Presently they heard firing from the direction of the camp. The troops had turned out on hearing the shots at the bush edge, and were covering the retreat of the scouts.
Then another thing happened. Maling and his companion heard and felt something now and then swishing and cutting through the fern just above their heads. They were under the fire of their own comrades.
"Maling," said Lingard, "this is getting too warm! It's not good enough to stay here and be shot by our own men. Let's make a run for it."
Creeping out from their place of concealment, and giving a quick look backwards to make sure that no more Hauhaus were coming, the two scouts ran along the track in the direction of the camp. Close by on their left they could hear the enemy yelling and firing.
Just as they turned a bend in the path they came upon a terrible sight. Mackenzie lay on the ground, face downwards; his head smashed in and his brains spattering the ground. His carbine and ammunition and Afghan sheath-dagger were gone.
This they saw at one horrified glance, then they dashed on, taking a short cut across the fern to the camp. They could see the white tents now in the morning light. They ran towards the troops shouting, "Don't fire!—don't fire!"
The two scouts reached camp safely, and Lingard immediately reported the result of the night's work to the colonel. All the others excepting poor Mackenzie turned up. One of them had fallen shot, wounded in the back, close to the camp, but was rescued by the surgeon, Dr. Walker, who pluckily ran out and carried him in.
Mackenzie, one of the survivors said, was running well, and would have escaped, but he suddenly fell prone on his face without any apparent cause. A Hauhau came running along next moment, and, putting his gun close to Mackenzie's head, blew his brains out.
Then came another strange development of the morning's adventure. Surgeon Walker, on examining Mackenzie's body, said he believed the scout had died suddenly of heart disease, and that he was quite dead before even the Hauhau shot him.
The brave old Gurkha soldier's presentiment of speedy death was only too true a foreword from the Unknown.