Early in the morning of May 12 a heavy fire was opened upon the town from the east, but was soon discontinued; and then an alarm came from the S.W. It was Eloff, who, with 300 burghers, had wriggled up the river bed through the outposts and had set fire to the native huts: a signal for the reinforcements which Snyman had promised in writing. It also warned the garrison. The natives were too much terrified to offer resistance, and Eloff, leaving the greater part of his force to hold the location, advanced upon the town. The police building in the open was surrounded and the detachment holding it taken prisoners. A pause was now made to allow the promised reinforcements to come up. Eloff's gallant thrust gave the garrison the opportunity for which it had long been hoping. The troops of the western section of the defence closed in and were manoeuvred by Baden-Powell through the telephone. The door by which Eloff came in was shut, not only to a retreat but also to the reinforcements which timidly knocked at it; the burghers holding the location were overpowered, and Eloff's party was penned up in the police building with its prisoners, whose condition was suddenly dramatically reversed. Eloff, seeing that Snyman had failed him, surrendered to the men he had captured a few hours before, within the walls of the prison in which he had confined them. The ordeal of Mafeking soon came to an end. On May 15 it was reported that the relief column under Mahon, who on that day joined Plumer at Massibi on the Molopo twenty miles from Mafeking, was approaching. The combined forces, though vigorously opposed by Delarey, whom L. Botha had sent when the news of the advance reached him, entered the town on May 17 and ended a siege of 213 days. Mafeking, the last and most instructive of the sieges, proved that there was hardly any disparity of numbers or preponderance of available military resources that could not be neutralized by good leadership opposed to bad. Baden-Powell had not only detained a considerable Boer force on the edge of the storm, but with a body of irregular troops had beaten the men of Magersfontein, Colenso, and Spion Kop. The relief of Mafeking, however, did not vitally affect the general situation. The capture of the town during Lord Robert's advance would no doubt have caused annoyance and trouble, but if necessary it could have been retaken without much difficulty. Nor would its fall have greatly benefited the enemy, who probably would have been tempted by the success to hold an unsound position and detain in it commandos urgently required elsewhere.