The Siege of Kimberley. T. Phelan

of the Town Guard went out to the Intermediate Pumping Station, and sought to entice them into battle; but they were not to be drawn. The Beaconsfield Town Guard was afterwards deputed to try its powers of persuasion—to no purpose. The armoured train was finally resorted to as a decoy; but beyond eyeing it from a distance—and if looks could smash, it would have been reduced to small pieces—the Boers made no attempt to catch it. So far from being lured or wheedled by us, they rather conveyed by their wariness that green had no place in their eyes.

      A copy of a Boer proclamation, which had been wafted into Kimberley by a cynical breeze, gave rise to much astonishment and criticism. In substance, it presented the Transvaalers with all territory north of the Vaal river; the Free Staters with the Cape Colony; and the British with—the sea! The Colonel read and appreciated the excellence of the joke, but thought it politic to give people who lacked a sense of humour a little illumination. He, accordingly, issued a counter-proclamation which made the "point" of the other clear: it was not to be taken seriously. The British element, which largely predominated, found scope for their humour in the Boer proclamation; that the enemy should limit his pretensions to portions of a single continent was surprising. Punch subsequently published a cartoon which represented President Steyn artistically painting all territory south of the Equator a pleasing Orange hue. Oom Paul, looking on in dismay, enquires: "Where do I come in?" "Oh," Steyn replies airily, "there is the rest of the British Empire."

      But to return to the proclamations. Colonel Kekewich had yet another to draft; the conduct of the natives compelled it. Many of the aborigines were addicted to drinking more than was good for them of a species of brandy—a fiery concoction, with a "body" in it, called Cape Smoke. They staggered through the streets, rolled their eyes, flourished big sticks, and sang songs of Kafirland in a key that did not make for harmony. So the Colonel reasoned that he might as well write out another proclamation while he was about it, and had pen and ink convenient. He restricted the sale of "smoke," and decreed that all Kafir bars and canteens were to remain open between the hours of ten and four o'clock only. He also provided for the imposition of heavy penalties upon all and sundry who dared to disobey.

      The bar-keepers, it need hardly be said, were angry; it was going rather too far, they thought. Was it the province of a military man to advocate, still less to enforce, temperance? Had not the "black" an "equal right" to quench his thirst? The canteen-men thought so; some of them, indeed, were sure of it, and went so far as to defy "despot sway," by ignoring it. They continued ministering to the needs of the horny-handed sons of toil. But the police—miserable time-servers—would do their duty; they were forced to uphold the Colonel's law, and to requisition the services of the celebrated local "trappers." The rebel Bonifaces were thus duly indicted, arraigned before the Summary Court, and heavily fined or deprived of their licenses.

      The death of a sergeant of the Diamond Fields' Artillery threw a gloom over the city. He was mourned for as one who, indirectly, had sacrificed his life in defence of Kimberley. It was our first casualty; and made us wonder how many more there were to be—or rather, if there were to be any more.

      Friday came, and with it came two English prisoners who had made good their escape from the Boers. Their story was interesting. They carried Martini-Henry rifles, but (as they explained) given a choice in the selection, would have chosen Mausers. Their friends, the enemy, had presented them with the weapons—conditionally; all they had asked in return was that the recipients should join the Republican ranks. The Englishmen scratched their heads, hesitated about striking a bargain, and were promptly commandeered. They determined, however, to get the best of the bargain at last; they escaped; and here they were in our midst, easing their consciences with expressions of their intention to restore the rifles to their rightful owners when the war was over, and as much of the ammunition as possible, on the instalment plan, while it lasted.

      They had heard pitiful tales of the straits to which we had been reduced. Imaginative natives had assured them that there was "no more Kimberley"; the "fall" of Mafeking, forsooth, had staggered us so much that we did not want to fight. We were in our last gasps for a drop of water. Terrible guns were being wheeled to the diamond fields, to scatter it to the four winds of heaven. The diamonds were first to be blown out of the mines, and with them the local "imaginative" shareholders; while the Verkleur was to be unfurled Over the City Hall. All the perishable property was to be confiscated, and consumed as a sort of foretaste of what was due to the proud invaders' valour. Such was the romance dinned into the ears of our visitors. Happily, they made allowances for Bantu palsy, and did not hesitate to ignore it.

      Saturday proved altogether uneventful, and prolific in nothing but outrageous lies. One item of news, however, was but too true: the good folk of Windsorton had surrendered to the Boers. Intelligence of a more agreeable nature followed soon after. Cronje's repulse at Mafeking, and the British victory at Glencoe, made us hopeful at the end of a week, the beginning of which had looked so ominous; and nearly all things were to our satisfaction on Saturday night when the third part of our "time" had formally expired.

Chapter II

       Table of Contents

Week ending 28th October, 1899

       Table of Contents

      After a hard and anxious week, Sunday was indeed a day of rest. We enjoyed it because we felt instinctively that an enemy who sincerely believed that Providence was necessarily on his side, would leave us unmolested on the Sabbath. We were therefore justified in feeling a sense of immunity from stray shells and bullets. We enjoyed the day, too, because it gave us time and opportunity to look about us; to make a general inspection; and to pronounce the arrangements for the city's defence satisfactory. The volunteer forces had assumed gratifying proportions, and their eyes were all "right." Walls and buildings on the outskirts of the town, which might serve as a cover for the invader—in the improbable event of his drawing so near—or that might stand within the zone of our gun-fire, had been ruthlessly levelled to the ground. A high barbed wire fence surrounded the various camps, and the vigilant piquet had orders to shoot down anybody who attempted to cross it. Every imaginable precaution had been taken to hold the fort at all costs. The rumour-monger had formally made his debut, and was busy drawing upon the reservoirs of his excellent imagination, and disseminating information gathered from a mystic source known only to himself. He knew the exact day and hour of the entrance into Kimberley of the British troops; he could detail their plans to the letter, and a lot more than anybody else (including the British troops) concerning them. The rumour-monger became a character, a siege character, an adventitious celebrity, destined to receive attention from a facetious press and the tongues of men. So the day passed, with plenty to encourage, plenty to talk and laugh about, plenty to predict about, plenty to see and hear, and as yet, thank goodness, plenty to eat and drink.

      Early on Monday morning, a mounted detachment, accompanied by the armoured train and two hundred men of the Lancashire Regiment, went forth to reconnoitre. The procession was an imposing one; at least the Boers encamped at Scholtz's Nek appeared to think so; they made no attempt to interfere with it, and thus debarred the procession from interfering with them.

      But meanwhile domestic concerns were getting serious, and absorbing the minds of the people. The grocers of Kimberley are a respectable and, in the aggregate, a public-spirited body of citizens; they are men of substance; most honourable; most humane, too; and, as events were to show, most human. With fine foresight they detected in the conflagration of patriotism which consumed the consumer, a chance of bettering themselves. Having a constitutional right to do it, they took this tide in their affairs at what they (rather hastily) conceived to be its flood. Actuated by motives of the new ("enlightened") self-interest, they had proceeded to run up the prices of their goods by nice and easy gradations of from ten to twenty, thence to fifty, and were well on their way to a hundred, per cent., when a thunderbolt, an unexpected projectile, smashed the ring. It was a pity, in a way, for the process of welding the ring, so to speak, had been carried out with admirable skill. Rich folk, whose balances