This is what they saw.
Over the brow of the high ridge, about a mile in their rear, a dark mass
was advancing. It was like a disturbed ants' nest--on they came, those
dark forms, swarming over the hill--and the sun glinted on assegai
blades and gun-barrels as the savage host poured down the steep slope,
glancing from bush to bush, rapidly and in silence.
"I'm afraid we shall have to give up the cattle, lads, and fight our way
out," said Shelton, as he took in the full strength of the advancing
Kafirs. "Those chaps mean business, and there are too many of them and
too few of us."
"We'll make it hot for 'em, all the same," said Carhayes, with a scowl.
"I have just put two more nicks on my gun-stock--not sure I oughtn't to
have had four or five, but am only certain of two--Hallo! That's near."
It was. A bullet had swept his hat off, whirling it away a dozen yards.
At the same time puffs of smoke began to issue from the hillside, and
the twigs of the bushes beyond were sadly cut about as the enemy's
missiles hummed overhead--but always overhead--pretty thickly. At
first, the said enemy was rather chary of showing himself, although they
could see groups of red figures flitting from bush to bush, and the
whigge of bullets and potlegs became more and more unpleasantly near,
while from the slope above jets of smoke and flame kept bursting forth
at all points.
The plan of the whites was to make a running fight of it. While
one-half of the patrol drove on the cattle, the other half was to fight
on foot, covering their comrades' retreat, but always keeping near
enough to close up, if necessary.
"Now, boys--let 'em have it!" cried Shelton, as a strong body of the
enemy made a sudden rush upon their left flank to draw their attention,
while another party, with a chorus of shouts and deafening whistles, and
waving their assegais and karosses, darted in between the cattle and
their captors, with the object of separating and driving off the former.
A volley was discharged--with deadly effect, as testified by the number
who fell, wounded, maimed, or stone dead. The rest rushed on, gliding
in among the fleeing cattle--whistling and yelling in a frenzy of
excitement.
"Keep cool, boys, and fire low," cried Carhayes--who was in command of
the dismounted party--as a crowd of Kafirs suddenly started up on their
rear, and, with assegais uplifted, threatened a determined charge.
"Now!"
Again there was a roar, as the whole fire was poured into the advancing
mass. Even the horses, steady, trained steeds as they were, began to
show restiveness, terrified by the continuous crash of firing and the
fierce yells of the savages. Then, without pausing to reload, every man
discharged his revolver into the very thick of the leaping,
ochre-smeared warriors. It was too much. The latter wavered, then
dropped into cover.
But the respite was only a temporary one. Changing his tactics, the
fierce foe no longer attempted an open _coup de main_, but taking
advantage of the bush he pressed the handful of whites who formed the
rear guard so hotly as to force them to close up on their comrades, in
order to avoid being entirely surrounded and cut off from the latter.
But however bad had been their marksmanship earlier in the day, while
excited and practising at the two fleeing Kafirs at long range, our
frontiersmen were now in a different vein. There was nothing wild about
their shooting now. Steady of eye, and cool of brain, they were keenly
alive to every opportunity. Directly a Kafir showed his head he was
morally certain to receive a ball through it, or so uncomfortably close
as to make him feel as if he had escaped by a miracle, and think twice
about exposing himself a second time.
Meanwhile the cattle were being driven off by the enemy, and indeed
matters had become so serious as to render this a mere secondary
consideration. From the bush on three sides a continuous fire was kept
up, and had the Kafirs been even moderately decent shots not a man of
that patrol would have lived to tell the tale; but partly through fear
of exposing themselves, partly through fear of their own fire-arms, to
the use of which they were completely unaccustomed, the savages made
such wild shooting that their missiles flew high overhead. Now and
then, however, a shot would take effect. One man received a bullet in
the shoulder, another had his bridle hand shattered. Several of the
horses were badly wounded, but, as yet, there were no fatalities. The
enemy, confident in the strength of his overwhelming numbers, waxed
bolder--crowding in closer and closer. Every bush was alive with Kafir
warriors, who kept starting up when and where least expected in a manner
that would have been highly disconcerting to any but cool and determined
men.
But this is just what these were. All hope of saving the spoil had been
abandoned. The frontiersmen, dismounted now, were fighting the savages
in their own way, from bush to bush.
"This is getting rather too hot," muttered Shelton, with an ominous
shake of the head. "We shall be hemmed in directly. Our best chance
would be for someone to break through and ride to the camp for help."
Yet he hesitated to despatch anyone upon so dangerous a service.
Just then several assegais came whizzing in among them. Two horses were
transfixed, and Hoste received a slight wound in the leg.
"Damn!" he cried furiously, stamping with pain, while a roar of laughter
went up from his fellows, "Let me catch a squint at John Kafir's sooty
mug! Ah!"
His piece flew to his shoulder--then it cracked. He had just glimpsed a
woolly head, decked with a strip of jackal's skin, peering from behind a
bush not twenty yards away, and whose owner, doubtless, attracted by the
laughter of those devil-may-care whites, had put it forward to see what
the fun was about. A kicking, struggling sound, mingled with stifled
groans, seemed to show that the shot had been effective.
"Downed him! Hooray!" yelled Hoste, still squirming under the smart of
the assegai prick in his calf. "Charge of _loepers_ that time--must
have knocked daylight through him!"
Taking advantage of this diversion, a tall, gaunt Kafir, rising
noiselessly amid a mass of tangled creepers, was deliberately aiming at
somebody. So silent had been his movements, so occupied were the other
whites, that he was entirely unperceived. His eye went down to the
breech. He seemed to require a long and careful aim.
But just then he was perceived by one, and instinctively Eustace brought
his piece to bear. But he did not fire. For like a flash he noted that
the savage was aiming _full at Carhayes' back_.
The latter, sublimely unconscious of his deadly peril, was keenly alert
on the look out for an enemy in the other direction. Eustace felt his
heart going like a hammer, and he turned white and cold. There in the
wild bush, surrounded by ruthless enemies, the sweet face of Eanswyth
passed before him, amid the smoke of powder and the crash of volleys.
She was his now--his at last. The life which had stood between them now
stood no more.
With a frightful fascination, he crouched motionless. Carhayes was
still unconscious of his imminent peril--his broad back turned full to
the deadly tube of the savage. The distance was barely fifteen yards.
The latter could not miss.
It all passed like lightning--the awful, the scathing temptation. He
could not do it. And with the thought, his finger pressed ever so
lightly on the trigger, and the Kafir crashed heavily backward, shot
through the brain--while the ball from his gun, which, with a supreme
effort he had discharged in his death throes, hummed perilously near his
intended victim's head.
"Hallo, Milne! You got in that shot just right," cried one of the men,
who had turned in time to take in the situation--not the whole of it,
luckily.
Eustace said nothing. His better nature had triumphed. Still, as he
slipped a fresh cartridge into his smoking piece, there was a feeling of
desolation upon him, as though the intoxicating sense of possessing the
whole world had been within his grasp, and as suddenly reft from it
again. The extremely critical position in which he--in which the whole
party--stood, passed unheeded. "Fool!" whispered the tempting, gibing
fiend. "You had your opportunity and you threw it away. You will never
have it again. She is lost to you forever now. Never can you hope to
possess her!"
And now the firing opened from an unexpected quarter--and behold, the
bushy slope in front was alive with Kafir warriors. The patrol was
entirely surrounded, and now the savages began to shout exultantly to
each other.
"We have got the white men in a hole," they cried. "Ha! They cannot
get out. Look, the sun is shining very bright, but it will be dark for
the white men long before it touches the hill. They are caught like
wolves in a trap. _Hau_!"
"Ho-ho! Are they!" sung out Carhayes, in reply to this taunt. "When a
wolf is caught in a trap, the dogs cannot kill him without feeling his
teeth. The Amaxosa dogs have caught not a wolf, but a lion. Here is
one of his bites." And quick as lightning he brought up his rifle and
picked off a tall Gcaleka, who was flitting from one bush to another a
couple of hundred yards above. The Kafir lurched heavily forward,
convulsively clutching the earth with both hands. A yell of rage arose
from the savages and a perfect hail of bullets and assegais came
whistling around the whites--fortunately still overhead.
"Aha!" roared Carhayes with a shout of reckless laughter. "Now does any
other dog want to feel the lion's bite? Ha, ha! I am he whom the
people call Umlilwane. `The Little Fire' can burn. He it was who
helped to burn the kraal of Sarili, the Great Chief of the House of
Gcaleka. He it is who has `burned' the life out of many dogs of the
race of Xosa. He will burn out the lives of many more! Ha, ha--dogs--
black scum! Come forth! Try who can stand before The Little Fire and
not be burned up--utterly consumed away! Come forth, dogs, come forth!"
Catching their comrade's dare-devil spirit, the men laughed and cheered
wildly. But the Kafirs, full of hate and rage, forgot their prudence.
A great mass of them leaped from their cover, and shrilling their wild
war-whistles, snapped their assegais off short, and bore down upon the
handful of whites in full impetuous charge.
Critical as the moment was, the latter were prepared never more
dangerously cool than now when it was almost a case of selling their
lives dearly. They instantly gave way, melting into cover with the
serpent-like celerity of the savages themselves, and before these could
so much as swerve, they poured such a deadly cross-fire upon the compact
onrushing mass that in a second the ground was strewn with a groaning,
writhing heap of humanity.
With a roar like a wild beast, Carhayes sprang from his cover and,
wrenching a heavy knob-kerrie from the hand of a dead Kafir, dashed
among the fallen and struggling foe, striking to right and left,
braining all those who showed the slightest sign of resistance or even
of life. A Berserk ferocity seemed to have seized the man. His hair
and beard fairly bristled, his eyes glared, as he stood erect, whirling
the heavy club, spattered and shiny with blood and brains. He roared
again:
"Ho, dogs! Come and stand before the lion! Come, feel his bite--who
dares? Ha, ha!" he laughed, bringing the kerrie down with a sickening
crash upon the head of a prostrate warrior whom he had detected in the
act of making a last desperate stab at him with an assegai--shattering
the skull to atoms. "Come, stand before me, cowards. Come, and be
ground to atoms."
But to this challenge no answer was returned. There was a strange
silence among the enemy. What did it portend? That he was about to
throw up the game and withdraw? No such luck. His strength was too
great, and he was burning with vengeful rage at the loss of so many men.
It could only mean that he was planning some new and desperate move.
"I say, Milne, lend us a few cartridges; I've shot away all mine."
Eustace, without a word, handed half a dozen to the speaker. The
latter, a fine young fellow of twenty-one, was enjoying his first
experience in the noble game of war. He had been blazing away
throughout the day as though conscious of the presence of a waggon-load
of ammunition in the patrol.
"Thanks awfully--Ah-h!"
The last ejaculation escaped him in a kind of shuddering sigh. His
features grew livid, and the cartridges which he had just grasped
dropped from his grasp as he sank to the ground with scarcely a
struggle. A Kafir had crawled up behind him, and had stabbed him
between the shoulders with a broad-bladed assegai--right through to the
heart. A deep vengeful curse went up from his comrades, and they looked
wildly around for an object on which to exact retribution. In vain.
The wily foe was not going to show himself.
But the incident threw a new light upon the state of affairs, and a very
lurid one it was. Several had run out of ammunition, but had refrained
from saying so lest the fact, becoming known, should discourage the
others. Now it was of no use disguising matters further. There were
barely fifty rounds left among the whole patrol--that is to say,
something less than a round and a half per man. And they were still
hemmed in by hundreds of the enemy, closely hemmed in, too, as the
recent fatality proved, and it still wanted a good many hours till dark.
Small wonder that a very gloomy expression rested upon almost every
countenance. The position was almost as bad as it could possibly be.