The Story of Baden-Powell / 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps'

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.