shoulders against the forelegs of a horse,
bringing the hunter to the ground for mortal combat on foot. Many a
time has the novice, who went out as gaily and contemptuously as the
fox-hunter, returned to his bungalow cut and gored on a stretcher. He
who goes up against the wild boar must, in Baden-Powell's words, "have
matured not only the 'pluck' which brings a man into a desperate
situation, but that 'nerve' which enables him to carry the crisis to a
successful issue."
When Baden-Powell returned to India from Afghanistan in 1882, he
became an enthusiastic pig-sticker (for reasons which we shall give in
our chapter on Scouting), and during that year he killed no fewer than
thirty-one pigs. In the following year he killed forty-two, and won
the blue-ribbon of hog-hunting--the Kadir Cup. Two years afterwards he
wrote and illustrated the standard book on pig-sticking (published by
Messrs. Harrison and Sons), which is as famous a book in India as Mr.
H.S. Thomas's delightful books on fishing.
Hunting the boar takes place early in the morning and again in the
evening, so that men find themselves with nothing to do for the
greater part of the day. This time is usually spent in the tent
sketching, dozing, and reading, with occasional "goes" of claret cup.
But it is characteristic of Baden-Powell that he should give useful
advice concerning these waste hours. "If you prefer not to waste this
time altogether," he says, "it is a good practice to take a few books
and dictionary of any foreign language you may wish to be learning."
Again, his character as a thoughtful man may be seen in the warning he
gives novices against ill-treating villagers, or allowing the shikaris
to do so. "Shouting and cursing at a coolie already dumbfoundered at
the very sight of a white man is not the way to clear his
understanding." His remark that native servants under cover of their
master's prestige will frequently tyrannise over the villagers reminds
me of a story which I cannot forbear to tell. A bridge had been thrown
over a river in some outlandish part of India, and his work done, the
Englishman in charge was returning to more civilised regions. Just
before turning his back on the scene of his labours he inquired of a
villager whether he was pleased with the bridge. The man expressed
voluble admiration for the sahib's great skill, but lamented the high
toll that was charged for crossing the bridge. "Toll!" exclaimed the
Briton, "why, there's no toll at all; the bridge is free to
everybody." But the native still protesting that a charge was made,
and saying that a notice to that effect was written up in big English
letters, the engineer went down to the bridge himself to investigate
the mystery. There he discovered his own servant sitting at the
receipt of custom, with a flaming advertisement of Beecham's Pills
pasted on to a board over his head, to which he pointed as his
authority when questioned by rebellious natives.
Baden-Powell tells an amusing story of an impromptu boar hunt. "At a
grand field-day at Delhi, in the presence of all the foreign
delegates, in 1885, a boar suddenly appeared upon the scene and
charged a Horse Artillery gun, effectually stopping it in its advance
at a gallop by throwing down two of the horses. The headquarters staff
and the foreign officers were spectators of this deed, and hastened to
sustain the credit of the Army by seizing lances from their orderlies
and dashing off in pursuit of the boar, who was now cantering off to
find more batteries on which to work his sweet will. The staff,
however, were too quick for him, and, after a good run and fight, he
fell a victim to their attentions, amidst a chorus of _vivas_,
_sacrés_, and _houplas_."
The pig is a born fighter. From his early infancy he learns the use of
butting, and perceives, at an age when civilised piggies are just
beginning to root up one's orchard, that his growing tusks are meant
for other uses than those of mere captivation. Little "squeakers" have
been watched by B.-P. having a regular set-to together, while the
older members of their family sat in a pugilistic ring grinning
encouragement. Once Baden-Powell managed to secure a baby pig, and
kept him in his compound, just as he had kept rabbits and guinea-pigs
in England. To watch this squeaker practising "jinking" from a tree
("jinking" is "pig-sticking" for jibbing), and charging ferociously at
an old stump, was one of our hero's pet amusements for many weeks.
Although dogs are not regularly used in hunting the wild boar they are
sometimes employed for scouting in a particularly thick jungle, and
Baden-Powell frequently went to work of this kind with a half-bred
fox-terrier. He regards as one of the joys of true sport the bending
of animals' wills to his own, and while in this respect the horse
ranks highest in his estimation, he is always glad to work with a keen
dog. Beetle, the fox-terrier, was just such a dog as Baden-Powell
would like; he was quick, full of intelligence, a complete stranger to
fear, and moreover he had an individuality of his own. When B.-P.
started off for the haunt of his quarry, Beetle would sit with an air
of great dignity in the front of the saddle, keeping a sharp look-out
for signs of pig. At a likely spot the little dog would jump nimbly
from the saddle and plunge boldly into the jungle. Then a sharp yap
would reach the ears of B.-P., then a smothered growl, a crashing of
twigs and branches, and at last, with a floundering dash, out came the
boar, struggling into his stride with Beetle at his heels. "In the run
which followed," says Baden-Powell, "the little dog used to tail along
after the hunt, and, straining every sense of sight and hearing as
well as of smell to keep to the line, always managed to be in at the
death, in time to hang on to the ear of a charging boar, or to apply
himself to the back end of one who preferred sulking in a bush." And
in the end it was a change of climate, at Natal, that killed the
gallant-hearted Beetle. He died with a tattered ear, a drooping
eyelid, an enlarged foot, and twelve scars on his game little
body--all honourable mementos of innumerable fights with the dreaded
boar.
As showing Baden-Powell's prowess as a hunter we may mention some of
the stuffed animals in the hall of his mother's house, all of which
have fallen to our hero: Black Bucks, Ravine Deer, Gnu, Inyala, Eland,
Jackal, Black Bear, Hippopotamus (a huge skull), Lion, Tiger, and Hog
Deer.
CHAPTER VII
SCOUT
All hardy exercise is good for a soldier, but in pig-sticking
Baden-Powell found a sport which, in addition to its effect upon the
nerves and sinews, gives a man what is called a "stalker's eye," and
that, says B.-P., is _par excellence_ the soldier's eye. It was this
that made B.-P. an enthusiastic hunter of the wild boar. "Without
doubt," he exclaims, "the constant and varied exercise of the
inductive reasoning powers called into play in the pursuit must exert
a beneficial effect on the mind, and the actual pleasure of riding and
killing a boar is doubly enhanced by the knowledge that he has been
found by the fair and sporting exercise of one's own bump of
'woodcraft.' The sharpness of intellect which we are wont to associate
with the detective is nothing more than the result of training that
inductive reasoning, which is almost innate in the savage. To the
child of the jungle the ground with its signs is at once his book, his
map, and his newspaper. Remember the volume of meaning contained in
the single print of Friday's foot on Crusoe's beach." And so he
advises officers in India to go with a native tracker to the jungle
and watch him and learn from him "the almost boundless art of deducing
and piecing together correctly information to be gathered from the
various signs found." The importance of tracking, and the art of it,
is shown in an interesting story which B.-P. tells, a story which
demonstrates the close relationship of hunter and scout. A sportsman
in India was out tiger-shooting early one morning, with two
professional trackers walking in front of his elephant, and the usual
company of beaters behind. As they went along, the fresh pugs of a
tiger were seen on the ground, but the professional trackers passed on
without so much as a sign of having noticed the spoor. In a minute the
beaters were up with the professionals, asking, with Asiatic irony, if
they had eyes in their professional heads. To which one of the
trackers merely replied, "Idiots! at what time do rats run about?" And
then the humbled coolies went back to look at the spoor again, and
there they saw, after a close scrutiny, the delicate tracing of a
little field-rat's feet over the mighty pugs of Stripes. This rat only
comes out of its hole early in the night, and retires long before the
Eastern day begins, so that several hours had elapsed since the tiger
journeyed that way, and the professional was a better man than the
amateur.
Baden-Powell has all the qualifications that go to make a good scout.
His eye is as keen as the hawk's, and many a time "by keeping his eyes
skinned" he has done useful, if unobtrusive, work. Once he was riding
in the night with despatches for headquarters' camp, guiding himself
by the stars. Arriving at the place where he thought the camp ought to
be, he was surprised to find no sign of it. Dismounting from his
saddle, he was thinking of lying up for the night (rather than
overshoot the mark) when a distant spark, for the fraction of a
second, caught his eye. Jumping into the saddle again, he rode towards
the place where the spark had flickered its brief moment, and there he
found a sentry smoking a pipe. The red glow of the baccy in the bowl
had guided B.-P. with his despatches safely to camp.
But not always does Baden-Powell see what he says he sees. On one
occasion in Kashmir he was matching his eyes against a shikari, and
the story of the contest is related by B.-P. in his _Aids to Scouting_
(published by Gale and Polden, London and Aldershot): "He pointed out
a hillside some distance off, and asked me if I could see how many
cattle there were grazing on it. It was only with difficulty that I
could see any cattle at all, but presently I capped him by asking him
if he could see the man in charge of the cattle. Now, I could not
actually see this myself, but knowing that there must be a man with
the herd, and that he would probably be up-hill above them somewhere,
and as there was a solitary tree above them (and it was a hot, sunny
day), I guessed he would be under this tree." And when the incredulous
shikari looked through the field-glasses he marvelled at the vision of
the white man--the herdsman was under the tree as happy as a hen in a
dust-bath. The uses of inductive reasoning!
A good instance of Baden-Powell's skill in "piecing things together"
is given in the same excellent manual on scouting. He was scouting one
day on an open grass plain in Matabeleland accompanied by a single
native. "Suddenly," he says, "we noticed the grass had been recently
trodden down; following up the track for a short distance, it got on
to a patch of sandy ground, and we then saw that it was the spoor of
several women and boys walking towards some hills about five miles
distant, where we believed the enemy to be hiding. Then we saw a leaf
lying about ten yards off the track--there were no trees for miles,
but there were, we knew, trees of this kind at a village 15 miles
distant, in the direction from which the tracks led. Probably, then,
these women had come from that village, bringing the leaf with them,
and had gone to the hills. On picking up the leaf, it was damp and
smelled of native beer. So we guessed that according to the custom of
these people they had been carrying pots of native beer on their
heads, the mouths of the pots being stopped with bunches of leaves.
One of these leaves had fallen out; but we found it ten yards off the
track, which showed that at the time it fell a wind had been blowing.
There was no wind now, but there had been about five A.M., and it was
now nearly seven. So we read from these signs that a party of women
had brought beer during the night from the village 15 miles distant,
and had taken it to the enemy on the hills, arriving there about six
o'clock. The men would probably start to drink the beer at once (as it
goes sour if kept for long), and would, by the time we could get
there, be getting sleepy from it, so we should have a favourable
chance of reconnoitring their position. We accordingly followed the
women's tracks, found the enemy, made our observations, and got away
with our information without any difficulty."
In the chapters referring to his work as Sir Frederick Carrington's
Chief of the Staff in the Matabele campaign of 1896, we shall see what
great service Baden-Powell has rendered the army by his tireless
scouting. Here I can hardly do better than quote from his _Aids_, for
in this book he unlocks his heart as a scout, and in order to
encourage non-commissioned officers and men to interest themselves in
the more intelligent side of soldiering (not for self-advertisement)
tells us innumerable instances of his own interesting experiences. The
chief charm of scouting, of course, is in actual warfare, when a man
goes out, sometimes alone and unattended, to find out what a
well-armed enemy is doing and how many fighting men are to be expected
in the morrow's battle. But just as Cervantes could "engender" the
ingenious Don Quixote in a miserable prison, so Baden-Powell in the
arid times of peace finds means of enjoying the fascinations of
scouting. When out in India he used to spend many an early morning in
practising, and he gives the result of one of these mornings in his
little book on Scouting, which I would have you read in its entirety.
It is a book which has many of the virtues of a novel, and is written
in plain English.
The following instance will show you how assiduously B.-P. practises
scouting, and will also give you an idea as to beguiling your next
country walk.
_Ground:_ A well-frequented road in an Indian
hill-station--dry--gravel, grit, and sand.
_Atmosphere:_ Bright and dry, no wind.
_Time:_ 6 A.M. to 8 A.M.
_Signs: Fresh Wheelmarks._ [Fresh because the tracks were
clearly defined with sharp edges in the sand; they overrode
all other tracks.]
[This must mean a "rickshaw" (hand-carriage) had passed
this morning--no other carriages are used at this
station.]
_Going Forward._ [Because there are tracks of bare feet,
some ridden over, others overriding the wheel track, but
always keeping along it, _i.e._ two men pulling in front,
two pushing behind.]
[Had they been independent wayfarers they would have
walked on the smooth, beaten part of the road.]
_The men were going at a walk._ (Because the impression of
the fore part of the foot is no deeper than that of the
heel, and the length of pace not long enough for running.)
_One man wore shoes_, the remaining three were barefooted.
_One wheel was a little wobbly._
_Deduction_
_The track was that of a rickshaw conveying an invalid in
comparatively humble circumstances, for a constitutional._
Because it went at a slow pace, along a circular road which led
nowhere in particular (it had passed the cemetery and the
only house along that road), at an early hour of the
morning, the rickshaw being in a groggy state and the men
not uniformly dressed.
NOTE.--This deduction proved correct. On returning from my walk
I struck the same track (_i.e._ the wobbly wheel and the one shod
man) on another road, going ahead of me. I soon overtook them,
and found an old invalid lady being driven in a hired bazaar
rickshaw.
While following the tracks of the rickshaw, I noticed fresh
tracks of two horses coming towards me, followed by a big dog.
_They had passed since the rickshaw_ (overriding its tracks).
_They were cantering_ (two single hoof-prints, and then two near
together).
_A quarter of a mile farther on they were walking_ for a quarter
of a mile. (Hoof-prints in pairs a yard apart.) Here the dog
dropped behind, and had to make up lost ground by galloping
up to them. (Deep impression of his claws, and dirt kicked
up.)
_They had finished the walk about a quarter of an hour_ before I
came there. (Because the horse's droppings at this point
were quite fresh; covered with flies; not dried outside by
the sun.)
_They had been cantering up to the point where they began the
walk, but one horse had shied violently on passing the
invalid in the rickshaw._ (Because there was a great kick up
of gravel and divergence from its track just where the
rickshaw track bent into the side of the road, and
afterwards overrode the horse's tracks.)
NOTE.--I might have inferred from this that the invalid was
carrying an umbrella which frightened the horse, and was,
therefore, a lady. But I did not think of it at the time and had
rather supposed from the earliness of the hour that the invalid
was a man. Invalid ladies don't, as a rule, get up so early.
_Deduction_
_The tracks were those of a lady and gentleman out for a ride,
followed by her dog._
Because had the horses been only out exercising with syces they
would have been going at a walk in single file (or possibly at a
tearing gallop).
They were therefore ridden by white people, one of whom was a
lady; because, 1st, a man would not take a big, heavy dog to pound
along after his horse (it had pounded along long after the horses
were walking); 2nd, a man would not pull up to walk because his
horse had shied at a rickshaw; but a lady might, especially if
urged to do so by a man who was anxious about her safety, and that
is why I put them down as a man and a lady. Had they been two
ladies, the one who had been shied with would have continued to
canter out of bravado. And the man, probably, either a very
affectionate husband or no husband at all.
NOTE.--I admit that the above deductions hinge on very
little--one link might just be wrong and so break the whole chain.
This is often, indeed generally, the case, and corroborative
evidence should always be sought for.
In the present instance my deductions proved pretty correct. I
saw the couple later on, followed by their collie dog, riding
along a lower road; but I could not determine their relationship
to one another.
_Note on Examples I. and II._
Incidentally, the horse-tracks of No. 2 gave me a clue to the
hour at which the invalid in the rickshaw had passed that way.
Thus: I came on the droppings at 7.14.
Assuming that they were actually 15 minutes old and the horses
had walked 1/4 mile since passing the rickshaw, 19 minutes must
have elapsed since the passing; _i.e._ they passed each other at
6.55.
On my arrival at the point where they had passed, the rickshaw
would now be 23 minutes ahead of me, or about 11/4 mile.
But it is not only on set occasions that Baden-Powell practises
scouting. He rarely takes a walk, boards a 'bus, or enters a train,
without finding opportunity for some subtle inductive reasoning. Thus
he recommends the men in his regiment to notice closely any stranger
with whom they may come in contact, guess what their professions and
circumstances are, and then, getting into conversation, find out how
near the truth their surmises have been. Therefore, dear reader, if
you find yourself in a few months' time drifting into conversation
with a good-looking, bronzed stranger, this side of fifty, who puts
rather pointed questions to you, after having studied your thumbs,
boots, and whiskers intently, take special delight in leading him
harmlessly astray, for thereby you may be beating, with great glory to
yourself, the "Wolf that never Sleeps."
The joy of a walk in the country is heightened, I think, by following
the example of Baden-Powell, and paying attention to the tracks on the
ground. It would be an uncanny day for England when every man turned
himself into a Sherlock Holmes, but there is no man who might not with
advantage to himself practise scouting in the Essex forests or on the
Surrey hills. The world is filled with life, and yet people go
rambling through fields and woods without having seen anything more
exciting than a couple of rabbits and a few blackbirds.
The chief joy of scouting, however, is not to be found in what
Baden-Powell calls "dear, drowsy, after-lunch Old England." They who
would seek it must go far from this "ripple of land," far from
The happy violets hiding from the roads,
The primroses run down to, carrying gold,--
The tangled hedgerows, where the cows push out
Impatient horns and tolerant churning mouths
'Twixt dripping ash-boughs,--hedgerows all alive
With birds and gnats and large white butterflies
Which look as if the May-flower had caught life
And palpitated forth upon the wind,--
Hills, vales, woods, netted in a silver mist,
Farms, granges, doubled up among the hills,
And cattle grazing in the watered vales,
And cottage-chimneys smoking from the woods,
And cottage-gardens smelling everywhere,
Confused with smell of orchards.
Far from our tight little island must they journey for that inspiring
spell which turns the man of means into a wanderer upon the earth's
surface, driving him out of glittering London, with its twinkling
lights and its tinkling cabs, out of St. James's, and out of the club
arm-chair--out of all this, and wins him into the vast, drear, and
inhuman world, where men of our blood wage a ceaseless war with savage
nature. And it is when Baden-Powell packs his frock-coat into a
drawer, pops his shiny tall hat into a box, and slips exultingly into
a flannel shirt that the life of a scout seems to him the infinitely
best in the world. No man ever cared less for the mere ease of
civilisation than Baden-Powell.
CHAPTER VIII
THE FLANNEL-SHIRT LIFE
In _The Story of My Heart_ Richard Jefferies begins his enchanting
pages with the expression of that desire which every son of Adam feels
at times--the longing for wild, unartificial life. "My heart," he
says, "was dusty, parched for want of the rain of deep feeling; my
mind arid and dry, for there is a dust which settles on the heart as
well as that which falls on a ledge.... A species of thick clothing
slowly grows about the mind, the pores are choked, little habits
become part of existence, and by degrees the mind is inclosed in a
husk." Then he goes on to tell of a hill to which he resorted at such
moments of intellectual depression, and of the sensations that
thrilled him as he moved up the sweet short turf. The very light of
the sun, he says, was whiter and more brilliant there, and standing on
the summit his jaded heart revived, and "obtained a wider horizon of
feeling." Thoreau, too, went to the woods because he wanted to live
deliberately, and front only the essential facts of life. "I wanted to
live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and
Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad
swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to
its lowest terms."
This longing for a return to nature in minds less imaginative than
Thoreau's and Jefferies' results in globe-trotting or
colonisation--according to circumstances,--it wakes the gipsy in our
blood, be we gentle or simple, and sends us wandering over the waste
places of the earth in quest of glory, adventure, or a gold
mine--anything so long as it entails wandering. When it stirs in the
mind of the disciplined soldier it turns him into a scout, and drives
him out of the orderly-room, out of the barrack square, to wander in
Himalayan passes and ride across the deserts of Africa. Baden-Powell
is a nomad. The smart cavalry officer who can play any musical
instrument, draw amusing pictures, tell delightfully droll stories,
sing a good song, stage-manage theatricals--do everything, in short,
that qualifies a man to take his ease in country houses, loves more
than any other form of existence the loneliness and the wildness of
the scout's. Often, he tells us, when he is about the serious business
of handing teacups in London drawing-rooms, his mind flies off to some
African waste, to some lonely Indian hill, and straightway he longs
with all his soul to fling off the trappings of civilised society, and
be back again with nature, back again in the dear old flannel-shirt
life, living hard, with his life in his hand.
Once, after two months of wandering, he got into a hotel and, after
dinner, into a bed. But it would not do, he says; in a twinkling he
had whipped the blankets off the bed and was lying outside on mother
earth, with the rain beating upon his face, and deep in refreshing
slumber. The best of beds, according to B.-P., is "the veldt tempered
with a blanket and a saddle." When he is on his lonely wanderings he
always sleeps with his pistol under the "pillow" and the lanyard round
his neck. However soundly he sleeps, if any one comes within ten yards
of him, tread he never so softly, Baden-Powell wakes up without fail,
and with a brain cleared for action.
One of the sayings of Baden-Powell which I most like is that which
most reveals this side of his character. "A smile and a stick," says
he, "will carry you through any difficulty in the world." And he lives
in accordance with this principle; and it is typical of the man. Over
the world he goes on his solitary expeditions, hunting animals,
hunting men, making notes of what foreign armies are doing, what are
the chief thoughts occupying the minds of distant and dangerous
tribesmen, and he never goes about it blusteringly or with the Byronic
mystery of the stage detective. He trusts to his sense of humour--to
his smile--first; after that, and only when there is no hope for it,
do those hard jaws of his lock with a snap, the eyes light up with
resistless determination, and _whir-r-r_ goes the stick, and--well, it
requires a tough head to bear what follows.
[Illustration: The Family on Board the _Pearl_]
Baden-Powell's friends were amused during the early days of the siege
of Mafeking by the complaint of some fellow in the town who had
incurred the Colonel's wrath. I forget the exact words of the silly
creature's complaint, as, indeed, I forget his offence, but it was
something after this fashion: "The Colonel called me before him
and, in a dictatorial manner, told me that if I did it again he would
have me shot. He then most insolently whistled a tune." The last words
I believe to be quite correctly quoted: "He then most insolently
whistled a tune." How they suggest laughter! One of Baden-Powell's
choicest epigrams refers expressly to this very trick of whistling:
"There is nothing like whistling an air when you feel exasperated
beyond reclaim." Uncle Toby whistling "Lillabullero" when muddled by
his scarps and counter-scarps, and Baden-Powell whistling a scrap from
_Patience_ to prevent himself from kicking a dangerous idiot out of
his presence! "He then most insolently whistled a tune." I recall
those words sometimes when I am dropping off to sleep, and they wake
me up to laugh. I tell this story not only for its own dear sake, but
because it is necessary to remember, when considering Baden-Powell's
character, that though he meets you with a smile on his face he
carries a stick in his hand to prevent you from taking liberties with
his good nature. The best-tempered fellow in the world, and blessed
with the keenest sense of humour, he can be as uncompromising a
martinet as the sternest fire-eater of old days--_when there is real
necessity for it_.
In this flannel-shirt life of his, Baden-Powell has had many
adventures, but few, I think, are more interesting in a subdued way
than one he records in his diary of the Matabele campaign. I give it
in his own words: "To-day, when out scouting by myself, being at some
distance from my boy and the horses, I lay for a short rest and a
quiet look-out among some rocks and grass overlooking a little stream,
and I saw a charming picture. Presently there was a slight rattle of
trinkets, and a swish of the tall yellow grass, followed by the
apparition of a naked Matabele warrior standing glistening among the
rocks of the streamlet, within thirty yards of me. His white war
ornaments--the ball of clipped feathers on his brow, and the long
white cow's-tail plume which depended from his arms and
knees--contrasted strongly with his rich brown skin. His kilt of wild
cat-skins and monkeys' tails swayed round his loins. His left hand
bore his assegais and knobkerrie beneath the great dappled ox-hide
shield; and in his right a yellow walking-staff. He stood for almost a
minute perfectly motionless, like a statue cast in bronze, his head
turned from me, listening for any suspicious sound. Then, with a swift
and easy movement, he laid his arms and shield noiselessly upon the
rocks, and, dropping on all fours beside a pool, he dipped his muzzle
down and drank just like an animal. I could hear the thirsty sucking
of his lips from where I lay. He drank and drank as though he never
meant to stop, and when at last his frame could hold no more, he rose
with evident reluctance. He picked his weapons up, and then stood
again to listen. Hearing nothing, he turned and sharply moved away. In
three swift strides he disappeared within the grass as silently as he
had come. I had been so taken with the spectacle that I felt no desire
to shoot at him--especially as he was carrying no gun himself." It is
little adventures of this kind, I think, which most impress one with
the romance and fascination of a scout's life.
On his solitary wanderings over the earth Baden-Powell has had many
narrow escapes of death, but none so near, perhaps, as that of an
excited native who, after an action, told B.-P. with bubbling
enthusiasm that a bullet had passed between his ear and his head!
Once Baden-Powell came unexpectedly upon a lion prepared to receive
him with open jaws, and but for perfectly steady nerves, which enabled
him at that critical moment to fire deliberately, he had never brought
home another lion's skin to decorate his mother's drawing-room in
London. Another narrow escape occurred during the Matabele campaign,
when Baden-Powell was quietly and peacefully marching by the side of a
mule battery. One of the mules had a carbine strapped on to its
pack-saddle, and by some extraordinary act of carelessness the weapon
had been left loaded, and at full-cock. Of course the first bush
passed by the battery fired the carbine, and Baden-Powell remarks of
the incident, "Many a man has nearly been shot by an ass, but I claim
to have been nearly shot by a mule."
It is Baden-Powell's habit to keep in perfect readiness at his London
house an entire kit for service abroad. The most methodical of men, he
has made a study of this important branch of a wanderer's service, and
when he sets out on his journeys he carries with him everything that
is essential both for himself and his horse, and packed in such a way
as would be the despair of the deftest valet. When the War Office
asks him how long he will be before starting on a commission abroad,
B.-P. answers, "I am ready now." Everything is there in a room in his
mother's house, and Baden-Powell is never so happy as when that khaki
kit leaves its resting-place and is packed away in a ship's cabin. And
what journeys he has been on Queen's service! Before he was
twenty-three he had travelled over the greater part of Afghanistan,
and then after seeing most of India, he was in South Africa at
twenty-seven, and did there a wonderful reconnaissance, unaccompanied,
of six hundred miles of the Natal Frontier in twenty days. He has
travelled through Europe, knows the Gold Coast Hinterland as well as
any European, and has almost as good a notion as the Great Powers
themselves concerning their frontier defences.
This reminds me that Baden-Powell sometimes spends his holidays in
visiting historical battlefields and travelling through various
countries to see how their defences and their guns are getting along.
He is an excellent linguist, and can make his way in any country
without arousing suspicions. During some military manoeuvres one
autumn (we need not enter into special details) Baden-Powell was
wandering at the back of the troops, seeing things not intended for
the accredited representatives of Great Britain, who had the front row
of the stalls, and saw beautifully what they were meant to see. What
he noted on this occasion is regarded by military authorities as very
valuable information.
But exciting as these adventures are, they possess no such fascination
for Baden-Powell as the life in breeches, gaiters, flannel-shirt, and
cowboy's hat--when the mountains infested with murderous natives are
blurred by the night, and he is free to steal in among their shadows
at his will, and creep noiselessly through the enemy's lines. The
Matabele, of whom we shall speak later on, soon got to distinguish
Baden-Powell from the rest of Sir Frederick Carrington's troops in
1896. They christened him "Impessa" then, and to this day he is spoken
of by the Kaffirs with awe and admiration as the "Wolf that never
Sleeps." Silent in his movements, with eyes that can detect and
distinguish suspicious objects where the ordinary man sees nothing at
all, with ears as quick as a hare's to catch the swish of grass or
the cracking of a twig, he goes alone in and out of the mountains
where the savages who have marked him down are asleep by the side of
their assegais, or repeating stories of the dreadful Wolf over their
bivouac fires. This is the life which has most attractions for
Baden-Powell, and if he had not been locked up in Mafeking all through
those precious months at the beginning of the war, it is no idle
guesswork to say that we should have lost fewer men and fewer guns by
surprise and ambuscade.
In this flannel-shirt life, however, Baden-Powell is not always on the
serious emprise of soldiering. Most of his holidays, at any rate while
he is abroad, are spent in shirt-sleeves. His periods of rest from the
duties of soldiering are given over to expeditions which carry him far
away from the smooth fields and trim hedges of civilisation; he is for
ever trying to get face to face with nature, living the untrammelled
romantic life of a hunter, independent of slaughterman,
market-gardener, and tax-collector. In his boyhood, as we saw, he
loved few things more than "exploring," and now he has but exchanged
the woods of Tunbridge Wells for the Indian Jungle and the Welsh
mountains for the Matopos.
Happy the man who carries with him into middle-age the zest and aims
of a clean boyhood. There is something invigorating, almost inspiring,
in the contemplation of Baden-Powell's meridian of life. The fifties
which gave him birth seem now to belong to a remote and benighted era;
and the blindest of his unknown adorers, if she has bought a hatless
photograph, cannot deny that Time's effacing fingers have something
roughly swept the brow where she could wish his hair still
lingered,--and yet at forty-three, Baden-Powell, Colonel of Dragoons,
goes wandering into bush and prairie, striding by stream and striking
up mountain, with all the eagerness, all the keenness, all the
abandonment of the gummy-fingered boy seeking butterflies and birds'
eggs. For him life is as good now as it was with big brother
Warington. He is up with the lark, his senses clear and awake from the
moment the cold water goes streaming over his head; there is no
"lazing" with him, no beefy-mindedness, no affectation and effeminacy.
And I cannot help thinking that if the decadents of our day--for
whose distress of soul only the stony-hearted could express
contempt--would but for a week or two lay aside their fine linen,
donning in its place the magic flannel shirt of Baden-Powell, they
would find not only a happy issue to their jaundice, but even discover
that the world is a good place for a man to spend his days in--if he
but live like a man.
Hear Baden-Powell on this subject, and get a glimpse of his serious
side, which so seldom peeps out for the world to see: "Old Oliver
Wendell Holmes," he says, "is only too true when he says that most of
us are 'boys all our lives'; we have our toys, and will play with them
with as much zest at eighty as at eight, that in their company we can
never grow old. I can't help it if my toys take the form of all that
has to do with veldt life, and if they remain my toys till I drop.
"Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its grey,
The stars of its winter, the dews of its May;
And when we have done with our life-lasting toys,
Dear Father, take care of Thy children, the boys.
"May it not be that our toys are the various media adapted to
individual tastes through which men may know their God? As
Ramakrishna Paramahansa writes: 'Many are the names of God, and
infinite the forms that lead us to know of Him. In whatsoever name or
form you desire to know Him, in that very name and form you will know
Him.'"
CHAPTER IX
ROAD-MAKER AND BUILDER
King Prempeh was the first celebrity to receive the attention of B.-P.
In his capital of Kumassi, which being interpreted is "the
death-place," this miserable barbarian had been practising the most
odious cruelties for many years, ignoring British remonstrances, and
failing, like another African potentate, to keep his word to
successive British Governments. Among the Ashantis at this time (1895)
the blood-lust had got complete dominion, and the sacrifice of human
life in the capital of their kingdom was so appalling that England was
at last obliged to buckle on her armour. To quote B.-P. in a
characteristic utterance: "To the Ashanti an execution was as
attractive an entertainment as is a bull-fight to a Spaniard, or a
football match to an Englishman." Even the most coddled schoolboy
will appreciate the force of this comparison.
To give a general idea of these cruelties we will quote a vivid
passage from Baden-Powell's book, _The Downfall of Prempeh_: "Any
great public function was seized on as an excuse for human sacrifices.
There was the annual yam custom, or harvest festival, at which large
numbers of victims were often offered to the gods. The late king went
every quarter to pay his devotions to the shades of his ancestors at
Bantama, and this demanded the deaths of twenty men over the great
bowl on each occasion. On the death of any great personage, two of the
household slaves were at once killed on the threshold of the door, in
order to attend their master immediately in his new life, and his
grave was afterwards lined with the bodies of more slaves, who were to
form his retinue in the next world. It was thought better if, during
the burial, one of the attendant mourners could be stunned by a club
and dropped, still breathing, into the grave before it was filled
in.... Indeed, if the king desired an execution at any time, he did
not look far for an excuse. It is even said that on one occasion he
preferred a richer colour in the red stucco on the walls of the
palace, and that for this purpose the blood of four hundred virgins
was used."
The expedition to bring Mr. Prempeh to his senses was under the
command of Sir Francis Scott, and Baden-Powell received the pink
flimsy bearing the magic words, "You are selected to proceed on active
service," with a gush of elation, which, he tells us, a flimsy of
another kind and of a more tangible value would fail to evoke. Of
course he was keen to go. The expedition suggested romance, and it
assured experience. To plunge into the Gold Coast Hinterland is to
find oneself in a world different from anything the imagination can
conceive; civilisation is left an infinite number of miles behind, and
the Londoner is brought face to face with what Thoreau calls the wild
unhandselled globe. The message was received by Baden-Powell on the
14th of November 1895, and on the 13th of December he was walking
through the streets of Cape Coast Castle, and had noted how well
trodden was the grave of the writer L.E.L., who lies buried in the
courtyard of the castle.
It was the business of B.-P. to raise a force of natives, and to
proceed with this little army as soon as possible in front of the
expedition, acting as a covering force. That is to say, the work of
these undrilled, stupid, and not over-brave natives was scouting, a
duty which while it is the most fascinating part of a soldier's life
is also one of the most difficult. This then was an undertaking of
which many a man might have felt shy, but Baden-Powell (the army is
full of Baden-Powells) went at it cheerfully enough. On the arid
desert outside the castle, which is called the parade ground, B.-P.
and Captain Graham, D.S.O., taught these negroes, under a blazing sun,
the rudiments of soldiering. In one part of their drill a few simple
whistle-signals were substituted for the usual words of command, such
as "Halt" and "Rally," and a red fez was served out to the Levy (which
in the end amounted to 860 men) as a British uniform. The glory of
this "kit," however, was somewhat obscured by a commissariat load
which each warrior carried on his head; but there was no heart under
those shiny ebon skins which did not beat quicker for the possession
of the red fez. The Levy, of course, had its band--a few men who made
a tremendous din on elephant-hide drums, and a few more who produced
two heart-breaking notes on elephants' hollowed tusks garnished with
human jaw-bones. At the head of this force B.-P. and Captain Graham
set out on their journey from Cape Coast to Kumassi, a distance of
nearly 150 miles, on the 21st of December.
Soon after leaving the coast the little expedition plunged into the
bush, and then amid the giant ferns and palms began to appear "the
solemn, shady miles of forest giants, whose upper parts gleam far
above the dense undergrowth in white pillars against the grey-blue
sky." The Levy had now reached the regular forest, the beautiful,
awe-inspiring, but, alas, evil-smelling forest. Here it was found by
Baden-Powell that, in addition to scouting, his force would have to
play the arduous part of road-makers, and, therefore, whenever he came
upon a village such tools as felling-axes, hatchets, spades, and picks
were requisitioned. But it was no easy task teaching the negroes to
perform this labour. The man who was given a felling-axe immediately
set about scraping up weeds, while the grinning warrior armed with a
spade incontinently hacked at a hoary tree with Gladstonian ardour.
"The stupid inertness of the puzzled negro," says B.-P., "is duller
than that of an ox; a dog would grasp your meaning in one-half the
time." But B.-P. did not despair of his men, neither did he ill-treat
them. For three days he worked hard at tree-felling himself, and he
only desisted from this labour on the discovery that the sight of his
hunting-crop brought more trees to the ground than all his strokes
with the axe. This hunting-crop was called "Volapük," because every
tribe understood its meaning, and during the march Baden-Powell found
it of inestimable value. "But, though often shown," he says, "it was
never used." The men might be stupid, they might be idle, but B.-P.
can get work out of the worst men without bullying and without
continual punishments.
It is men like Baden-Powell who exercise the greatest power over the
negro's mind. When he condemns them for cruelty or stupidity he is
quick to protest against the assumption that he is "a regular nigger
hater." Here is the secret: "I have met lots of good friends among
them--especially among the Zulus. But, however good they may be, they
must, as a people, be ruled with a hand of iron in a velvet glove; and
if they writhe under it, and don't understand the force of it, it is
of no use to add more padding--you must take off the glove for a
moment and show them the hand. They will then understand and obey."
British rule is only imperilled when men in authority discard the
velvet glove altogether, or--what is probably worse still--wear only
the velvet glove, much padded, over their flaccid hands.
Just as he encourages Tommy Atkins to learn scouting and the more
intelligent parts of soldiering, so he encouraged these negroes,
duller than oxen, and made them useful pioneers. Here is his own
simple record of the way he got to the hearts of the Levy: "How they
enjoy the palaver in which I tell them that 'they are the eyes to the
body of the snake which is crawling up the bush-path from the coast,
and coiling for its spring! The eyes are hungry, but they will soon
have meat; and the main body of white men, armed with the best of
weapons, will help them win the day, and get their country back again,
to enjoy in peace for ever.' Then I show them my own little repeating
rifle, and firing one shot after another, slowly at first, then faster
and faster, till the fourteen rounds roll off in a roar, I quite bring
down the house. They crowd round, jabbering and yelling, every man
bent on shaking hands with the performer."
But Baden-Powell, while humane and nothing of a bully, knows the value
of strictness, as we have shown, and he admits that sometimes it is
even necessary to shoot one's own men in order to maintain discipline.
He is, however, careful to remark that an extreme step of this kind
"should be the result only of deliberate and fair consideration of the
case." "Strict justice," he adds, "goes a very long way towards
bringing natives under discipline."
By these methods B.-P. won the confidence of his troops, and under him
these rough tribesmen, half-devil and half-child, manfully fought
their way through the jungle of forest, cheered by his encouragement,
awed by "Volapük," and gradually growing to respect the dauntless
courage of the white man who managed them so nicely. A description of
an average day's work will give you an idea of Baden-Powell's task,
and the way in which his negroes worked.
Early in the morning, while the thick white mist is still hanging
athwart the forest, a drummer is kicked out of bed by a white foot and
bidden to sound "Reveillé." Then there is a din of elephant-tusk horns
and the clatter of the elephant-hide drums. The camp is astir, and it
all seems as if the men are as smart and as disciplined as their
brother warriors in Aldershot or Shorncliffe. But the negroes have
only risen thus readily in order to light their fires and settle down
to a lusty breakfast of plantains. After his tub, his quinine and tea,
Baden-Powell sends for King Matikoli and demands to know why his three
hundred Krobo are not on parade. His Majesty smiles and explains to
the white chief that he is suffering from rheumatism in the shoulder,
and therefore he, and consequently his tribe, cannot march that day.
Baden-Powell, with his contradictory smile, solemnly produces a
Cockle's pill (Colonel Burnaby's _vade mecum_), hands it to the
monarch, and remarks that if his tribe are not on the march in five
minutes he will be fined an entire shilling. "The luxury," exclaims
B.-P., "of fining a real, live king to the extent of one shilling."
The king goes away for five minutes, and then returns with the
intelligence that if the white chief will provide his men with some
salt to eat with their "chop" (food) he really thinks they will be
able to march that day. B.-P. expresses a feverish desire to oblige
His Majesty, and proceeds with great alacrity to cut a beautifully
lithe and whippy cane. In an instant that tribe is marching forward
with their commissariat loads upon their heads. But there are others
still to be dealt with. The captains of one tribe are discussing the
situation, and would like Baden-Powell to hear their views.
Baden-Powell treats them as Lord Salisbury, say, would no doubt like
to treat the deputations that sometimes come to give him the benefit
of their opinions; he looks to his repeating rifle, talks about
fourteen corpses blocking the way of retirement, and _hey presto!_ the
other tribe is swinging down the forest-path laughing, singing, and
chattering, like children released from school.
On they march through the heavy forest, a long twisting line of men,
until the halt is made at mid-day for two hours' chop and parade.
Then tools are served out and every company is set to work. One
clears the bush, another cuts stockade posts, a third cuts palm-leaf
wattle, a fourth digs stockade holes, and a fifth is set to keep guard
over the camp and prevent men from hiding in huts. By sunset some
seven or eight acres are cleared of bush, large palm-thatched sheds
are to be seen in long regular lines, while in the centre stands a
fort with its earth rampart bound up by stockade and wattle, and
having in its interior two huts, one for hospital and one for
storehouse. Besides this the natives bridged innumerable streams and
dug and drained roads wherever necessary.
This work can only be seen in its true perspective when the character
of the country is borne in mind. For nearly all of its 150 miles the
road from Cape Coast to Kumassi leads through heavy primeval forest.
"The thick foliage of the trees, interlaced high overhead, causes a
deep, dank gloom, through which the sun seldom penetrates. The path
winds among the tree stems and bush, now through mud and morass, now
over steep ascent or deep ravine." And, in addition to the
difficulties of locomotion, there was the haunting menace of the
heavy dews and mists which come at night laden with the poison of
malaria.
But all these difficulties were met with cheerful courage, and though
Captain Graham and two other officers subsequently attached to the
covering force were incapacitated by fever, the Native Levy fought its
way to Kumassi, and won the admiration of all military authorities. It
was at Kumassi on 17th January, and though no actual fighting had
taken place, the march may be reckoned an achievement of which all
Englishmen can be proud.
One incident of the march will have a romantic attraction for those
who have sons and brothers doing the Empire's work in distant lands.
As the Native Levy with its two white officers journeyed through the
bush they came now and then upon bridges over streams and causeways
over swamps, all in course of construction at the hands of natives
under the direction of a few ever-travelling, hard-worked white
superintendents. "Here we meet one gaunt and yellow. Surely we have
seen that eye and brow before, although the beard and solar topee do
much to disguise the man. His necktie of faded 'Old Carthusian'
colours makes suspicion a certainty, and once again old
school-fellows are flung together for an hour to talk in an African
swamp of old times in English playing-fields." For an hour in an
African swamp! and then on again through the never-ending dark green
aisles towards the savages smitten with the blood-lust in "the
death-place."
The Ashantis did not show fight, and King Prempeh, sucking a huge nut,
surrounded by court-criers and fly-catchers, with three dwarfs dancing
in front of his throne, consented humbly and meekly to receive the
soldiers of the Queen. After Sir Francis Scott had presented Prempeh
with his ultimatum the meeting broke up for the night, but the "Wolf
that never Sleeps" was on the look-out with his Native Levy for a
possible surprise, or for His Majesty's escape. You can imagine how
"Sherlock Holmes," as Burnham the American scout calls our hero,
enjoyed that work. In the quiet night, under the white stars, a
council was being held in the savage king's palace, and B.-P.
"shadowed" that regal hut with eyes and ears alive. At three o'clock
in the morning a white light streamed out of the palace doorway, and
through the clinging mist went a string of white-robed figures, one
of them the queen-mother. This little company passed within twenty
yards of B.-P., and it was followed stealthily by him until the
queen's residence, not hitherto known, was marked down. Then the
watchers returned to their ambush outside the palace, and caught a
councillor who was stealing away in the night. Almost immediately
after this gentleman had been made prisoner two fast-footed men came
upon the scene. They evidently suspected something, for they suddenly
pulled up and stood listening intently. One of them was within arm's
length of Baden-Powell. Quietly B.-P. stood up. The man did not move.
A moment's pause, and then, quick as a flash of lightning,
Baden-Powell had gripped him, and had, moreover, got hold of the gun
he was carrying. Then the patrol came up, the Ashanti was pinned, and,
as B.-P. concludes the narrative, "a handsome knife in a leopard-skin
scabbard was added to our spoil."
After the palace had been searched and the whole of the fetish village
had been burned to the ground, Prempeh, with B.-P. to look after him,
set out for Cape Coast Castle. The bitterness to a soldier of that
return journey, without a shot having been fired, can hardly be
imagined by a civilian, and would certainly be strongly reprehended by
those who regard the justest war with horror and aversion. The
soldiers had set out on that dreadful march through swamp, and bush,
and forest, to fight and bring to the dust a cruel bloodthirsty nation
of savages, contemptuously described by Baden-Powell as "the bully
tribe" of the Gold Coast Hinterland. Instead of finding the bully as
willing to fight as Cuff was willing to face dear old Dobbin, B.-P.
found a cowering, cringing enemy, willing to lick the dust and abase
himself in any manner the ingenious white man might suggest. So it was
with no feelings of elation that the man who had received the pink
flimsy ordering him on active service, who had raised and organised
the Native Levy, who had cut a road through the bush and forest,
draining roads and bridging streams,--turned his back on Kumassi, and
marched King Prempeh to the Cape coast. This march of 150 miles was
accomplished in seven days. Of this expedition B.-P. recalls "ten
minutes' genuine fun,"--that was when a doctor was cutting out from
under his toe-nail the eggs of an insect called the jigger, rude
enough to make a nest of B.-P.'s big toe. It is such incidents as
these that live in the soldier's mind after a hard campaign.
During the whole of these tiresome operations B.-P. of course was hard
at work sketching and keeping his diary. He added to his wonderful
store of experiences, and had the rare delight of seeing the King of
Bekwai "oblige with a few steps"--specially in his honour. But the
story of his work--and it is the same with all the quiet work done by
servants of the Queen in every part of the Empire--attracted little
public notice, and the man-in-the-street had no more idea of B.-P.'s
service than the man-in-the-moon. At that time, indeed, few people
outside official circles had ever heard of his name, and certainly no
stationer would have been mad enough to stick B.-P.'s photograph in
his window. Whether Baden-Powell, when he awakes to it, will prefer
his present fame to the happy obscurity of those distant days, is a
subject for speculation. I could say definitely, if I chose, which
condition is preferred by the proud mother of as gallant a son as ever
rode horse into the African desert.
CHAPTER X
PUTTING OUT FIRE
A Brevet-Colonelcy was conferred upon Baden-Powell for his work on the
Gold Coast,--he was then eight-and-thirty,--and in the same year he
was back at regimental work in Ireland. Hardworking as ever, and keen
on making his men practical soldiers, B.-P. was settling down to what
is called the dull part of soldiering when the gods, in the shape of
the heads of the War Office, again interfered with the even tenor of
his way. A telegram from Sir Frederick Carrington arrived at Belfast
towards the end of April telling our hero that there was to be
fighting in Matabeleland, and that there would be room for him on the
staff. B.-P. was attending that day the funeral of a man in his
squadron who had been killed by a fall from his horse, and after the
service he rushed back to barracks, changed his kit, arranged about
selling his horses, dogs, and furniture, and just when the English
world sits down to its most excellent meal of the day, that oasis of
the afternoon desert, he was in a train rushing as fast as an Irish
train can rush towards the steamer that sailed for England.
At twelve o'clock next day B.-P. was saying good-bye to Sir Frederick
Carrington, who sailed before him, and that done he spent a few
miserable days in constant dread that he would be bowled over by a
hansom, or catch scarlet fever, and thus be prevented from sharing in
the hardships and glory of a campaign. But nothing contrary happened
to him, and after affectionate farewells to his family he embarked for
Cape Town on board the _Tantallon Castle_ on 2nd May. One of his first
labours was to begin an illustrated diary for his mother's
delectation, a diary that was afterwards published by Messrs. Methuen
in book form under the title of "The Matabele Campaign--1896." The
keeping of this diary had its good uses for B.-P.; in what manner he
explains in the preface, addressed to his mother,--"Firstly, because
the pleasures of new impressions are doubled if they are shared with
some appreciative friend (and you are always more than appreciative).
Secondly, because it has served as a kind of short talk with you every
day." That is the way in which British soldiers go forth to war.
The voyage was uneventful. Drill in pyjamas every morning prevented
B.-P. from putting on flesh, and that drill, especially "Knees Up!"
seems to have been of a pretty severe kind, for it draws from
Baden-Powell the exclamation, "I'd like to kill him who invented
it--but it does us all a power of good." That is the saying of the old
soldier. In the barrack-room it is considered the right thing to
grumble, or "grouse" as it is called, while one is working hardest.
Thus the man with a jack-boot on his left arm and a polishing brush in
his right hand--going like lightning,--the sweat running down his red
face, is the man who swears he ain't goin' to bother about his
blooming boots any more, dashed if he is; and after the brushing
proceeds to "bone" them violently. The first part of B.-P.'s
exclamation reminds me of a friend who says that ever since he arrived
at years of discretion he has been searching for the man who invented
work on purpose to murder him. He is, of course, the hardest of hard
workers.
There were pleasures as well as drill on board: athletic sports,
tableaux, concerts, and a grand fancy dress ball. At this ball a lady
with a Roman nose appeared as Britannia, but as the peak of the helmet
threatened to bore a hole through the bridge of her nose she was
obliged to wear her war-hat (as the Hussar calls his busby) the wrong
way round. It was probably B.-P. himself who said to the good lady of
her helmet, "That is not the rule, Britannia."
On the 19th May B.-P. looked from his port and saw "the long, flat top
of grand old Table Mountain" looming darkly against the glittering
stars, its base twinkling with electric lights that glinted on the
water. That day was of course a busy one for B.-P. as Chief of the
Staff, and the first news received by the Man of Mafeking (how odd it
seems now!) was that Sir Frederick Carrington had gone up to Mafeking,
and that he was to follow. In three days Baden-Powell was in Mafeking,
the guest of Mr. Julius Weil, who gave an anxious England as much
important news of the gallant little Mafeking garrison during the Boer
war as the universal Reuter himself. Odd, too, it seems that while in
Mafeking in 1896 B.-P. should write in his diary that "Plumer's force,
specially raised here in the South, had got within touch of Buluwayo."
Names how much more familiar in 1900!
Buluwayo was the town selected by the Matabele for their first blow,
and accordingly with Sir Frederick Carrington and two other officers
B.-P. set out from Mafeking on the 23rd May in a ramshackle coach,
drawn by ten mules, on a drive of ten days and nights to Buluwayo. On
this journey the officers encountered the celebrated King Khama, and
it interested B.-P. to find that Khama knew him as the brother of Sir
George Baden-Powell, and that he inquired after Sir George's little
girl, just as a lady in the Park asks if one's baby has got over the
measles. This (if we leave out a dinner at a wayside "hotel," where
the waiter smoked as he served our officers) was the one picturesque
incident of that jolting, clattering drive of nearly 560 miles, and,
therefore, while our hero is groaning in the coach or travelling
afield after partridges and guinea-fowl for dinner, we will take leave
to look hastily for the reason of his presence in South Africa.
Matabeleland, let us say at the beginning, is included in Rhodesia, a
country 750,000 miles in extent, or, so that the size may jump to the
eye, let us say as big as France, Italy, and Spain lumped together.
This vast country was under the administration of the British
Government, but the Matabele, who had been but partially beaten in the
taking of their country in 1893, were only waiting their opportunity
to throw off the white man's yoke. The opportunity came when the
deplorable Jameson raid emptied the country of troops, and left our
brave hard-working colonists at the mercy of these savages. But there
were other causes contributory to the rebellion. Rinderpest was
slaying the cattle of the Matabele by thousands, and the white man's
order that, to prevent the scourge from spreading, healthy beasts as
well as diseased should be killed was, not unnaturally, quite
unintelligible to the Matabele. The rumour spread that the hated white
man was killing the cattle in order that the tribes should perish of
starvation. The fact, too, that raiding weaker tribes for food was
punished by the British further aggravated this "offence." The priests
encouraged the spirit of rebellion, and the oracle-deity, the M'limo,
promised through the priests that if the Matabele would make war upon
the white man his bullets in their flight should be changed to water,
and his cannon shells become eggs. Horrible murders followed upon this
encouragement, too horrible, indeed, to repeat; but a general idea of
the blood-lust which now possessed the Matabele may be gathered from
the fact of over a hundred and fifty English people (scattered, of
course, in outlying districts) being killed within a week of the
M'limo's call to battle. Only a swift blow, then, could prevent the
loss of civilisation to South Africa for many years; only a terrible
lesson could teach the Matabele that the white man was his lord and
master.
Buluwayo, prior to the time of Sir Frederick Carrington's arrival,
contained about seven hundred women and children and some eight
hundred men. The women and children were accommodated in a laager of
waggons built up with sacks full of earth, and further protected from
assault by a twenty or thirty yards' entanglement of barbed wire with
a sprinkling of broken bottles on the ground. The eight hundred men
were organised in troops, and were armed and horsed in an incredibly
short space of time.
Outside the town, on the north, south, and east, lay more than seven
thousand Matabele, two thousand of whom were armed with Martini-Henry
rifles, while the others possessed Lee-Metfords, elephant guns, Tower
muskets, and blunderbusses, besides their own native assegais,
knobkerries, and battle-axes. This formidable force was further
strengthened by the desertion of a hundred Native Police, who took
with them to the enemy their Winchester repeaters. Thus it will be
seen that all the odds were in favour of the Matabele, but it is only
when the odds are overwhelming against him that the Englishman feels
he must buck up, and Buluwayo was fortunate enough to possess men of
the true breed. Among these let us make special mention of the Hon.
Maurice Gifford, who lost an arm in a gallant dash upon the
besiegers[1]--a man "for whom rough miners and impetuous cowboys work
like well-broken hounds"; Mr. F.C. Selous, hunter and explorer;
Colonel Napier, and Captain MacFarlane. These men gave the enemy no
rest, and by repeated attacks at last rid the town of any immediate
danger of being rushed by the blacks.
Baden-Powell's work when he arrived was almost entirely confined to
the office; and working at a desk from early morning to late at night,
with no prospect of an early closing movement, began to tell upon his
spirits. He became convinced that "our force is far too small
adequately to cope with so numerous and fairly well-armed an enemy,
with well-nigh impregnable strongholds to fall back on.... Our force,
bold as it is, is far too small, and yet we cannot increase it by a
man, for the simple reason that if we did we could not find the
wherewithal to feed it." If this sort of thing had gone on much longer
B.-P. might have learned to look glum for an entire five minutes; but
one night at ten o'clock, when he and Sir Frederick Carrington were
putting up the shutters of office, into the town rode Burnham, the
famous American scout, with news of a large impi of the enemy about
three miles outside Buluwayo. This necessitated action, and B.-P. was
himself again. With a police-trooper as a guide he rode out to find
for himself how matters stood, and, after a hard and refreshing ride,
in the early dawn he was able to see the enemy. There they were on the
opposite bank of the Umgusa river, their fires crackling merrily, and
they themselves apparently as happy as bean-feasters in Epping Forest.
Not long after he had caught sight of these fires and the Matabele
going backwards and forwards from the water, Baden-Powell was at the
head of two hundred and fifty men riding towards the Umgusa. Under the
impression, conveyed to them by their sorry old humbug of an oracle,
that the waters of the Umgusa would open its jaws and swallow up the
wicked white man, the Matebele allowed Baden-Powell to get his force
across the stream without firing a shot; but when they found that not
only did the waters fail to overwhelm their enemies, but that these
same enemies were riding hard towards them, the Matabele took to their
heels in order to find cover in some thicker bush. Then the air began
to scream and whistle. Bullets flew by the ears of the charging
English with a _phit, phit!_ and, when they ricocheted off the ground,
with a _wh-e-e-e-w!_ Up and down bobbed the black heads in the long
rank grass, and _bang, bang, bang_ went the guns. Some of
Baden-Powell's force wanted to dismount and return the fire, but
B.-P., without a sword among his men, sang out, "Make a cavalry fight
of it. Forward! Gallop!" Then, as the horses raced snorting forward,
and the English gave a shout of battle, the Matabele, 1200 against
250, poured an irregular volley into their enemies. The next minute
the horses were in among them, flashing by with the lather on their
necks, while their riders' revolvers barked angrily in every quarter
of the field. The Matabele ran. As hard as they could lick, they
bolted like rabbits to their holes, but faster behind them came the
avenging English with the velvet glove flung aside and the iron hand
visible to their terror-stricken eyes. In the general rout, the mere
act of punishment, there were many instances of coolness and bravery.
One man got detached from the rest, and suddenly found himself
confronted by eight of the enemy. In an instant his horse was shot
under him, but almost in the same instant he was standing in front of
the eight with his rifle to his shoulder. Before they could close on
him with their knobkerries and assegais, or before they could shoot
him down, he had used his magazine fire with such deadly effect that
four of his enemy were dead and the other four were sprinting for dear
life. Baden-Powell had two pretty adventures in this engagement.
Having emptied his Colt's repeater, he threw it carefully under a
peculiar tree, so that he might find it when business was done; then
he went to work with his revolver. As he rode forward he came upon an
open stretch of ground, and the first object that struck his attention
was a well-knit Kaffir on one knee covering his body with a
Martini-Henry. The distance was about eighty yards, and Baden-Powell,
telling the story, says that he felt so indignant at the fellow's
rudeness that he rode at him as hard as he could gallop, calling him
every name under the sun. But the Kaffir was not to be moved even by
the best-bred abuse, and he remained kneeling with the rifle pointed
at B.-P., until that horseman, with locked jaws and gleaming eyes
(those who know him will understand), was only ten yards off. Then he
fired, and B.-P. says he felt quite relieved "when I realised he had
clean missed me." That nigger was shot immediately afterwards by one
of Baden-Powell's men, who was riding to his help from behind.
The other close shave will make the nervous turn cold to think of it.
B.-P. had ridden to the help of two men kept at bay by a nigger under
a tree, and when the nigger had been killed, he was standing for a
moment under the tree, when something moving above him made him look
up. It was a gun-barrel taking aim at him. The man behind the gun,
standing on a branch, was so jammed against the trunk of the tree as
to look part of it, and while B.-P. was making a note of this fact for
his next lecture on scouting, _bang_ went the gun, and the ground in
front of his toes was as if a small earthquake had struck it. That
nigger's knobkerrie and photograph are now in the Baden-Powell
museum--a museum which began with butterflies and birds' eggs, and now
includes mementos of nearly every tribe and animal on the face of the
earth.
After the fight Baden-Powell got back to Buluwayo in time for late
lunch, and--"made up for lost time in the office." From now it was a
case of office for many weary weeks, and Baden-Powell could only at
rare intervals steal away for exercise, which he took in the form of
hard scouting, sometimes by himself, sometimes with Burnham--"a most
delightful companion." His rides with the famous American gave him
great pleasure, and each man, both born scouts, learned something from
the other. While he was enjoying these expeditions as relaxation from
the cramping work of office, he was at the same time picking up
valuable information concerning the enemy. During this grind at the
office B.-P. used to long for the lunch hour; "it sounds greedy," he
says, "but it is for the glimpse of sunlight that I look forward,
_not_ the lunch." On one occasion his work as Chief of the Staff was
so severe that he was unable to leave the office for four days. He was
feeling "over-boiled," and got rid of this stuffiness of mind in his
own characteristic way. After dinner on the fourth day he saddled up
and rode off to the Matopos, spent the night there, and was back in
the office by 10.30 on the following day, "all the better for a night
out."
All this time the office work increased, and the anxiety of the
General and his staff was doubled by reports of rebellion in
Mashonaland. The fire of lawlessness was spreading its evil flames in
all directions, till reports of murder and outrage covered an area of
one hundred thousand square miles, and about 2000 whites found arrayed
against them an army of some 20,000 maddened savages.
Fortunately for B.-P. he had in Sir Frederick Carrington a chief who
never wastes a man. Excellent as Baden-Powell was in the office (and
Tim Linkinwater would not have feared, I believe, to hand the precious
Cherryble ledgers over to his keeping) he could render much more
valuable service in the field. In the middle of July the reward came
for all his independent scouting; he was chosen by Sir Frederick
Carrington, as a man who knew the Matopos country and the whereabouts
of the enemy, to act as guide to Colonel Plumer--the officer chosen
for the immediate direction of operations in the Matopos. With joy
B.-P. flung down the pen and took up the sword.
His first move was towards Babyan's stronghold, Babyan being one of
the great Matabele chiefs--a chief great in the glorious days of
Lobengula--and who now occupied the central and important impi in the
Matopos. This work was well done, the enemy's exact whereabouts were
ascertained, and the scouting ended in a glorious gallop back to camp
after emptying a few guns into a party of savages attempting to cut
off Baden-Powell's party. After this came battle.
In the moonlight of the 19th July the little force, nearly a thousand
strong, moved out into the Matopos, Baden-Powell going on alone as
guide. He went alone because he feared to have his attention
distracted by a companion, thereby losing his bearings. There was
something of a weird and delightful feeling, he says, in mouching
along alone, with a dark, silent square of men and horses looming
behind one. So they marched forward, the one incident, and that a sad
one, being the killing with an assegai of a dog who had followed the
force, and had endangered the success of its movement by barking at a
startled buck. The only noise in the column marching behind the lithe,
wiry guide was the occasional muffled cough of a man and the sharp
snort of an excited horse. When the force was within a mile of
Babyan's impi a halt was called, and the men lay down to sleep in the
freezing cold night. It was not a long sleep, for an hour before dawn
they were in the saddle again, and moving through the darkness as
silently as before towards the enemy's stronghold. When the pass was
reached which led into the valley held by Babyan the column was
prepared for attack, the advance force being under the command of
Baden-Powell.
The guide almost jumped with joy, he says, when he spotted the enemy's
fires. The fight was to begin. The guns were got up, and in a few
minutes they were volleying and thundering, flinging their whirring
shells into the masses of Matabele, whose assegai blades glistened in
the morning sun. While this opening cannonade was proceeding
Baden-Powell found useful work to do. With a few native scouts he
started off on his own account and soon found a large body of the
enemy elsewhere enjoying a bombastic war-dance, which plainly
portended the staggering of humanity and the driving of the British
into the sea. Thinking that Colonel Plumer ought not to miss this
performance, Baden-Powell sent back word of it, and calling together
the Native Levy proceeded to attack the dancers. Their sound of
revelry died away, or changed to something more dismal, when
Baden-Powell and his men came clambering up the rocky height, leaping
over boulders, dodging behind crags, and pouring lead into their
astonished midst. With very little delay the Matabele went to earth,
tumbling pell-mell into their caves and holes, from whence the rattle
of their musketry soon rolled, and where they fancied themselves as
safe as a rabbit in its burrow from the attack of an eagle. To add to
Baden-Powell's difficulty his Native Levy began to show the white
feather, getting behind rocks and wasting their ammunition on the
desert crags. Had the Matabele come out of their caves, given one
war-whoop, and made a show of descending upon the besiegers, those
precious friendlies would assuredly have turned tail and bolted. But
the Matabele in the security of their caves made no such sign, and
Baden-Powell called up the Cape Boys and the Maxims in the nick of
time. In a few minutes the guns were in position on what looked like
inaccessible crags, and the Cape Boys shouting and cheering were
floundering through bogs, leaping over boulders, and firing with firm
hand wherever firing was of use. The fight was now begun in earnest,
and B.-P., on a rock directing the movements of his force, was
surrounded by the deafening roar of artillery. In nearly every cave
on those hills savages lay with rifle to shoulder, finger on trigger,
waiting to pick off the besiegers as they came bounding over the rocks
towards them. The Cape Boys never wavered; up they dashed, panting and
sweating, to the very mouths of the caves, fired their rifles into the
darkness, charged in, to reissue in a few minutes, jabbering to each
other, and then rushing off to "do ditto" wherever these man-holes
existed. Now they were creeping stealthily round rocks "like stage
assassins," now leaping forward through the long yellow grass like men
in a paper-chase,--always fighting well and pluckily, lifting up their
wounded and carrying them to places of safety, and then again joining
in the battle, charging without fear upon their maddened enemy,
parrying the thrust of sudden assegai with the bayonet that kills
almost in the instant that it guards. And while this work was going
on, a sudden corner revealed another string of rebels running down a
path. "For a moment," writes B.-P., "the thought crosses one's mind,
shall we stop to fire or go for them? but before the thought has time
to fashion itself, we find ourselves going for them." Again there was
the cheering rush, the rattle of rifles, and hard fighting till the
enemy was scattered. So the battle went on, and it did not cease until
the stronghold was completely cleared. Then the "flag-waggers"
signalled back to the main body for stretchers.[2] During this pause
Baden-Powell wrote an account of the fighting (illustrated), to be
sent home to his mother.
In this manner Babyan was beaten, and the victors went back to camp
satisfied with their day's work. On the following morning it was
discovered that a column sent by the General to attack the enemy on
the Inugu Mountain had not returned, and Baden-Powell with a patrol of
a hundred men was ordered to go in search. When the sun was up the
little body moved off towards the mountains, and after passing through
much difficult country, parts of which were actually in the occupation
of the enemy, they struck the spoor of the missing column, and to
Baden-Powell's great joy found that the marks were quite fresh and
leading outwards from the mountains--showing that the missing men
were safe. Very soon after that the patrol was further cheered by
seeing the gleam of the column's camp-fires, and after an exchange of
events Baden-Powell hurried back to camp to acquaint the General with
the good news.
The next morning, forgetting that he had had another night out,
Baden-Powell started off for solitary exercise in the mountains, his
purpose being to "investigate some signs I had noted two days before
of an impi camped in a new place," and to select a position for the
building of a fort to command the Matopos. Returning to camp he drew
his design and plan for the fort, and in the evening was back in the
mountains again with a number of Cape Boys, ready to begin the
business of building.
One of Baden-Powell's little relaxations when fighting slackened was
the "rounding off" of cattle, a sport almost as exciting as chasing a
solitary boar, especially when the cattle are being driven into the
mountains for "home consumption" by bloodthirsty and hungry Matabele.
On one of these occasions Baden-Powell was wounded. Having rounded off
some cattle he was riding towards a party of niggers when he felt a
sharp blow on his thigh as though Thor had given him a playful tap
with his big hammer. He was bowled over, and thinking that he must
have charged into the stump of a tree turned round to have a look at
it; but there was no tree. Then he realised that he had only been
struck with a lead-covered stone fired from a big-bore gun, and so
hopped off like a man who has been kicked on the shins in a football
match, to continue the game. No blood was drawn by this bullet, but
our hero's thigh was black and blue for many days afterwards.
This was the kind of life Baden-Powell lived at this time as Chief of
the Staff. An officer who knows him very well tells me that it is
impossible to wear him out; "Baden-Powell," he says, "is tireless." He
is keen to be given the most risky and the most solitary work; he can
go for days without food and never complains of broken nights. He has
an enthusiasm for hard work, and when that work demands cunning of the
brain as well as quickness of the hand, as in scouting, B.-P. is as
much lost in the labour as a wolf in search of food for its young.
Never throughout the Matabele campaign was Sir Frederick Carrington
better served than when the young Englishman slunk away into the
darkness, and wandered alone and unprotected into the rocky mountains
held by the murderous Matabele. And never were those savages more
disquieted than when news was brought to them in the morning that the
Wolf had been in the mountains during the night.
* * * * *
FOOTNOTES:
[1] After the arm was amputated at the shoulder Mr. Gifford used to
feel the pain as if it were in his hand.
[2] Let it not be thought that B.-P. had neglected to bring
stretchers. They were brought, but the friendlies who carried them,
like the hen that laid the rotten egg, were nervous, and had dropped
them in the river, they themselves taking up positions of safety till
the fighting was over.
CHAPTER XI
IN RAGS AND TATTERS
Baden-Powell now had what one might term a roving commission. He was
sent by Colonel Plumer in charge of a patrol to wander over the vast
country covered by the rebellion and see what he could of the enemy,
and when found make a note of. It was exactly the work B.-P. liked
above all others. There was romance in the dangers of it, and
intellectual joy in its difficulties. There was freedom in it, and the
glorious feeling that every step he took he was carrying his life in
his hand. And not only was life menaced by the bullets and assegais of
Matabele lurking in the tall yellow grass, but there was considerable
danger, though of a more humorous order, even in the taking of a bath,
as B.-P. discovered in going down to a pool and spotting just in time
a leering crocodile in the reeds. Lions, too, were stumbled upon in
clumps, just as in peaceful England one walks upon a covey of
partridges. Then, lying down one day after dinner for a nap, B.-P.
discovered on awaking that a snake had selected precisely the same
spot for its own siesta. The charm of night marches, too, was
occasionally broken by the growling of a bloodthirsty hyæna, following
and snarling at the heels of the horses. These were dangers, however,
that added the few touches necessary to complete the picture of our
smart adjutant of Hussars in cowboy hat, grey flannel shirt, breeches
and gaiters, with a face as brown as a Kaffir's, wandering over the
South African veldt. During these expeditions, by the way,
Baden-Powell's wardrobe came to ignominious grief, and under the
tattered breeches, the stained shirt, and the split boots, he was a
mere network of holes. The ankles of his socks remained true to the
end, but the rest of them, in B.-P.'s euphemistic phrase, were most
delicate lace. The one drawback to the tub in the river, leaving out
the chance of a stray crocodile, was the difficulty he experienced in
getting back into these delicate open-work socks, and the only way of
surmounting this difficulty was by bathing--socks and all!
The marches, too, had their intervals of fighting, and the little
patrol was frequently so in touch with the enemy that Tommy Atkins and
Master Matabele could exchange compliments. "Sleep well to-night," the
grinning savages would shout from the hills; "to-morrow we will have
your livers fried for breakfast!" And the compliments became sterner
whenever the Matabele recognised in the little force of whites the
dread "Wolf that never Sleeps." "Wolf! Wolf!" they shrieked with
savage ferocity, and if Baden-Powell had the nerves of some of us he
must have had many a bad night after hearing that yell, and marking
the gleaming eyes and the frothing lips that twitched with lust for
his destruction.
Then there was the bitterest work of all. The closing of suffering
eyes that had grown so strangely dear during the hardships of such
work as this; the saying of farewells to the men who had raced by
one's side with Death at their heels for how many hard weeks. Of one
of these Baden-Powell writes in his diary: "His death is to me like
the snatching away of a pleasing book half read." And solemn as the
funeral service ever is, one fancies how awe-inspiring, how poignant
its impressiveness, when in the dark, "among the gleams of camp-fires
and lanterns, with a storm of thunder and lightning gathering round,"
a few fighting Englishmen heard its message over the body of a
fellow-soldier.
Baden-Powell's description of the day's work at this time gives one a
good idea of the life of a patrol. This is what he wrote in his diary
for his mother's eyes: "Our usual daily march goes thus: Reveillé and
stand to arms at 4.30, when Orion's belt is overhead. (The natives
call this Ingolobu, the pig, the three big stars being three pigs, and
the three little ones being the dogs running after them; this shows
that Kaffirs, like other nations, see pictures in constellations.) We
then feed horses--if we have anything to feed them with, which is not
often; light fires and boil coffee; saddle-up, and march off at 5.15.
We go on marching till about 9.30 or 10, when we off-saddle and lie up
for the heat of the day, during which the horses are grazed, with a
guard to look after them, and we go a-breakfasting, bathing, and in
theory writing and sketching, but in practice sleeping, at least so
far as the flies will allow. At 3.30 saddle-up and march till 5.30;
off-saddle and supper; then we march on again, as far as necessary,
in the cool hours of the early night. On arriving at the end of our
march, we form our little laager; to do this we put our saddles down
in a square, each man sleeping with his head in the saddle, and the
horses inside the square, fastened in two lines on their 'built up'
ropes. To go to bed we dig a small hole for our hip-joints to rest in,
roll ourselves up in our horse-blanket, with our heads comfortably
ensconced in the inside of the saddle, and we would not then exchange
our couch for anything that Maple could try and tempt us with."
But after months of this hard work, the tireless B.-P. began to knock
up. Fever and dysentery attacked him, and he said unkind things to
people who bothered him--as witness the message sent to one of the
patrolling columns: "If you let the men smoke on a night march, you
might as well let the band play too." The justness of the gibe!
B.-P. relates a good story, by the way, of smoking while on guard. A
Colonial volunteer officer, Captain Brown, in times of peace Butcher
Brown, ordered a sentry found smoking to consider himself a prisoner.
"What!" exclaimed the volunteer soldier, "not smoke on sentry? Then
where the ---- _am_ I to smoke?" The dignified Captain only reiterated
his first remark. Then did the sentry take his pipe from his mouth and
confidentially tap his officer upon the shoulder. "Now, look here,
Brown," said he, "don't go and make a ---- fool of yourself. If you
do, I'll go elsewhere for my meat."
To return. B.-P., having lived straight and hard, soon fought down the
fever, and in little more than a week was back again at work. It is
nice to know that during the time of his being on the sick-list Sir
Frederick Carrington went regularly to his bedside and sat for a long
time, retailing all the cheerful news of the campaign. Sir Frederick
and Baden-Powell, by the bye, are probably the two Imperial officers
who know most about South Africa.
During his illness Major Ridley had started off with a column to make
war upon the Somabula, and when B.-P. got about again he was ordered
to go in search of this force, with three troopers as an escort, and
to take command of it. "I could picture nothing more to my taste," he
says, "than a ride of from eighty to one hundred miles in a wild
country, with three good men, and plenty of excitement in having to
keep a good look-out for the enemy, enjoying splendid weather,
shirt-sleeves, and a reviving feeling of health and freedom." So the
man who had only just got off a sick-bed started for a ride into the
forest after Ridley's column, and during the ride the twentieth
anniversary of his joining Her Majesty's Service came round and
brought its reflections for the diary. "I always think more of this
anniversary than of that of my birth, and I could not picture a more
enjoyable way of spending it. I am here, out in the wilds, with three
troopers.... We are nearly eighty miles from Buluwayo and thirty from
the nearest troops. I have rigged up a shelter from the sun with my
blanket, a rock, and a thorn-bush; thirteen thousand flies are,
unfortunately, staying with me, and are awfully attentive.... I am
looking out on the yellow veldt and the blue sky; the veldt with its
grey hazy clumps of thorn-bush is shimmering in the heat, and its vast
expanse is only broken by the gleaming white sand of the river-bed and
the green reeds and bushes which fringe its banks." How could a man
feel unhappy with the whole of his wardrobe packed away in one wallet
of the saddle, and his larder in the other? Be sure that Lucullus
never enjoyed a banquet with the same sharpness of delight as
Baden-Powell squatting amid the yellow grass of the veldt with his
cocoa and rice.
But there were anxious moments coming for the man who kept on the open
veldt the twentieth anniversary of his joining Her Majesty's army with
gladness in his heart. After he had found the column and had got into
the Lilliputian forest with its stunted, bushy trees and its sandy
soil, he was brought face to face with the greatest enemy that can
harass, fret, and wear down nerves of steel--absence of water. A
commander whose mind is racked by the difficulty, perhaps the
impossibility, of finding water for his troops is like the man haunted
day and night, waking and sleeping, by debt. "This was our menu," says
Baden-Powell: "weak tea (can't afford it strong), no sugar (we are out
of it), a little bread (we have half a pound a day), Irish stew
(consisting of slab of horse boiled in muddy water with a pinch of
rice and half a pinch of pea-flour), salt, none. For a plate I use one
of my gaiters, it is marked 'Tautz & Sons, No. 3031'; it is a far cry
from veldt and horseflesh to Tautz and Oxford Street!" But this was at
a time when B.-P. wrote in his diary: "Nothing like looking at the
cheery side of things." The morrow came when he could see nothing but
arid miles of sand, when his eyes ached as they ranged the pitiless
desert for water; there is no cheery side to that view. Halting his
party to give them a rest, he and an American scout named Gielgud
started off to make one grand effort to find river or puddle. Hill
after hill was climbed to find only a valley of dead, baked grass
beyond, and at last, broken-hearted and weary, the two riders turned
their horses' heads back to camp. Soon after this the American's head
began to bob till the chin rested on the chest, and he forgot the
quest of water in the fairyland of dreams. But B.-P. could not sleep,
and those keen eyes of his were ranging the desolate country every
dreary minute of that ride. And at last he noticed on the ground
certain marks which he knew to be those of a buck that had scratched
in the sand for water. Overjoyed he got down from the saddle and
continued the work of the buck, digging and digging with his lean
sunburnt fingers till he came to damp earth, and then--to water. At
that moment he saw two pigeons get up from behind a rock some little
way off, and leaving his oozing water in the sand he hastened there
and discovered to his supreme joy the salvation of his party--a little
pool of water.
On this expedition you will be interested to hear that a man who lent
valuable assistance to Baden-Powell was your hero of the
cricket-field--Major Poore. In the days of the Matabele campaign he
had not slogged Richardson out of the Oval, nor driven Hearne
distracted to the ropes at Lord's; he was there as Captain Poore of
the 7th Hussars, working like a nigger, brave as a Briton, and quite
delighted to be soldiering under the peerless Baden-Powell. His fame
came afterwards.
During this expedition Baden-Powell gave brilliant evidence of his
capacity as a general. He had drawn up a plan for an attack by his own
and another column upon a great chief named Wedza, who lived with his
warriors in a mountain consisting of six rocky peaks ranging from
eight hundred to a thousand feet high. On the top of these peaks were
perched the kraals, while the mountain itself, nearly three miles
long, resembled nothing so much as a rabbit-warren, being a network of
caves held by the burrowing rebels. Wedza's stronghold was steep, and
its sides were strewn with bush and boulders; only by narrow and
difficult paths was it accessible, and these paths had been fortified
by the Matabele with stockades and breastworks. This important and
well-nigh impregnable stronghold was held by something like sixteen
hundred Matabele--six or seven hundred of whom were real fighting men.
Baden-Powell, nevertheless, drew up his plan for the attack, and sat
down to wait for the other column which was to act with him. That
column never came; only a letter arrived by runner saying that it
would be unable to join in the attack after all. "The only thing we
could do," says Baden-Powell, "was to try and bluff the enemy out of
the place."
So he arranged to win the battle by cunning of the brain. Sending
five-and-twenty men to climb a hill which commanded a part of the
stronghold, with instructions to act as if they were two hundred and
fifty, and giving small parties of Hussars similar instructions
regarding the left flank and rear of the enemy, Baden-Powell got his
artillery ready to bombard the central position. Just as the
five-and-twenty reached the summit of their hill, however, they were
observed by the enemy and instantly fired upon. From hilltop to
hilltop rang the call to arms, and B.-P. watched through his telescope
the yelling savages rushing with their rifles and assegais to massacre
his gallant little force of five-and-twenty men under a lieutenant. To
create a diversion, Baden-Powell galloped off with seven men to the
left rear of the stronghold, crossing a river on the way, and opened
fire upon a village on the side of the mountain. By continually moving
about in the grass and using magazine fire, B.-P. with his seven men
gave the enemy the impression that he had a large army there, and soon
the strain was taken off the five-and-twenty on the hilltop. Then
Hussars and Artillery joined the five-and-twenty, while a 7-pounder
flung deadly shells at every important point of the mountain. Soon
after this the enemy made a backward move, and the lieutenant on the
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 chances, that the
lot of most officers is humdrum, and that with so much talk about
Arbitration and Universal Millennium, you cannot go up for Sandhurst
with any certainty that your career will contain a single opportunity
for gaining honour and renown. My dear Smith major, believe me, a man
may distinguish himself in a barrack square as well as in African
mountains or a besieged township. General popularity, it is true, does
not come that way; but the opportunity for honour is there all the
same, and the distinction one earns on that field has its appreciation
in the right quarter. Long before the world of London paraded its
streets with portrait badges of Baden-Powell on its heart, or
thereabouts, he was a marked and famous man, and before he had drawn
sword on a field of battle, or fired a revolver into the yellow grass
of the veldt, he was known throughout the British Cavalry as a
first-rate, if not the ideal, soldier. It is not a bad ambition, I
promise you, to try and be a perfect regimental officer.
A party of sergeants in Baden-Powell's old regiment were once asked by
a civilian whether the men liked him. There was a silence for a minute
or two, and at last one of the sergeants replied, hesitatingly, "Well,
no, I shouldn't say they _like_ him"; then in a burst--"why, they
worship him!" Let me tell you how Baden-Powell has earned their love.
In the first place, he entered the Army with no mischievous ideas
about the manliness and dash of a fast, raking life. That is a great
start, for if the soldier despises one type of officer more than
another it is the young sprig who affects to consider soldiering a
bore, and comes on parade with the evidence of last night's folly and
dissipation in his drawn face and dull eyes. Baden-Powell was keen
about his work from the first, and never posed as a drawling Silenus
in gold lace. In the second place, Baden-Powell, who always possessed
a great deal of sound common sense, took an interest in his men,
treated them as intelligent beings, and never for once mistook the
drunken, devil-may-care Private of fiction for the soldier who goes
anywhere and does anything. It is a literary "dodge" to reach the
reader's sympathies by drawing the blackguard in order to find the
hero; one good deed in that world of unreality wipes out all the
unworthiness of a lifetime, and the reader puts down the tale with a
longing to fall on the neck and wring the hand of the very next
hiccupping Tommy he encounters. As Bishop Blougram says:--
Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things,
The honest thief, the tender murderer,
The superstitious atheist, demireps
That love and save their souls in new French books--
We watch while these in equilibrium keep
The giddy line midway: one step aside,
They're classed and done with.
This is all very well in fiction, but I protest it is a little hard on
the soldier, and it is certainly a dangerous belief for the future
officer to grow up in.
The following letter, which appeared recently in the _Daily Graphic_,
is well and truly written: "Having served as chaplain of one of the
largest recruiting depôts in England, may I thank you for your article
on the Heroic Blackguard style of literature in vogue just now.
Soldiers have often remarked to me that they were represented as
'drunken roughs who couldn't speak the Queen's English.' As a matter
of fact, a steadier, better behaved, better mannered class it would be
difficult to find. There are exceptions, but not popular exceptions.
Blackguardism and heroism very seldom go together, Bret Harte and
other writers notwithstanding. The pluckiest and most reliable
soldiers are not animated beer barrels, but sober, keen-eyed, sensible
fellows, and of such the British Army chiefly consists."
When you are most inclined to think the Private an irresponsible
good-for-nothing, look hard at the next Commissionaire you meet on the
street. That smart, clean, well-brushed man, with his bronzed face,
his bright keen eyes, and general look of self-respect, was once a
soldier, and indeed it is soldiering that has made him what you see.
Look hard, honoured sir, at the next Commissionaire who comes across
your path, and you will never again be disposed to regard the soldier
as an insensate good-for-nothing.
"Tommy Atkins," says Baden-Powell, "is not the childish boy that the
British Public are too apt to think him, to be ignored in peace and
petted in war. He is, on the contrary, a man who reads and thinks for
himself, and he is keen on any instruction in really practical
soldiering, especially if it promises a spice of the dash and
adventure which is so dear to a Briton." It was just because
Baden-Powell acted on this assumption in the 13th Hussars that the men
learned to "worship" him. The few regular bad-lots that are to be
found, I suppose, in every regiment, are certainly no heroes among the
rest of the soldiers. The corner in the canteen where they foregather
is not crowded, and I have seen them from that unsplendid isolation
looking wistfully at the fresh, clean, merry-voiced troopers buying
"luxuries" at the bar,--men who are keen soldiers, anxious to excel,
and who do not "nurse the canteen."
But bad officers may ruin the best men, and the popularity of the Army
with the classes from which its ranks are drawn depends very largely
upon the behaviour of our subalterns and captains. No one likes to be
neglected, and the great mistake made by so many officers, but never
by Baden-Powell, is their apparent indifference to the soldier's
welfare "out of hours." In a cavalry regiment, for instance, for the
greater part of the year the men have practically nothing to do from
dinner-time till the bugle rings for evening stables. Will you believe
it, that the commonest way of spending the afternoon in cavalry
regiments is by going to bed? Immediately after dinner is over, down
go the beds with a clatter, the strap that holds the mattress
doubled-up is unbuckled, and under the thick sheets and the dark
blankets, minus his boots, the trooper smokes his pipe until he falls
asleep. Their officer is with them in the morning, to see that they
brush the scurf out of their horses' manes and put the burnisher over
the backs of the buckles; he puts his nose into their room at
dinner-time to ask if there are any complaints, and withdraws it
almost before it is recognised by the men, as if the odour of the
Irish stew disagreed with him. After that, unless he walks through
the stables in the evening, his men do not see him. Now, how can an
officer who soldiers in this dull, stupid fashion ever gain the
affection of his men? And, more important question, how can men with
such an officer ever grow enthusiastic about soldiering, or even
content with their lot?
Baden-Powell devoted himself to the men in his troop, and, when he was
adjutant, to the whole regiment. He would get them out of their rooms
in the afternoon for sports of some kind, he would encourage them to
take up flag-wagging or scouting, and he would work like a slave to
provide them with an alternative for public-house and canteen. There
is a story about him, which shows how popular he is with the men, and,
also, that it is possible for soldiers to take an intelligent interest
in practical soldiering. Baden-Powell was delivering a course of
lectures, I think on scouting, and every lecture had been attended by
a large audience which completely filled the room. Men used to wait
outside the door in order to get a seat, just as people stand
patiently for hours at the pit-door of a theatre. Among this audience
there was one young sergeant who had shown a singularly keen
interest in the lectures; he was one of the smartest and
cleanest-living men in the station, and had never been charged with
drunkenness in his life. At one of the lectures B.-P. was surprised to
find the young soldier absent, and he was still more surprised on the
following day to find that this irreproachable sergeant was up on a
charge of drunkenness. "What on earth made you go and get drunk?"
asked B.-P. "Well, sir," said the sergeant doggedly, "I was late
yesterday and couldn't get in to your lecture, so of course I had to
go and get drunk." He said this perfectly seriously, and there was a
very world of meaning in his argumentative "of course."
[Illustration: "_Viret in Æternum_"
Van der Weyde, Photographer, 182, Regent St., W.]
Baden-Powell was as assiduous in his attentions to his men as any
knight to his lady. He wooed them and won them. He did not win by
playing to the gallery, asking if they were quite comfortable in their
room, and giving them little coddling presents. He won as a man wins a
love that is worth winning, by treating the object of his devotion
with respect and perfect trust. His work at Malta, when he was acting
as Assistant Military Secretary to the Governor, secured for him the
affection of hundreds of soldiers and, I am glad to add, sailors too.
He was the life and soul of the place, indefatigable in getting up
sports and theatricals for the men, and building a permanent club for
their use, which effectually prevented the weaker men, or shall we say
the more generous hearted? from spending too much money in
public-houses. It was a sight to see the gymnasium, in which the
theatricals were held, during one of Baden-Powell's performances. The
vast floor of the building was crowded with soldiers packed as tightly
as sardines, and the rafters running from wall to wall were all
bestridden by sailors as happy and as comfortable there as the
Governor and his party sitting in the front row in their splendid
chairs from the palace. And when B.-P. appeared in the wings a shout
such as might have brought down the walls of Jericho shook the great
building, and soldier and sailor vied with each other to see who could
keep that roar of welcome going the longest. And over and over again
did Baden-Powell apply for leave to shirk some great social function
in the palace because the hour of such entertainment clashed with the
time he spent among Tommy and Jack in the gymnasium or the club.
His opinion of the soldier is a high one, and that is the secret of
his success. He loves to recount instances which have come in his long
experience, showing the soldier in the best light, revealing his
pluck, his love of little children, his chivalrous championing of the
weak, his handiness, his humour, his cheerfulness in depressing
circumstances, his self-respect, and his honesty. What was it that
struck his attention most about the tempting work of searching
Prempeh's palace for treasure? That the work which was entrusted to a
company of British soldiers "was done most honestly and well, without
a single case of looting. Here was a man with an armful of gold-hilted
swords, there one with a box full of gold trinkets and rings, another
with a spirit-case full of bottles of brandy, yet in no instance was
there any attempt at looting." And, eating out his own heart, on that
bitter march back from Kumassi to Cape Coast Castle, he had eyes for
the splendid doggedness of the British soldier: "In truth, that march
down was in its way as fine an exhibition of British stamina and pluck
as any that has been seen of late years. For the casual reader in
England this is difficult to realise, but to one who has himself
wearily tramped that interminable path, heart-sick and foot-sore, the
sight of those dogged British 'Tommies,' heavily accoutred as they
were, still defying fever in the sweltering heat, and ever pressing
on, was one which opened one's eyes and one's heart as well. There was
no malingering _there_; each man went on until he dropped. It showed
more than any fight could have done, more than any investment in a
fort, or surprise in camp, what stern and sterling stuff our men are
made of, notwithstanding all that cavillers will say against our
modern army system and its soldiers." During that bitter march
Baden-Powell asked a young soldier, gripped by fever but manfully
plodding on with the rest, whether his kit was not too heavy for him,
whereat, says Baden-Powell, he replied, with tight-drawn smile and
quavering voice, "It ain't the kit, sir; it's only these extra rounds
that I feel the weight of." "These extra rounds" being those intended
for the fight which never came.
In the Matabele campaign he was quick to notice the manner in which
private soldiers tended some wounded nigger children. "It did one
good," he says, "to see one or two of the Hussars, fresh from
nigger-fighting, giving their help in binding up the youngsters, and
tenderly dabbing the wounded limbs with bits of their own shirts
wetted." During that haunting march with the Shangani Patrol, when the
rice was cut down to a spoonful, and a horse had been killed to supply
the men with food, Baden-Powell found time to note that "the men are
singing and chaffing away as cheerfully as possible while they scoop
the muddy water from the sand-hole for their tea." And he loves the
soldier for all his little oddities. How he laughed over the man who
carried skates in his kit through India, and the man in the African
desert with a lot of fish-hooks in his wallet! And how he likes to
chaff them out of their failings. At Aldershot one of his most popular
pieces as an entertainer is that in which he impersonates the
barrack-room lawyer. While the audience is waiting for the next
singer, there is a noise heard in the wings, and then a loud voice
cries, "I tell yer I will go on. It's no use of you a-stoppin' of me,
I'm agoin' to tell 'em all about it, I am," and then with a great
clatter a private soldier comes bungling on the stage, tunic open,
hair all over the place, and cap at the back of his head. "Beg
parding, sir," he says to the officer in the front row, "but these
here manoeuvres has all been conducted wrong, they have, and I
warn't to tell the company how they ought to have been managed. Now if
I had had the runnin' of this concern, and not the Field-Marshal, I
should have first of all"--etc. etc. The audience yells with delight,
and if Baden-Powell really should show up, in his own inimitable
fashion, the mistakes of a general (which, by the way, he is quite
capable of doing), the audience and the general too, if he is there,
laugh all the more.
Men go to him with their private cares and troubles. They know that
the man who can make them laugh till the tears stream down their
faces, can at the right moment show a serious face, and give ear to
the humblest tale of trouble. He makes it his business--and surely it
is part of an officer's business--to know all about his men's lives,
their families, their favourite sports, their objects in life, and the
way in which they spend their leave. When he was in the 13th Hussars
he was always a favourite with the children in the married quarters,
and if you could pick out an apple-cheeked urchin playing in the dust
of the barracks who did not grin from ear to ear when you asked if he
knew Baden-Powell, you had stumbled upon a young gentleman the guest
of the regiment.
Baden-Powell even got to learn the names men gave their horses. There
was in the 13th Hussars some years ago a handsome little black horse
whose regimental number was, I think, A18. To the men he was Smut, and
no one ever thought of calling him anything else. One day at stables
the squad was called to attention, and the young soldier standing at
the head of A18 was mightily surprised to hear a civilian walking side
by side with the captain of his troop remark, as he passed up the
stable, "Why, there's old Smut!" When the officer and civilian had
passed out he turned to the next man, and asked who the deuce the
bloke was in the brown hat. "Why, that's Captain Baden-Powell," said
the man; and then he added with great pride, "I was his bâtman once."
The young soldier had heard of Baden-Powell before, and was furious
that he had not looked longer at him as he passed. An odd
circumstance, by the way, concerning the ex-bâtman. He was a terrible
fellow in many ways, always on the look-out for a fight, and in his
cups had disabled more than one policeman in the cities where the 13th
sojourned. But he kept in his box a little faded red book of
quotations, filled with serious and religious thoughts, and he was
particularly fond of two of these apothegms: the one, "A prayer is
merely a wish turned Godward"; and the other, "A grave wherever found
preaches a short and pithy sermon to the soul." He would quote them
over and over again in his confidential moments, and, though he might
pick out others as he turned the well-thumbed pages of that tiny book,
it was always to these two that he returned as perfect specimens of
great sayings. And that book, unless I am mistaken, was given to him
by Baden-Powell. "If I had been with him right along," he would say,
regretting some escapade, "I should have been a sergeant by this
time."
Baden-Powell's familiarity with the names of his men's horses reminds
one of his difficulty in swallowing horse-flesh during the hungry days
with the Shangani Patrol: "It is one thing to say, 'I'll trouble you
to pass the horse, please,' but quite another to say, 'Give me another
chunk of D15.'" He is a man who can grow very nearly as fond of his
troop's horses as of his own.
A good description of Baden-Powell is that versatile officer's own
sketch of a man with whom he soldiered on one of his campaigns: "He
has all the qualifications that go to make an officer above the ruck
of them. Endowed with all the dash, pluck, and attractive force that
make a born leader of men, he is also steeped in common sense, is
careful in arrangement of details, and possesses a temperament that
can sing 'Wait till the clouds roll by' in crises where other men are
tearing their hair." The public in the light of recent events will be
quick to recognise B.-P. in the latter part of this portrait; I can
assure them that the rest is equally accurate. As a regimental officer
he exhibits all these good qualities. He can show the men dash and
pluck in every sport they care for, his common sense makes him the
friend of Tommy Atkins as well as his officer, and the affairs of his
regiment are so admirably managed that there is no enervating air of
slackness about the barracks from the first monitory note of
"Reveillé" to the last wailing sound of "Lights Out."
And while Baden-Powell is loved in the barrack-room he is ever the
most popular figure in the Officers' Mess. There is nothing of the
namby-pamby, I mean, in his solicitude for the soldier's welfare,
nothing to make him unpopular with his brother officers, nothing that
makes even the youngest subaltern a little contemptuous. _Tout au
contraire._ The place he holds in the affections of his brother
officers may, perhaps, be seen in a quotation from the letter of an
officer in the 13th Hussars, which I received during the most anxious
days of the siege of Mafeking. After saying that relief ought to have
been sent before, my Hussar says, "Poor dear chap, he must be severely
tried. As I eat my dinner at night I always wish I could hand it over
to him." Could a Briton do more?
Such then is Baden-Powell's character as a regimental officer. Beloved
by the little fashionable world of the Officers' Mess, adored by the
men who eat and sleep and clean sword, carbine, and boots in the one
room, he presents to the gaze of the schoolboy whose whole thoughts
are set upon Sandhurst the beau-ideal of a regimental officer.
To reach that ideal there are five great essentials--keenness,
courage, high-mindedness, self-abnegation, humour. Ability to mix
freely with private soldiers without loss of dignity is, I take it,
the natural gift of a gentleman; and if the officer who devotes
himself to his men is high-minded and courageous, always ready to
ignore self, with the saving virtue of humour, he will earn not only
their respect and admiration, but their loyal and unswerving love.
CHAPTER XIII
GOAL-KEEPER
Baden-Powell was at Henley, preparing to enjoy the festivities of the
1899 Regatta in one of the pleasantest houses on the river, when a
telegram arrived calling him to the War Office. This was on Wednesday,
and the business the state of things in the Transvaal. On Saturday he
was on the sea, sailing away from the coast of England.
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.
On us they wasted all their lead,
On us who stood at bay,
And with our guns (forgive it, Stead!)
Popped quietly away.
They could not make the city burn,
However hard they tried.
Not one of us is dead, but learn
A dog it was that died.
The reaction was extraordinary. The almost unknown Colonel
Baden-Powell instantly became "B.-P." to the general public, and in
the twinkling of an eye his photograph appeared in the shop-windows
beside those of Sir Redvers Buller, Sir George White, and Lord
Methuen. Everybody was cracking jokes about the war, and the Boers
seemed to be already under the heel of the conqueror. When men opened
their newspapers in the railway carriage it was with the remark,
"How's old B.-P. getting along?" The doings of other soldiers in more
important positions lost much of their interest, and the public mind
became riveted on Mafeking. Here was a light-hearted cavalry-officer
locked up in a little frontier town with seven hundred Irregular
cavalry, a few score volunteers, six machine-guns and two 7-pounders;
against whom was pitted the redoubtable Cronje with one 10-pounder,
five 7-pounders, two Krupp 12-pounders, and one Krupp 94-pounder, and
probably an army of something like 6000 wily Boers. And yet the
Goal-Keeper, 870 miles from English Cape Town and only 150 miles from
Boer Pretoria, was as light-hearted and optimistic as a general
leading an overwhelming army against a baffled and disorganised foe.
Englishmen were quick to recognise the virtue of the man who solemnly
sent the death of a dog to be recorded in the archives of the War
Office; quick to appreciate the peril of his position; and I do not
think I am screwing my string too tight when I say that the safety of
Baden-Powell from that moment became a personal matter to thousands of
Englishmen all the world over. Miss Baden-Powell at this time was
travelling in Scotland, and at some out-of-the-way station she and her
boxes detrained. The station-master passing along the platform
noticed the name of Baden-Powell on the trunks, and instantly rushed
towards her, with beaming face and extended hand,--"Gie me the honour,
ma'am," he cried, "o' shakin' your hand." And from this time gifts and
letters poured in ceaselessly upon Mrs. Baden-Powell in London,
letters from all classes of the nation, costly gifts, humble
gifts--all testifying to the giver's love and admiration of her
gallant son in Mafeking. One of these presents took the form of a
large portrait of B.-P. worked in coloured silks, another a little
modest book-marker. And in the streets gutter-merchants were doing a
roaring trade in brooches and badges with B.-P.'s face smiling on the
enamel as contentedly as if immortalised on a La Creevy miniature.
Finally, to complete this apotheosis, Madame Tussaud announced on
flaming placards that Baden-Powell had been added to the number of her
Immortals.
This, then, was the sudden fate of the man who had returned to England
from wandering alone within a stone's throw of the Matabele bivouac
fires unknown and unhonoured by the public. I wonder if Baden-Powell
had a presentiment of what was to be when, in the early days of the
siege, he corrected the proofs of _Aids to Scouting_, and came upon
his own words towards the end of that manual: "Remember always that
you are helping your _side_ to win, and not merely getting glory for
yourself or your regiment--that will come of itself."
The wit of Baden-Powell in some measure obscured from the popular view
the grimness of his task. Like the true Briton that he is, he
considered it part of his duty to make light of his difficulties. But
the holding of Mafeking was stern work. The Boers themselves never
dreamed the defence would be seriously maintained, and in the early
days of the siege they sent in a messenger under a flag of truce
offering terms of surrender. Baden-Powell gave the messenger a
sumptuous lunch, himself the most delightful of hosts, and sent him
back with word to the accommodating Boers that he would be sure and
let them know immediately he was ready to yield the town. And to
Cronje's humanitarian plea that Baden-Powell should surrender in order
to avoid further bloodshed, the Goal-Keeper made answer, one can see
his eyes twinkling, "Certainly, but when will the bloodshed begin?" A
little later he got in with a still more irritating piece of irony,
addressing a letter to the burghers asking them if they seriously
thought that they could take the town by sitting down and looking at
it.
But this was at a time when Baden-Powell, in common with the rest of
us, believed that the triumphant British Army would soon be coming up
to Mafeking, and he himself able to sally out and strike a crushing
blow at the besieging force. Weeks passed and the hope died. The Boers
cut off the water-supply, and, with contrary ideas of logic, thought
that such an action would damp the spirits of Baden-Powell. But that
thoughtful and resourceful commander had seen that all the old wells
were cleaned, and well filled, so that Mafeking was as secure from a
water-famine as it was from the entrance of the Boers. Besides this,
Baden-Powell had constructed bomb-proof shelters everywhere, and a boy
stood ready with bell-rope in hand to ring immediate warning of a
shell's approach. Trenches were dug giving cover and leading from
every portion of the town. So perfect indeed were Baden-Powell's
defences that it was possible to walk entirely round the little town
without being exposed to the Boer fire. Telephones, too, were
established between the headquarter bomb-proofs of outlying posts and
the headquarter bomb-proof where Baden-Powell and Lord Edward Cecil,
D.S.O., laid their heads together and planned the town's defence. And
to keep the enemy at a respectful distance, Baden-Powell continually
sent out little forces to harass them and keep them in a state of
nerves. The Matabele never knew when Impessa was coming, and the Boers
could never lie down to sleep with the assurance that they would not
be awakened by the rattle of British musketry and the dread "Reveillé"
of cold steel. Here is one instance. Knowing that the Boers fear the
bayonet more than rifle bullets, Baden-Powell determined upon a sortie
in which his men should get within striking distance of the large army
closing round the town. One night he sent fifty-three men with orders
to use only the bayonet, and this insignificant force crept silently
to the enemy's trenches in the darkness, and scattered six hundred
Boers from their laager. So close to the town were the assaulted
trenches of the enemy that the officer's sudden and thrilling
"Charge" rang out distinctly on the night to the ears of those
anxiously waiting the result of the sortie in Mafeking. This gallant
attack completely "funked" the Boers, and at two o'clock in the
morning, long after the little force had returned triumphantly to the
town, they began another fusillade, firing furiously at nothing for a
whole hour. Fight after fight ensued. Whenever the enemy occupied a
position likely to inconvenience the town, Baden-Powell took arms
against them, and drove them out. After several experiences of this
kind the Boer lost his temper, and with it all sense of honour. It is
difficult to write without unbridled contempt of their inhuman
bombardment of the women and children's laager in the gallant little
town which neither their valour nor cunning could reduce. Baden-Powell
loves children, and few incidents in the siege of Mafeking could be
more distressing to those who know the stout-hearted Defender than
these cruel bombardments. His sorrow over the killed and wounded
children was of the most poignant character. One of the officers wrote
to his mother during these dark days, saying how the whole garrison
was touched to the heart by seeing their Commander nursing terrified
children in his arms, and soothing their little fears. If anything
could have stirred that just and honest nature to unholy thoughts of
vengeance it would have been the murder of these children; and I doubt
not that he will hit the harder and the more relentlessly when he gets
at close quarters with his enemy, fired by the thought of those
mangled little bodies and the remembrance of their mothers' agony. And
in addition to the murderous shells of the Boers, typhoid and malaria
were at their fell work in the women's laager; the children's
graveyard just outside the laager extended its sad bounds week by
week, and the cheerfulness that marked the beginning of the siege died
in men's hearts.
[Illustration: Goal-Keeper
By permission of the "Daily Graphic."]
The cheerfulness, but not the determination. Baden-Powell wrote home
in December, after some two months of the siege, saying that they were
all a little tired of it, but just as determined as ever never to
submit. And in order to keep up the spirits of the garrison in the
hour when it seemed to many Englishmen that Mafeking was to be another
Khartoum and he a second Gordon, Baden-Powell began to plan all
manner of entertainments for the amusement of the women and children.
The special correspondent of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ in Mafeking, who
sent to his journal some of the most interesting letters received
during the siege, bore witness to Baden-Powell's efforts in this
direction. In one of his letters he said: "The Colonel does all in his
power to keep up the spirits of the people. To-day we have quite a big
programme of events--the distribution of flags in the morning, cricket
afterwards, general field sports, plain and fancy cycle races, a
concert in the afternoon, and in the evening a dance given by the
bachelor officers of the garrison. We have no Crystal Palace or
monster variety hall, but nevertheless we manage to enjoy ourselves on
truce days, and it goes without saying that the institution of sports
and pastimes has done wondrous things in the way of relieving the
tension on the public mind, and keeping up the health of the
population. It may shock the mind of some cranks to hear that we so
spend our Sundays; but if such persons wish to test the worth and the
wisdom of a rational Sabbath, transfer them here, and let them have a
week of shell-fire. They will speedily become converts." During the
Matabele campaign, it may be remarked, Baden-Powell always held divine
service on Sunday, and even to those whose training makes them regard
the playing of innocent games on Sunday an offence, this holiday of
Sunday in Mafeking must surely be regarded as a holy-day, pleasing to
the Father of men. The love of Baden-Powell for children, his intense
eagerness to keep alive the flame of joy in their young hearts, and
the spark of hope still burning in the hearts of their defenders,
could not, we may be very certain, inspire any decision displeasing to
high Heaven.
Baden-Powell's dauntless courage, his brisk unchanging hopefulness,
and his unflinching determination to "stick it out," were the
inspiration of the splendid little garrison. To many of them surrender
would have meant nothing more than release from a diet of horse-flesh
and the irritating confinement of a siege; but no man and no woman in
Mafeking even breathed the suggestion that Baden-Powell should haul
down his flag; and on the hundredth day of the siege Mafeking sent a
telegram of loyal devotion to the Queen, whose anxiety for their
safety was not concealed from the world. A hundred days have long
since passed, and if the request of Lord Roberts that Baden-Powell
should hold out to the middle of May turns out to be history, the
siege will have lasted considerably over two hundred days. And during
these long, long days men have been in the trenches night and day,
children crying to their mothers to be taken away from the pitiless
rain of Boer bullets and the terrifying scream of Boer shells; day by
day fever has crept in to lessen the number of brave men whose faith
in the Old Carthusian never once wavered, and to rob poor mothers of
their little ones. And with all these distressing experiences to wear
him down and sicken his heart, our hero found himself further hampered
by treachery in his own camp.
Treachery it was that frustrated Baden-Powell's great effort to break
the cordon pressing so relentlessly upon little Mafeking, and by that
means open up communication with those marching to his relief. The
battle of Game Tree fort, as it is called, is one of those events
which thrill the heart with pride, and then at the conclusion bring
tears into the eyes with the reflection that so much skill in the
planning, so much valour in the execution, should be defeated by base
treachery.
Baden-Powell's plans for the taking of this fort were perfectly
understood by his officers. The little force entrusted with the work
of carrying Game Tree moved out of the town in the dusk of early
morning, and in a few minutes the roar of artillery announced the
beginning of a desperate fight. The scream of the engine of the
armoured train told the men at the guns to cease firing, meaning that
Captain Vernon was ready to rush the position with the bayonet. The
scene that followed was magnificent. Waving their hats and cheering
like schoolboys after a football match, our men started to run through
the scrub towards the silent fort. And then as they went, a pitiless
fire suddenly poured in upon them, a hail of bullets tore up the
ground at their feet, swept down their gallant ranks, like grass
before the scythe, and the men realised amid that enclosing and
remorseless fire that treachery had forewarned the Boers, that Game
Tree was impregnable. But did they waver or turn back? Not them. They
were many yards from the fort, and their orders were to storm it. On
they rushed, the officers well in front, waving their swords in the
air and shouting cheerfully to their men to follow. Three officers,
Vernon, Sandford, and Paton, seem to have made a race of it. Through
that terrible zone of fire these young Englishmen rushed forward with
all the zeal of men striving to be first to touch the tape. Captain
Vernon fell ten yards from the thundering fort, and Sandford and Paton
were left to fight out that splendid race alone. With a shout from his
parched lips, Paton leaped upon the redoubt, caught with his strong
hand the corner of a sandbag, jerked it out of position, thrust his
revolver through the loophole, and, panting like a man spent, fired
into the enemy's midst till he fell, shot through his gallant heart.
Sandford, too, had run a great race, and had almost tied with Paton on
the post. He flung himself upon the piled wall that could only be
broken by heavy artillery, and fell shot through, with his breast
almost against the muzzles of the enemy's guns. Nor were the
non-commissioned officers and men far behind their valiant leaders;
one intrepid sergeant, who was twice wounded, and at some distance
from the redoubt, continued the race across the bullet-swept scrub and
reached the sandbags almost on the heels of Paton. The men went
forward shouting and cheering, unafraid to look death in the face,
afraid only to turn back with their faces from the sandbags where the
smoke drifted, and from whence the hail of bullets rained. There was
no coward among their ranks, and even when the gallant souls realised
that the position was impregnable, there was not a single man among
them who wavered, or dropped back in the race. From the moment when
the order to charge had been given, the attack was an eagerly
contested race, with Death sitting on the flaming fort with the crown
of glory for their prize.
When an aide-de-camp from the officer commanding the operations
galloped up to Baden-Powell with the woeful intelligence that Captain
Vernon had been repulsed, the Goal-Keeper hesitated, and the
bystanders saw that he was taking counsel with himself as to whether a
second attack should be made upon Game Tree fort. But his decision was
soon reached, and in a quiet voice he said, "Let the ambulance go
out." And that was the way in which Baden-Powell took the defeat of
his great plan for breaking the tightening cordon round Mafeking.
In history are recorded sieges of a more thrilling character than that
of Mafeking, but if you consider the story of this little town's
defence you will find, I believe, that in few other cases have
difficulties of so oppressive a character been borne with greater
fortitude and courage. In a large town a siege is not so wearing to
the nerves as it is in a little village the size of Mafeking; and in
the case of this miniature garrison the troublesomeness has been
doubled by the small number of men to share the burden of days and
nights spent in the trenches, now blistered by the sun's rays, now
drenched to the skin with rain that converted the ditches into small
rivers. It is not our purpose to magnify Baden-Powell's defence, but
it is necessary to caution you against the natural course of following
his example and treating the Boer bombardment as a joke. It was no
joke; and, if it had been, even the best of jokes pall when repeated
through days and weeks and weary months. But the garrison would never
let anybody dream that they were doing heroic things, never send
imploring messages for help to men already occupied with the enemy in
other parts of South Africa. To the question, "How long can you hold
out?" Baden-Powell had only one answer, "As long as the food lasts."
And so we take leave of our friend the Old Carthusian defending his
warm corner. As the last page is turned we see him walking through the
streets of Mafeking, now glancing with hard steely eye to the forts
which throw their coward shells into the women's laager, now turning
to give an order with clenched hands and locked jaws, and now stooping
down to lift a child into his arms and caress away its little fears.
On his mind weighs the safety of that town with its handful of brave
lives, the prestige of England, which suffers if the flag once set
above the roofs of any town, whatever the size, falls before the
assault of the Queen's enemies, and the thought that far away in
distant London the mother who made him what he is, waits on the rack
for his delivery. Be sure that never a thought of adding to his own
reputation enters the mind of Baden-Powell in little Mafeking, that
never does bitterness for tardy release enter his soul, and that all
his labour has but one great all-embracing end--the victory of his
side. "Play the game; play that your side may win. Don't think of
your own glorification or your own risks--your side are backing you
up. Play up and make the best of every chance you get."
FINIS
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_
+----------------------------------------------------+
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| SIR GEORGE WHITE |
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| THE HERO OF LADYSMITH |
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| By THOMAS H.G. COATES |
| _With Illustrations_ |
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| By HAMISH HENDRY |
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+----------------------------------------------------+
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