rters," I suggested,
catching the general drift of his inarticulate swift pictures.

"You're a square man, you are, Doctor! There you touch the spot.
Never let 'em get at close quarters. Sentries?--creep past 'em.
Outposts?--crawl between. Had Forbes and Wilson like that. Cut 'em off.
Perdition!... But Maxims will do it! Maxims! Never let em get near.
Sweep the ground all round. Durned hard, though, to know just WHEN
they're coming. A night; two nights; all clear; only waste ammunition.
Third, they swarm like bees; break laager; all over!"

This was not exactly an agreeable picture of what we had to expect--the
more so as our particular laager happened to have no Maxims. However, we
kept a sharp lookout for those gleaming eyes in the long grass of which
Colebrook warned us; their flashing light was the one thing to be
seen, at night above all, when the black bodies could crawl unperceived
through the tall dry herbage. On our first night out we had no
adventures. We watched by turns outside, relieving sentry from time to
time, while those of us who slept within the laager slept on the bare
ground with our arms beside us. Nobody spoke much. The tension was too
great. Every moment we expected an attack of the enemy.

Next day news reached us by scouts from all the other laagers. None of
them had been attacked; but in all there was a deep, half-instinctive
belief that the Matabele in force were drawing step by step closer
and closer around us. Lo-Bengula's old impis, or native regiments, had
gathered together once more under their own indunas--men trained and
drilled in all the arts and ruses of savage warfare. On their own
ground, and among their native scrub, those rude strategists are
formidable. They know the country, and how to fight in it. We had
nothing to oppose to them but a handful of the new Matabeleland police,
an old regular soldier or two, and a raw crowd of volunteers, most of
whom, like myself, had never before really handled a rifle.

That afternoon, the Major in command decided to send out the two
American scouts to scour the grass and discover, if possible, how near
our lines the Matabele had penetrated. I begged hard to be permitted to
accompany them. I wanted, if I could, to get evidence against Sebastian;
or, at least, to learn whether he was still directing and assisting the
enemy. At first, the scouts laughed at my request; but when I told them
privately that I believed I had a clue against the wh