The engine-driver unhitched them and made good his escape.
The Boers, thinking the trucks full of soldiers, immediately commenced bombarding them, till they exploded with terrific force.

This chance affair gave the Boers the idea that Mafeking was full of dynamite, and later, when I was in the laager, they told me one of the reasons why they had never pressed an attack home was that they knew the whole town was mined.

Mr.Keeley also told us of a tragedy that had greatly disturbed the little circle of defenders.

The very evening that the victims of the Canon Kopje fight were laid to rest, Lieutenant Murchison,[29] of the Protectorate Regiment, had, in consequence of a dispute, shot dead with his revolver at Dixon's Hotel the war-correspondent of the London _Daily Chronicle_, a Mr.Parslow.

I afterwards learnt that the court-martial which sat on the former had fourteen sessions in consequence of its only being able to deliberate for half an hour at a time in the evening, when the firing was practically over.