Long Odds

by Harold Bindloss

So while the seconds slipped away the negroes stood hesitating, and glancing at one another as well as at the hut which lay in the shadow. Their ebony limbs and scanty draperies were forced up against the glaring dust and sand in a flood of searching brilliancy. Nares, who felt his nerves tingle, could see the tension in their dusky faces and the oily gleam of their bodies as the perspiration broke from them. There was something curiously suggestive of pent up fury in the poses they had fallen into. In the meanwhile he could not move. Indeed, the big negro who held him fast had savagely drawn his arms behind his back, and the strain in the muscles was becoming almost intolerably painful.

Then several men broke away from the others and ran towards the hut, and once more Nares held his breath. He could have shouted as he saw the first dark form bound on, clutching a long Snider rifle in both hands, but he restrained himself. In another moment or two a thin flash blazed from the doorway of the hut, and the man went down with a shrill scream and lay clawing at the sand. Nares heard no detonation. He was only conscious of the little curl of blue smoke in the entrance of the hut, and the black object that writhed in the pitiless glare in front of it. Then the fallen man's comrades stopped, and a little shiver ran through him as he turned to Ormsgill, who nodded as if he understood him.

"You can only face it," said the latter. "They would scarcely listen to their Headman, and I can't move a limb. It's a single-shot rifle. They're bound to kill him." Then he broke off with a little gasp. "Ah," he said a moment later, "two of them are trying it now."

Nares did not wish to look, but he could not help it. The scene held his gaze, and he saw the two figures move cautiously towards the hut, keeping one wall of it between them and the doorway as far as they could. This, however, did not serve them. The deadly fire flashed again, and one negro who collapsed suddenly fell on his hands and knees. Then there was another streak of sparks and smoke, and the second man staggering forward went down headlong with a thud. Several Sniders flashed, and there was silence again.

"It's too much," said Ormsgill. "I can't stand this."

He struggled furiously, and he and the men who held him swayed to and fro, a cluster of scuffling, staggering figures for a moment or two. The effort, however, was futile, and he stood still again with his arms pinioned fast behind his back and the perspiration dripping from him while the Suzerain looked at him from his stool with a little grim smile.

"It is not your affair," he said.

Ormsgill said nothing, though the veins were swollen on his forehead and his face was suffused with blood, and at a sign from the Headman the negroes who held him relaxed their grasp a trifle. Nares also stood still, with every nerve in him thrilling. The man inside the hut no doubt deserved his fate, but that did not seem to count then, and the missionary felt only a sympathy with him that was almost overwhelming in its intensity. It was one man against a multitude, for there was no sign that Herrero was making any effort, and, after all, that man sprang from the same stock as he did. Then deep down in him he felt a thrill of pride, for Gavin was making a very gallant fight of it. It was in many ways a shameful work that he and his comrade had done, selling proscribed arms to the people who had turned against him now, fomenting discord between them and their neighbors, and debauching them with villainous rum, but, at least, he made it clear that the courage of his kind was in him. This was all at variance with Nares' beneficent creed, but the man was dying, indomitable, a white man.

Those who meant to kill him drew back a little farther from the hut, and standing and squatting flung up the long rifles. They were by no means marksmen, but the hut was large and built of cane and branch work. The heavy Snider bullets smashed through it, and for a few minutes the stagnant air was filled with the jarring detonations. There was no answering flash from the hut and Nares could see that its shadowy entrance was empty. Then as the ringing of the Sniders died away and a man here and there stole forward cautiously it seemed to him that a dimly seen white object dragged itself towards the doorway and crouched in it. He did not think it would be visible to the assailants, for they were keeping a little behind the hut, but it was clear to him that the one man against a multitude was bent on fighting still.

The straggling figures crept on, moving obliquely towards the perilous entrance, that the hut might shelter them, until they massed together for a dash at it. Then the flash blazed out again, and one of them dropped. Another went down screaming a few seconds later, and then the foremost broke and fled, and there was a sudden scattering of those behind. There were a host of negroes, but they shrank from that unerring rifle. They were evidently willing to face a hazard, but this was certain death. Then the Suzerain of the village signed to the negroes who held Ormsgill, and they led him forward.