Here there was a pause; the Arabs, not dashing out, the British, after their late experience, apparently not quite knowing whether they ought to break the square formation by dashing in. Not to mention that the Arabs were ticklish gentlemen to tumble over a bank into the middle of!
During this pause a stalwart, almost gigantic figure was seen walking up the slope with a double-barrelled fowling-piece in his hand. Coming to the parapet he brought the gun to his shoulder, fired right and left, and calmly opening the breech, replaced the two empty cartridges with two fresh ones, just as if he were standing during a battue, shooting pheasants and not Soudanese.
“Look at Burnaby!” cried some one, and hundreds were looking at him, expecting that at last he must fall, this dauntless traveller, keen observer, and born soldier, who courted peril as other men court safety; who spurned luxury and loved hardship; who seemed to treat the king of terrors as a playfellow.
Again he gave the enemy in the earthwork, and within a few yards of him, both barrels, and retreated a few steps down to re-load.
The Soudanese followed to the top of the parapet, but the moment one of them showed his head above it he was shot by the soldiers close below.
Directly he had got fresh cartridges in, Colonel Burnaby stepped back to his old place, and added another brace to his bag. But this combat between one man and a host would never take the fort, and the foremost line did not stand long at gaze, but ran up and clambered over the artificial bank, which was about four feet high, pouring a volley into the defenders as they did so. And now single combats again commenced, and the interior of the earthwork resembled an ancient arena.
The theoretical duty of an officer in action was suspended, for he had to fight physically and practically like the men, the only difference lying in the arms he wielded.
His sword was no longer a baton of office, but a weapon to cut and thrust with, and the better its temper and the keener its edge, the greater friend was it to him that day. Not always did it prove true.
Captain Wilson, RN, cut down an Arab who was about to kill a soldier, and his blade shivered to the hilt, leaving him without a weapon to ward off a cut which wounded him, though happily not severely, in the head.
Captain Littledale, of the York and Lancaster Regiment, also bent his sword over one of the Soudanese in the fort, and would have lost his life had not two of his company come to his rescue. Some of the men’s weapons proved equally rotten.