For those inside the fort the tension was extreme. Colonel Hore, with Captain Singleton, Veterinary Lieutenant Dunlop Smith, fifteen non-commissioned officers and men of the Protectorate Regiment, Captain Williams and three men of the South Africa Police, and some native servants, were packed in by a crowd of the enemy, while a babel of tongues--German, French, Italian, Dutch--made a clamour that obfuscated the senses. Many of the Boers were busy looting, breaking open anything that came to hand in the officers' quarters, notwithstanding the remonstrances of their allies, the foreigners. Trooper Hayes, a deserter from the Protectorate Regiment, who was well acquainted with the fortifications, and had led Eloff into the town, swaggered about in the presence of the prisoners adorned with Colonel Hore's sword, and his watch and chain. His desire to get rid of as many of the British as possible was shown by his suggestion that they should stand on the verandah as a mark for their own men. Through the long hours the prisoners were cabined and confined in a very limited space, listening to the progress of the battle which still raged outside, and hearing the hail of bullets, hostile and friendly, that spluttered and splintered around the fort. It was a dreadful day of suspense and agony. Food was handed in, but water, owing to the tanks having been perforated by bullets, was scarce, and the sufferings of the wounded, both Britons and Boers, were horrible. Bravely Mr. Dunlop Smith and his assistants responded to the call of Eloff to assist the wounded Boers, and nobly they risked their lives over and over again, running the gantlet of the British fire in the service of their fellow-creatures. Meanwhile Baden-Powell's braves had surrounded the fort, and managed to make a vigorous stand against further encroachment of the enemy, while skirmishing of a more or less desperate kind was taking place in the direction of the stadt, round the kraal, and a kopje in its vicinity. [Illustration: GENERAL BADEN-POWELL, LORD EDWARD CECIL, AND OTHER OFFICERS, AT THE ENTRANCE TO THEIR "DUG-OUT." (Photo by D. Taylor, Mafeking.)]