k to your post; and I beg your
pardon.--Yes; who are you?"--for another scout came in to endorse the
words of the first. He had scouted down the other side of the widening
pass, and according to his report the enemy could not be a quarter of a
mile away.

"Thank goodness!" said the Colonel fervently. "Mr Moray, I spoke in
haste and disappointment. Now then, gentlemen, perfect silence, please.
I believe we shall hear some signal from below, and that is what the
party above are waiting for. Then they will attack simultaneously, to
give us a surprise, and we're going to surprise them. Every one to his
post, please; and then, at their first rush, let it be volleys and slow
falling back, so as to keep them from breaking our too open formation."

The next minute every man was in his place, and the pass so dark and
still that it was impossible to believe that a terrible conflict was so
close at hand. As I stood waiting and listening for the enemy's order
to attack, I could feel my heart go _throb, throb, throb, throb_, so
hard that I seemed to be hearing it at the same time making a dull echo
in my brain.

Still there was no sign; and at last I began to go over my brief
interview with the Colonel, and to wonder whether he would turn now upon
the two scouts and charge them with having deceived themselves, for
according to their report the enemy ought to have been upon us long
before. I had got to this point when all at once I felt an arm upon my
shoulder, and could just make out at the side and front of my face a big
hand pointing forward towards the stones a hundred feet away.

"Um!" whispered Joeboy, with his lips close to my ear. "See um now.
Big lots."

"I can see nothing," I whispered.

"Joeboy can. Lie down ready. Boss Val going to shoot?"

"When I get the order," I said softly, and my heart beat more heavily
than ever, for I felt now that the black must be right. I had had for
years past proofs of the wonderful power of his sight, and had not a
doubt that, though they were invisible to me, a large body of the enemy
were clustering among the stones ready for the assault upon our
position.

Then I heard from somewhere below a faint, rushing, whistling sound, as
of a firework, followed by a crack, and the white stars of a rocket lit
up the sides of the pass and made the stones in front visible in a soft
glare. The next instant from front and rear, almost simultaneously,
there were flashes and a scatter