"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."