of niggers when he felt a sharp blow on his thigh as though Thor had given him a playful tap with his big hammer.  He was bowled over, and thinking that he must have charged into the stump of a tree turned round to have a look at it; but there was no tree.  Then he realised that he had only been struck with a lead-covered stone fired from a big-bore gun, and so hopped off like a man who has been kicked on the shins in a football match, to continue the game.  No blood was drawn by this bullet, but our hero’s thigh was black and blue for many days afterwards.

This was the kind of life Baden-Powell lived at this time as Chief of the Staff.  An officer who knows him very well tells me that it is impossible to wear him out; “Baden-Powell,” he says, “is tireless.”  He is keen to be given the most risky and the most solitary work; he can go for days without food and never complains of broken nights.  He has an enthusiasm for hard work, and when that work demands cunning of the brain as well as quickness of the hand, as in scouting, B.-P. is as much lost in the labour as a wolf in search of food for its young.  Never throughout the Matabele campaign was Sir Frederick Carrington better served than when the young Englishman slunk away into the darkness, and wandered alone and unprotected into the rocky mountains held by the murderous Matabele.  And never were those savages more disquieted than when news was brought to them in the morning that the Wolf had been in the mountains during the night.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] After the arm was amputated at the shoulder Mr. Gifford used to feel the pain as if it were in his hand.

[2] Let it not be thought that B.-P. had neglected to bring stretchers.  They were brought, but the friendlies who carried them, like the hen that laid the rotten egg, were nervous, and had dropped them in the river, they themselves taking up positions of safety till the fighting was over.

CHAPTER XI

IN RAGS AND TATTERS

Baden-Powell now had what one might term a roving commission.  He was sent by Colonel Plumer in charge of a patrol to wander over the vast country covered by the rebellion and see what he could of the enemy, and when found make a note of.  It was exactly the work B.-P. liked above all others.  There was romance in the dangers of it, and intellectual joy in its difficulties.  There was freedom in it, and the glorious feeling that every step he took he was carrying his life in his hand.  And not only was life menaced by the bullets and assegais of Matabele lurking in the tall yellow grass, but there was considerable danger, though of a more humorous order, even in the taking of a bath, as B.-P. discovered in going down to a pool and spotting just in time a leering crocodile in the reeds.  Lions, too, were stumbled upon in clumps, just as in peaceful