THE SIGN.
Crash! crash! A long, detonating roar, then crash! again. The
rock-circle is a perfect ring of flame, sheeting forth in red jets
athwart the hanging sulphurous smoke. Death-yells are mingling with the
fearful war-shout. Shields are flung high in the air, and dark bodies,
leaping, fall forward upon their faces, to be trampled into lifelessness
as their own comrades tread them down, not pausing, rushing over them as
they lie.
"No, no! no quicker," reproves Hazon, who is directing here, where the
assailant's force is the strongest, namely, the main body, the _isifuba_
or breast of the _impi_. "Fire steadily and low, as before, but no
quicker."
His followers growl a ready assent. They are unmitigated ruffians, but
terrible and determined fighters. The fanatical fatalism of the
Mohammedan creed renders them utterly impervious to panic. They keep up
a steady, quick-loading fire into the charging Ba-gcatya, and, aiming
low, every shot tells, committing fearful havoc among the serried,
onrushing masses. Yet those terrible warriors are dauntless. Whole lines
go down; still, others surge over them, and now the charge is but two
hundred yards from the line of rocks.
The fore ranks hesitate, then come to a halt, crumpling back upon those
behind them. The slavers, with a shrill, ringing yell, seeing their
opportunity, pour a frightfully raking volley into the momentarily
confused mass. Shields are clashed together, spears wildly waving. For
the moment it seems as though the Ba-gcatya were fighting with each
other, striving to hew their way through their own ranks in their
endeavours to escape beyond the reach of that awful and destructive
fire.
"Give it to them again!" growls Hazon, a lurid gleam in his deep-set,
piercing eyes. "But, aim low--aim low!"
Again not a shot is thrown away. That side of the savage host falls back
hurriedly, leaving the ground bestrewn with bodies, dead, dying,
crushed. A perfect storm of exultant cheers greets this move.
But if a temporary retreat, it is no rout. In obedience to a
rapidly-uttered, whistling signal, fully one-half of the main body
swings round and hurls itself with incredible force and fury upon
another point of the rock-circle, seemingly the weakest point, for here
the rocks are low and apart, and have to be supplemented with bags and
bales.
Laurence Stanninghame is in command here. And now his dark face flushes
with the glow of a mad excitement, a perfectly transforming
exhilaration. He would thunder his commands aloud, but that a deadly
coolness is as indispensable almost as accuracy of aim. His orders are
the same as Hazon's and uttered as calmly--but for a suppressed
tremor--and as audibly.
The very earth seems to rock and reel beneath the detonating roll of the
volleys, the thunderous rumble of charging feet. The dark, glaring
faces of warring demons, the flinging aloft of shields, the groaning and
yells, the redness of the sheeting flames, all this renders him mad--mad
with the revel of conflict, with the herculean determination which is
sublime above death. Here again whole lines of the enemy are down. Here
again those in front would draw back if they could, but the immense
weight behind hurls them on. It is the work of but very few moments.
And now the whole of the Ba-gcatya host is circling around the slaver's
position, every now and again making a furious rush upon what seems a
weak point of the defences. But the defenders have a way of massing upon
each point thus attacked, and that with a celerity which is truly
marvellous, and the result is the same. Yet with each repulse the
terrible ranks leap forward immediately, and every such charge brings
them nearer than the last. Moreover, as each of their fighting leaders
is picked off, another springs forward with unparalleled intrepidity to
take his place. The while the barking roar of their terrific slogan
rends the air in its most demoniacal clamour.
Now an idea takes hold on the minds of these ferocious legionaries, and
it is passed like lightning round the ranks. Those in the forefront haul
up the bodies of the slain, and, holding them to them, stagger forward,
thinking to make a buckler of the dead for the living. But the terrible
rifles of the slavers drive their unerring missiles at that short range
through dead and living alike, and corpse is heaped upon corpse in
ghastly intertwining.
In the thickest of the tumult Hazon is here, there,
everywhere--directing, encouraging, restraining. But for the demon-glow
in the black eyes staring from the pale, set face, the man might have
been made of marble, so little trace of emotion of any kind does he
display. Laurence, too, is wary and self-contained, though getting in
here and there a telling shot. Holmes, on the other hand, is firing away
as fast as he can load. So far not a man has been injured. The
assailants are not quite within spear-throwing distance yet.
"Ammunition hold out? Oh, yes, we have plenty of that," is Hazon's reply
to a rapid, low-toned query on the part of Laurence. "But it's time they
turned tail. Isandhlwana was nothing to this."
But now, with a deafening, vibrating roar the Ba-gcatya, massing
suddenly, hurl fully one-half of their force upon the point directed by
Lutali. They surge up the slope in one dense charge of lightning
swiftness. Bullets are hailed upon them. They waver not. The hands of
the defenders are skinned and blistered by contact with the breeches of
their own rifles, so hot have these become through quick firing, and
still the firing is not quick enough. Stumbling, leaping, flying over
the defences they come--a great cloud of dark, grim faces, and bared
teeth, and protruding eyeballs. They spring upon the defences, then over
them. The whole might of the redoubtable foe is pouring into the natural
fortress.
[Illustration: STUMBLING, LEAPING, FLYING OVER THE DEFENCES THEY COME.]
Now ensues a scene the like of which might be paralleled, but hardly
surpassed, by some lurid drama of hell. In jarring shock they meet,
those within and those, till now, without--the savage legionaries of
"The Spider," and the no less savage and equally determined
slave-hunters. The Wangoni, seeing their chance, have sprung forward to
meet and roll back the assailants. But they themselves are beaten down
by the broad shields, ripped with the terrible stabbing spears of the
ferocious Ba-gcatya, now maddened to assuage their blood-thirst, and
whose crushing might, now pouring over in countless numbers, this
handful shall never hope to resist. The chief, Mashumbwe, is speared and
ripped. The struggle is fierce and hand-to-hand, but short. The Wangoni,
now a sorry remnant, are rolled back upon their allies.
Of these not a man but knows that the day is lost, that flight is
impossible; that if the other half of the Ba-gcatya host has not swarmed
over to take them on the rear, it is only because it is waiting to
receive on its spear points all who flee. But there is no thought of
flight. With all their indifference to human suffering, with all their
brutality, their savagery, the slavers are as brave as any. They are
indeed men picked for their desperate courage, and now, standing back to
back, they begin to render the victory of the Ba-gcatya a dearly bought
one indeed.
The war-shout no longer rends the air. There is a grim, fell silence in
this hand-to-hand conflict, broken only by the snake-like hiss of the
Ba-gcatya as an enemy goes down, by the slap and shock of shield meeting
clubbed gun or stabbing knife, by the gasps of the combatants. The cloud
of powder smoke hanging overhead partially veils the sun, which glowers,
a blood-red ball, through this gloomy shroud.
The whole space within the rock-circle is a very charnel-pit of
corpses, among which the combatants stagger--victorious Ba-gcatya and
vanquished slave-hunters alike--stagger and slip on a foothold of oozy
gore; stab, and strike, and fall in their turn.
In the rush and the _melee_ Laurence Stanninghame has become separated
even farther from his comrades,--his white comrades, that is,--nor can
he by any effort hope to rejoin them. Several Arabs are around him, his
own followers, swarthy sons of the Prophet, their keen eyes flashing
hate and defiance upon the foe, their long ataghans sweeping a circle of
light around them. In their forefront is Lutali--Lutali, whirling a
great scimitar, hewing down more than one of the too venturesome
Ba-gcatya, and that in spite of the broad bull-hide shield deftly
wielded--Lutali, uttering a semi-religious war-cry, his erect form and
keen, haughty face the very personification of absolute and dauntless
valour. And he himself, wedged in by those around, can still get in now
and again a telling shot from his revolver, and with every such shot one
more warrior of "The Spider" has uttered his last battle cry.
No, there is no hope. Swift as lightning, a mighty brain-wave surges
through Laurence's mind, and in it he sees the whole of his past life.
Yet not even this dismays him--rather does it engender a sort of
half-bitter exultation. Life for him has been such a mistake, and that
not through any fault of his own. It held no especial charm for him. All
its sweetness has been concentrated within one short idyllic period; but
even that could not have lasted--even to it would have come
disillusionment. Lilith would never learn his fate. It, and that of
those with him, would vanish, as others had done, into the mysteries of
this great mysterious continent. All this and more--so lightning-like is
the power of thought--passes through Laurence Stanninghame's brain at
this dread and awful moment.
A casting spear strikes him on the left shoulder, penetrating the flesh.
Infuriated by the sharp, sickening pang, he discharges his revolver at
the supposed thrower, but his aim is uncertain. Again he draws trigger.
The hammer falls with a harmless click; the chambers are empty. And now,
hard pressed by the yelling Ba-gcatya, those of his followers yet
between him and the enemy stagger back, fighting furiously, while the
life-stream wells from many a gashed and gaping wound. No longer can he
see either Hazon or Holmes, for the forest of waving, reeking spear
blades. Then one of his own followers, a hulking Swahili, mortally
wounded, reels and falls, and, doing so, bears back Laurence beneath his
ponderous weight. The rock-rampart is immediately behind him, and is low
here. It catches the back of his knees, and now, having lost all control
over his balance, grasping at empty air in wild effort to recover
himself, Laurence pitches heavily backward over the rocks, and lies half
stunned upon the plain without.
Those of the Ba-gcatya host in waiting on that side surge tumultuously
forward, uttering yells of savage delight. This is the first of the
doomed slavers who has come over; and he a white man, and of course a
leader. Each warrior is eager to bury his spear-head in this man's
body, and they crowd around him, every right hand raised aloft for the
downward stroke.
But the fatal stroke remains undealt. Broad blades quiver aloft in a
ring of steel. Each grim, bloodthirsty countenance is set and staring,
stony in its indescribable expression of mingled marvel and awe, and
eyeballs seem to start from their sockets as their owners stand gazing
down upon this prostrate white man. Then from each broad chest a gasp
bursts forth:
"_Au!_ The Sign! THE SIGN OF THE SPIDER!"