"It's a jolly good thing for us that they haven't any bombs," remarked the patrol-commander. "I don't fancy our blacks would stand up to them. By Jove! the villagers have shown any amount of pluck."
"They know that if the kraal's taken, their lives won't be worth a brass farthing," rejoined one of the men.
"Don't know so much about that," added another. "They had a chance to let us down and save their hides, but they weren't having any."
A meteor-like trail of reddish light whizzing through the air interrupted the argument. Anxiously the defenders watched the course of the missile, guessing but not knowing exactly what it was, until with a crash it alighted upon the palm thatched roof of a hut about in the centre of the kraal.
Several men rushed to the spot, regardless of the flying bullets, with the intent on of tearing away the smouldering missile, but before they could reach the hut the dull red glow gave place to a vivid bluish flame. The mobile weapon was an incendiary rocket.
In a minute the hut was a mass of flames, the sparks communicating the fire to the flimsily-constructed buildings adjoining it.
Strenuously the defenders, both white and black, sought to confine the devouring element to certain limits by pulling down the huts in the vicinity, but other incendiary rockets followed in rapid succession, while the fire of the machine-guns redoubled in violence.
The fire-fighters made excellent targets in the fierce light, their forms being silhouetted against the blazing huts, yet their losses were comparatively few, for the machine guns were badly laid. Nevertheless, before the men could take cover two Rhodesians were badly wounded, a dozen villagers killed and thirty odd seriously injured.
In the midst of this turmoil Dudley, whose attention was centred upon the enemy, detected a large body of men deploying from the bush. Simultaneously other formidable detachments advanced upon the kraal on all sides, showing up distinctly in the terrific glare of the burning huts. To add to the horror of the scene native women and children were shrieking in terror, and the horses and cattle were neighing and bellowing as they instinctively realised the peril that threatened them from the rapidly spreading flames.
But for the presence of their black allies the troopers would have mounted and ridden straight at their assailants, running a good chance of cutting their way out by weight of numbers and the speed of their horses; but no thought of abandoning the natives to their fate entered the heads of their allies. It would be a fight to a finish.