“Lie close, you fellows!” warns the latter. “Hallo! That’s Sybrandt signalling me. It’s an old hunting call of ours,” as a peculiar chirping whistle travels over from an adjacent granite pile. “Ah, I thought so.” Quick as thought he has wormed himself behind another stone and now peeps forth. Below, a couple of hundred yards distant, dark forms are crawling. The bush is thinner there, and the object of the savages is to pass this, with a view to extending the surround. Blachland and the American have both taken in this, and the thud and gurgling groans following on the simultaneous crash of their pieces tell that they have taken it in to some purpose. At the same time a cross fire from among the boulders where Sybrandt and some others are lying, throws the Matabele into a momentary but demoralising muddle of consternation.
The rain has ceased, but in the damp air the smoke hangs heavy over the dark heads of the bushes. Down in the camp, the sullen splutter of rifles, and ever and anon the angry, knock-like bark of the Maxims. There is a lull, but again and again the firing bursts forth. With undaunted persistency the savages return to the assault, howling out jeering taunts at those who a short while back they reckoned as sure and easy prey—but with dogged pertinacity the defence is kept up. One man falls dead while serving a Maxim, and several more horses are shot.
At length the firing slackens. The enemy seem to have had enough. Quickly the orders are passed round. Those in the kopjes are to remain there, covering the retreat of the rest of the patrol, until this shall have gained better ground some little way beyond.
Then the very heavens above took part in the fight, and in a trice the deafening, stunning thunder crashes rendered the sputter of the volleys as the noise of mere popguns, and the lurid blinding glare of lightning, pouring down in rivers of sheeting flame, put out the flash of man’s puny weapons.
“This is rather more risky than their bullets, eh Hilary?” remarked Percival West, involuntarily shrinking down from one of these awful flashes.
“Gun barrels are a good conductor,” was the grimly consolatory reply.
So, too, are assegai blades. In the midst of that stunning awful crash that seems to split open the world, five Matabele warriors are lying, mangled, fused into all shapes—and shapelessness—while nearly twice that number besides are lying stunned, as though smitten with a blow of a knob-kerrie.
“Mamo!” cries Ziboza, who is just outside the limit of this destruction, himself unsteady from the shock. “Lo, the very heavens above are fighting on the side of these whites!”
[a/]