When he returned he was chuckling to himself.

'General Cronje wants to assault Mafeking,' he said.

'He has wired that he can take the town in a hand-to-hand fight, but the old President won't listen to it.

He says the place is not worth the lives of fifty burghers, and has just issued an order that Cronje is to continue the siege and simply see to it that Colonel Baden-Powell and his troops do not escape.

The Council was divided; some thought that Cronje should be permitted to storm the place.