out,
resolved, at all cost, to wipe out the little band of heroes who held
the skull-shaped hill; and when the surging struggling mass of men had
been lost in a rain of blows, for full ten minutes, all chance of escape
or triumph for our friends seemed gone: but fifty men were left to fight
three hundred.

Grenville and Leigh, Amaxosa and Kenyon, were back to back, their blows
rained straight and sure, and at every blow from each a man went down,
still what could they do against such overwhelming odds as six to one.

Down went the gallant Umbulanzi, with a great spear wound in his back,
and down upon his breathless corpse went his recreant foe, his head
split to the very chin by a vengeful blow from Grenville's ready axe.

All was in vain, yet even as our friends had given up all hope of
escaping from the hideous crowd which surged in upon them like hungry
wolves round a dying buffalo, a clear, cold voice rang out in stentorian
tones across the startled veldt, arresting every hand and every arm.

"Cease," it said; "cease and hold your hands, ye uncircumcised ones,
both white and black, unless ye wish to die." And there upon the knoll,
to the utter horror of our friends, flaunted the dreaded banner of
Mormonism, and round the mingled mass of combatants, and of dead and
dying men, there extended on every hand a mighty triple ring of armed
and hated followers of the False Prophet.

Ringed in by fully a thousand well-armed men, further resistance was
worse than useless. Moreover, Grenville's keen eye quickly noted the
curious fact that, so far from displaying anything like enthusiasm over
the advent of the Mormon host, the slavers seemed considerably more
taken aback by the presence of the new arrivals than even his own party.

The tension of feeling between the three bands was all at once
unintentionally relieved by poor Leigh suddenly noticing Dora on the
crest of the knoll, where the poor girl had been an agonised spectator
of the awful fight, and where her cries, notifying the dreaded Mormon
approach, had been no more audible than the twitterings of a sparrow.
Suddenly noticing her, I say, an expression of positive terror froze
poor Leigh's face, his hair rose up upon his head, and with a fearful
shriek of "Dora, Dora, my long-dead, darling wife!" he threw up his
hands and fell prone upon his face, with the life-blood welling from his
mouth.

Kenyon threw himself upon his knees beside his friend, but in another