We should have lost many men if this hiding behind huts and popping from cover had been allowed to continue. I therefore called my "Forty Thieves" together, and ordered the bugler to sound the charge with the bayonet.
Pushing through the narrow wicket gateway, I formed some thirty or forty men in line and led them at full speed with fixed bayonets against the enemy.
Although the slave-hunters had primed themselves well with araki and merissa before they had screwed up courage to attack the troops, they were not quite up to standing before a bayonet charge. The "Forty Thieves" were awkward customers, and in a quarter of a minute they were amongst them.
The enemy were regularly crumpled up! and had they not taken to flight, they would have been bayoneted to a man.
I now saw Wat-el-Mek in his unmistakable yellow suit; he was marching alone across a road about 180 yards distant.
He was crossing to my right; and I imagined, as he was alone, that he intended to screen himself behind the houses, and then surrender.
To my surprise, I observed that when he recognized me, he at once raised his gun and took a steady aim.
I was at that moment reloading; but I was ready the instant that he had fired and missed me.
He now walked towards a hut across to my right. I allowed about half a foot before him for his pace, and the "Dutchman" had a word to say.
The bullet struck his right hand, taking the middle finger off at the root, and then striking the gun in the middle of the lock plate, it cut it completely in halves as though it had been divided by a blow with an axe. He was almost immediately taken prisoner. One of "The Forty" (Seroor) was so enraged that he was with difficulty prevented from finishing Wat-el-Mek with a bayonet thrust.