he open again, ostensibly to pick up his pipe, which lay on
the ground, but kept his eye warily fixed upon the expected point of
offence, and instantly dropped on his hands and knees as another bullet
whizzed over him. Then he quietly rose to his feet, but with a beating
heart, for, if the rifle were a double-barrelled one, or if more than
the one marksman were lying hid, he was in deadly peril. No shot
followed, however, and he calmly picked up his pipe and again sought
shelter with his companions.

"Now, chief," said Grenville, after a brief interval, "wait till I have
drawn the scoundrel's fire again, and then rush him," and, executing a
rapid movement round the rocky boulder which served the party as a
shelter, he once more provoked the fire of the hidden foe, delivered
with greater accuracy than before, the bullet grazing the skin of one
hand as he swung himself into cover, crying, "Now, Myzukulwa!" but the
fleet-footed Zulu was already half-way across the open space, going like
a sprint-runner, having started simultaneously with the flash of the
rifle. In a moment more the cousins were after him, only to find, upon
reaching the rock, that there was no trace of the would-be assassin, and
that the Zulu was hopelessly at fault. A little powder spilled upon a
stone showed where the man had been placed, and that was all.

Just then Grenville's quick eye "spotted" the barrel of a rifle slowly
rising a hundred yards away, out of a hollow in the ground,
imperceptible from where they stood; he instinctively pitched forward
his Winchester, and the two reports blended into one. Leigh's hat flew
off his head, carried away by a bullet, and at the same instant
Myzukulwa again "rushed" the hidden marksman, only to find the work
done; and a gruesome sight it was. There lay a fine-looking man,
stone-dead, with the blood welling out of a ghastly hole in his head,
the heavy shell-bullet doing frightful execution at such short range,
having fairly smashed his skull to pieces.

The Englishmen were very considerably taken aback at finding that their
assailant was as white-skinned as themselves; they had half expected to
find some loafing Hottentot or Kaffir, though the accuracy of the
shooting had already caused Grenville to doubt that the marksman could
be either of these, for, as a general rule, if a Kaffir aims at anything
a hundred yards from him he misses it nine times out of ten. The dead
man was dressed in a deerskin co