A SOFT-WATER BATH
MAFEKING, _December 6th, 1899_.
As compensation to the inhabitants of beleaguered Mafeking for the
many dull days we have had lately, yesterday was replete with
incidents and crowded with a constant succession of events of more
than ordinary interest. We have had our days of activity, when the
boom of artillery and the rattle of musketry have impressed into a few
brief hours the full measure of martial excitement, we have endured
our days of lonesome and tiring idleness when the hot winds of the
Kalahari Desert have swept eddies of whirring, biting sand across the
trenches, when the pitiless sun has spent its energies upon the
heat-stricken garrison. But yesterday we experienced the effect of a
combination between that Providence which the Boers claim as their
special and benign guardian and the elements themselves. It was a
reconnaissance in force by nature. A union of extreme subtlety and one
against which it was impossible to contend. It came, it swept
everything before it, and it left us drenched with rain, surrounded by
small lakes of mud, streams of water, and without dry garments to our
names. When the mischief was complete the deluge ceased. The general
physiognomy of the scene can be described at once. When dawn broke in
the morning across the sky there glowered the haze of heat, which in
Africa, as elsewhere, denotes a more than usually tropical day. To
those, however, who knew the signs of the sky, the fleeting masses of
black cloud, low down upon the horizon, foretold a day of evil
tempest. Slowly the rising wind drove them together until, shortly
before noon, clouds were bunched high up across the sky and over the
Boer laager. From where we were in the town it was quite apparent that
the temporary centre of the storm was almost above the emplacements of
the enemy's artillery. Before the breeze had increased the Boers had
thrown a few shells into the town, but presently, as the force of the
gale struck us, it was evident that the rain-filled clouds were
discharging their contents upon the extreme limits of the veldt. For
an hour or two the Boers received the full effect of the storm, and
but few drops of rain fell into the town, as the wind swept before its
path the _debris_ of the veldt, portions of broken trees, of scrub,
and bushes. The deluge quickly left the south-east, concentrating a
little beyond and over the town, and so soon as it began to trouble us
it seemed to have deserted the Boers. Possibly the wind carried with
it a rainspout, since the effect of the streaming water was as though
from somewhere in the sky buckets were being emptied on to the place
beneath. The veldt was quickly flooded, the dried-up spruits were soon
charged with foaming cataracts, Mafeking itself lay under water, the
earthworks around the town were swept away, trenches and bomb-proof
shelters were choked with eddying streams, everywhere was
ruin--destruction and complete chaos reigned until the storm had spent
itself. Down the acclivity upon which Cannon Kopje is placed there
rolled the surging tide, carrying in its might the stores of the fort,
the blankets of the men, the bodies of struggling animals, who, if
they succeeded in coping with the force of the stream, were dashed to
pieces upon the rocky facing of the hill. The women's laager, which
has hitherto rested in snug seclusion at the base of the hills forming
the western outposts, was, in a few minutes, flooded with the
off-pourings from the sluits of the veldt, while the trenches were
quickly submerged or silted with the refuse of the torrent. A cart
which went to the assistance of the inmates of the laager found itself
water-bound through the tremendous force of the tortuous cataracts. In
the town, bomb-proof cellars were vacated, and the people, discarding
their shoes and stockings, made their way from point to point by
paddling and fording the footpaths across the streets. To the north of
the town, below the exterior outposts, the men stripped to the skin,
allowing the full strength of the streaming downpour to beat upon
them. The Market Square was a sheet of running water, rising with such
rapidity that it seemed that the houses bordering the square would be
inundated.
From Market Square, upon two sides, the roads make something of a
descent, and down these slight inclines volumes of water, yards in
width and some feet in depth precipitated themselves to the river-bed.
As the storm increased it was seen that it would be impossible to
retain any longer our advanced positions in the river-bed. The first
to go was the trench occupied by Corporal Currie and his native
sharpshooters. As the water swept from bank to bank through this post,
which we, but a few days before, had won so gallantly from the enemy,
the men clambered up the banks to the veldt and made their way as best
they could to the base. With the flooding of this position, so rapidly
did the river rise, that those occupied by Captain Fitzclarence and
his squadron were equally untenable. As they were abandoned the stream
rushed by them with the roar of a river in flood, while the crash of
boulder upon boulder turned masses of rock into shattered fragments.
Within an hour the river had risen eight feet, and so unexpected was
the flood that for the time being it was not possible to rescue from
the rising stream the 7-pounder gun, which was in position some way
down the river. As the rain continued the wind died down, until in the
height of this storm it scarcely possessed the strength to dissipate
the white mists which were rising from the veldt. They hung low upon
the ground, prevented from rising by the strength of the downpour, and
making it difficult to see the progress of events in the enemy's
lines. From time to time above the hissing of the rain and the roar of
the rivers we heard the angry cough of the Nordenfeldt, the shrieks of
their quick-firing guns, and the heavy and more stately boom of "Big
Ben." Ofttimes there was the echo of the Mauser, the grating rustle of
the Martini, and it soon became evident that the enemy did not propose
to let us endure the misery of the storm altogether undisturbed. From
these omens, as some slight diminution in the downpour allowed the
mists to rise from the ground, we expected to hear the sound of
exploding volleys coming through the fog, and to find that the fight
had become suddenly desperate; but the Boers lacked the individual
courage, and the charge which they might have made under cover of the
tangle of the brushwood and the bewilderment of the fog never took
place. They were satisfied with cannonading our position; and across
the ground, heavy with rain, upon which the mist laid dense, the red
flashes of the gun and the sparkle of the rifles had a weird effect as
they flared and vanished through the eddying masses of vapour and
fantastic columns of smoke. The tumbling volumes of mist and the
grey-black masses of smoke mingled and curled in distorted pillars,
forming at a moment when the sun shone briefly, as the tears of heaven
dried off into space, an evanescent and iridescent canopy of colour.
The respite was momentary, and as the sun withdrew, the groups of men
that had been seen about the Boer lines were quickly obscured in
clouds of grosser vapour. Their fire, however, continued, while about
them tossed the thick white fog, as above us occasionally rolled the
thunder of their guns. The area of the storm included the most
advanced trenches of the Boers, and as the wind shifted the gloomy
masses of vapour we saw through the whirling mist and smoke-charged
air, the Boers, rain-soaked as ourselves, standing disconsolately upon
their muddy parapets. They did not seem to understand what they should
do. They could hear their own guns firing on our positions, happily
beyond the later centre of the storm, but these men themselves stood
still, shaking the water from their limbs, attempting to dry their
weapons. At night, with the darkness to cover our misfortunes, the
town was busily constructing fresh earthworks, draining those shelters
from which any further use could be obtained, and making such amends
as were possible for an occurrence, almost unprecedented in the annals
of war.