d have literally become a shambles, and every man of the party would
have died a dog's death, for the ambushed foe was securely entrenched
between the position of our friends and the entrance of the mountain
burrow leading to the old well.

Choosing the least of two evils, Leigh drew his men together, and then
launched them like a thunderbolt down the hill and into the very heart
of Zero's force, which they drove before them like chaff before the
wind. Then, getting right through the ranks of the slavers, our
friends, to the utter bewilderment of the foe, ignored altogether the
cover of the forest, and commenced to fall back steadily upon Equatoria,
in order, of course, to effect a junction with Grenville and Kenyon,
whom Zero, perhaps naturally, imagined to be lying dead in the cavern
along with poor Ewan and upwards of a score of the Atagbondo, who had
fallen victims to the first treacherous and fatal discharge of the
ambushed foe.

In the running fight which had ensued, the loss on the side of our
friends had not been worth speaking of, whilst Leigh, with his repeater
charged with explosive bullets, had dropped an enemy on every hundred
yards of ground from the mountain to the skull-shaped knoll. But when
the slavers once sighted the mighty volumes of smoke ascending from
their burning town, they naturally scented something extremely wrong,
and Zero's active mind instantly jumped to the likeliest solution of the
mystery, and told him that Grenville and the great Zulu, both of whom he
hated beyond expression, were revenging themselves upon his force at
home, and stamping out his town.

This caused the slaver to throw the whole of his available force, at any
cost, upon the desperate little band, and drive them in upon the town
pell-mell, with fearful loss upon both sides, for the Atagbondo had
contested every inch of ground, with a stubborn valour little short of
incredible when it is borne in mind that to rifle, spear, and axe, they
could only oppose their rough-hewn wooden clubs.

Of the Zanzibari carriers nothing had been seen since the very
commencement of the fight, for they had been placed for safety in the
hindmost cavern of all, as being worse than useless to the fighting
brigade; but whether the cowards were still in hiding there, or whether
the ambushed slavers had found and massacred the wretched men forthwith,
was, of course, as yet unknown, though, as the slavers in the cavern had
followed our friend