Nedra

by George Barr McCutcheon

Ridgeway ran among his men, urging them to stand firm, to beat back the foe, and they responded with an ardor that was nothing less than fiendishness itself. Their spears were unerringly thrown, but the supply was diminishing; it was the question of a very few minutes before they would be without ammunition. Hugh's hope lay in the possibility that the foe would soon retreat, believing itself unable to cope with an adversary whose numbers were unknown and who held such an advantageous position.

He soon saw that he would have to quickly withdraw his men from the hill after one of the temporary repulses, taking them to the trench at the mouth of the pass. Almost as he was forming this plan, he realized that it would be necessary to carry it out at once.

Far down the pass, beyond his line, the enemy came swarming up the undefended slope, steep as it was, and some of the foremost were already scrambling over the last few feet intervening. He yelled to the men, pointing to the danger spot and then toward the trenches, making a sign immediately thereafter to deliver a telling volley into the struggling ranks.

The savages seemed to understand, and he devoutly thanked God, for they sent a shower of spears into the horde and then dashed helter-skelter in the direction of the trenches where lay the king and two hundred men. Wild yells of triumph came from behind, and long before the descent to the valley was reached by the fleeing white man and his dusky army, the Ooloozers were pouring into the tree-covered summit like so many sheep.

Down the hill sped Hugh and his men. Pootoo saw them coming and waved his spear frantically. As the retreating army rolled headlong into the trenches and behind the breastworks, the enemy arrived at the crest of the hill. Breathlessly Hugh motioned for Pootoo to call the men from the opposite hill into action at once.

A volley of spears shot into and over the trenches, followed by a whirlwind of the long, slender messengers of death, several of them taking effect. Pootoo's men returned the volley from behind the breastworks, but the rampant chargers were not to be checked. Up to the very edge of the trench they rushed, and from that moment it does not lie within the power of the writer to depict the horrors of the conflict in detail. Hugh's men, well protected and well armed, hurled death into the ranks, of the fearless enemy as it crowded to the high breastworks. And out from the mouth of the pass poured the mass of Ooloozers who had not ascended the hill.

Ridgeway, cutting viciously away at the black bodies as they plunged against the wall behind which they stood, felt the spears crash against his shield, heard them hiss past, saw them penetrate the earthworks all about him. At another time he would have wondered how he and his men could hope to withstand such an onslaught. One thing he did have time to observe, and that was the surprise, consternation, even fear that came into the enraged faces of the assaulting savages when they saw him plainly. They were looking for the first time on the face of a white man--the new god of their enemies.

A sudden change in the tide of battle, though brief, transferred the brunt of conflict to another quarter. A withering rain of spears struck the enemy on the flank and rear, and down from the opposite hilltop rushed the mob that had formed the other boulder squad at the beginning of the fight, but who had done nothing after the first charge of the Oolooz men up the hill. They threw themselves upon the enemy and were soon lost in the boiling mass. Gaining fresh courage and a renewed viciousness, the men in the trenches forsook the shelter and poured into the open, Hugh being powerless to check them.

"It is all over," groaned he, when he saw his crazy forces jump into the very centre of the seething mass. With a white man's shrewdness he remained behind the friendly breastworks, a dozen of his warriors fighting by his side. Repeated rushes against his position were broken by the desperate resistance of this small company. Hugh's heavy sword was dripping with blood; it had beaten in the skull of many a foe, had been driven beneath the shields and through the bodies of others. To him it seemed hours instead of minutes since the battle began; his arm was growing tired, his brain was whirling, his body was dripping with perspiration. Still his blood boiled and surged with savage enjoyment; he was now yelling with the same frenzy that filled the wild men; pure delight grew out of the fall of every opponent that went down under his sword.

At last the Oolooz leader, a blood-covered savage as large as Pootoo, led his men up to the breastworks, driving the defenders into the trenches and down the gentle slope. Triumph was theirs apparently, and their yelling was full of it. But inch by inch Pootoo fought them back. Once the king looked helplessly at Hugh, as if praying for him as a god to exert his influence in the unequal struggle. That glance was one of entreaty, surprise, but Hugh could also see disgust in it. It stung him strangely.