The Boers, a thousand or so in number, had descended upon the railway, and an action followed in which the train appears to have had better luck than has usually attended these ill-fated contrivances.

The Boer commando was driven back and a number were killed.

It was probably news of this affair, and not anything which had occurred at Mafeking, which caused those rumours of gloom at Pretoria very shortly after the outbreak of hostilities.

An agency telegraphed that women were weeping in the streets of the Boer capital.
We had not then realised how soon and how often we should see the same sight in Pall Mall.
The adventurous armoured train pressed on as far as Lobatsi, where it found the bridges destroyed; so it returned to its original position, having another brush with the Boer commandos, and again, in some marvellous way, escaping its obvious fate.

From then until the new year the line was kept open by an admirable system of patrolling to within a hundred miles or so of Mafeking.