moment, then, partly rising, fired upon the
advancing shields at a hundred yards' distance. Several were seen to go
down. Crash! a second volley, then a third. The magazine rifles were
doing their duty right nobly. At the fourth volley the charging
warriors, dividing into two sections, sheered off at a tangent, and,
dropping down in the grass, crawled away with the silence and rapidity
of snakes, offering no mark to draw the defenders' fire.

"Quick! To the back!" cried Jekyll. "Not all, though."

With instinctive unanimity the little garrison divided itself. Those
told off to the back of the store arrived there in time to see their
enemies swarming up among the low rocky ridge which overlooked their
position from the rear.

"By George! that was real strategy, covering the advance of the storming
party," said one man, who was an ex-soldier. "Looks as if there were
whites among them. Dutch perhaps."

"No fear," returned Jekyll. "The most English-hating Dutchman this
country ever produced wouldn't turn niggers on to white men. We'd be
much more likely to do it ourselves. Hallo, Selwyn! Not hurt?"

This anxiously, as the young fellow, who had been peering forth watching
his chance of a shot, staggered back from the window holding his hands
to his head. Then it was seen that his face was streaming with blood.

"N-no; I don't think so," was the answer. "A splinter, I think it is."

"Let's see," said Jekyll. "Ah yes. Here you are"--exhibiting an ugly
splinter of wood, which he had simultaneously extracted from the other's
forehead. "Only a skin-wound. You're in luck."

"There's some fellow who can shoot, at any rate," remarked Tarrant, as
another bullet pinged in through the window. "Oh, I say! Here, quick,
some one! Lend me a rifle, for God's sake"--almost snatching one from
the hand of his neighbour, who yielded, too astonished to demur--and
blazed at the point from which the last shot had come, just missing. A
shout of laughter was the reply, together with a puff of smoke, and a
bullet so near as to make Tarrant duck--of course, after it had passed.
He again returned this, again missing, but narrowly.

"Here, try, one of you chaps; I'm no shot. For Heaven's sake drop the
young beast! It's my infernal boy--Mafuta."

A roar from his auditors greeted this intelligence, once its tenor was
grasped.

"Your boy! But you said he was a reliable boy?" cried Jekyll.

"So he is, damn him. You m