An impish humour broke out in him, and the mischievous schoolboy alternated with the warrior and the administrator.
He met the Boer commandos with chaff and jokes which were as disconcerting as his wire entanglements and his rifle-pits.

The amazing variety of his personal accomplishments was one of his most striking characteristics.

From drawing caricatures with both hands simultaneously, or skirt dancing to leading a forlorn hope, nothing came amiss to him; and he had that magnetic quality by which the leader imparts something of his virtues to his men.

Such was the man who held Mafeking for the Queen.
In a very early stage, before the formal declaration of war, the enemy had massed several commandos upon the western border, the men being drawn from Zeerust, Rustenburg, and Lichtenburg.

Baden-Powell, with the aid of an excellent group of special officers, who included Colonel Gould Adams, Lord Edward Cecil, the soldier son of England's Premier, and Colonel Hore, had done all that was possible to put the place into a state of defence.