Accompanied by the young Kafir, Renshaw sallied forth. The dogs had already pounced upon the wounded Bushman, and in another minute would have worried him to death. Game to the last, however, the ferocious ruffian had fired among them, killing one, and but for the fact that his gun was empty would have fired upon his human rescuers. Investigation showed that he was badly wounded in both legs, notwithstanding which, well knowing the desperate hardihood of the race, Renshaw deemed it necessary to bind his hands. The other wounded man, a Kafir, had also a broken leg. He, however, realising how thoroughly the odds were against him, submitted sullenly to the inevitable. The sixth and last, he who had led the gang, was stone dead, shot through the heart. Renshaw turned the body over. The empty eye-socket and the brutal pock-marked features seemed distorted in a fiend-like leer beneath the moonlight. Renshaw had no difficulty in recognising the description of the Kafir, Muntiwa.
Meanwhile, how had the non-combatants been faring? Mrs Selwood, having armed herself with a double gun, had retired to her children’s room, resolved that her post was there. She had taken Violet with her, and the latter had fallen into a fit of terror that was simply uncontrollable. The crash of the firearms, the dread lull intervening, the subdued anxious voices of the defenders, the terrible suspense, had all been too much for her; nor could the reassurances of her hostess, or even the example of pluck shown by the child Effie, avail to allay her fears. Finally, she went off into a dead swoon.
As for the two youngsters, Fred and Basil, the prevailing idea in their minds was one of unqualified disgust at not having been allowed to take part in the fight from the very beginning.
“Why didn’t you call us, Uncle Renshaw?” was their continual cry. “We’d have knocked fits out of those schelms. Wouldn’t we just!”
“You bloodthirsty young ruffians! You have plenty of time before you for that sort of thing, and you’ll have plenty of opportunities for getting and giving hard knocks by the time you get to my age,” he would reply good-humouredly. But the youngsters only shook their heads with expressions of the most intense disappointment and disgust.
Not much sleep for the household during the remainder of that night. Renshaw found his time and his vigilance fully occupied in attending to the security of his prisoners, and doing what he could for the wounded. The fellows, for their part, were disposed to accept the inevitable, and make the best of the situation. They were bound to be hanged anyhow, though in his secret heart each man hoped that his life might be spared. Meanwhile, it was better to enjoy good rations than bad ones, and to that end it was as well to conciliate the Baas; and Renshaw had no difficulty, accordingly, in getting at the story of the attack.
Of course, each swore he was not the instigator; of course, each laid the blame on the dead man, Muntiwa. He was the prime mover in the enterprise. He had a grudge against the Baas who lived there, and as they all stood and fell together they had been obliged to help him in his scheme of plunder. Of course, too, each and all were ready to swear that plunder was their only object. They would not have harmed anybody, not they; no, not for all the world. Thus the three half-breeds. But Booi, the Kafir, volunteered no statement whatever, and Klaas Baartman, the Bushman Hottentot, savagely declared that he had intended to cut the throat of every woman and child on the place. The seventh of the gang, who was still at large, having no firearm, had been posted under the willows to draw off the dogs—even as Renshaw had conjectured.
Asked whether they knew the Baas of the place was absent, they replied that one of them had been watching and had seen unmistakable signs that this was the case. The rest of the gang had watched the main road, and when Renshaw had passed they had intended to let him go by unmolested, so as to render more complete their projected surprise, and would have, but for the indiscretion of one of their number—of course the man who had not been captured.
In the morning, opportunely enough, a posse of Mounted Police arrived—a sergeant and three troopers. They had been patrolling the mountains on the lookout for this very gang, and had fallen in with some natives who declared they had heard distant firing in the direction of Sunningdale. Thither therefore they had ridden with all possible speed.
“Well, Mr Fanning—I wish I had had your luck—that’s all,” said the sergeant—while doing soldier’s justice to the succulent breakfast set before them. “You’ve captured the whole gang, single-handed, all but one, that is, and we are sure to have him soon.”