d."

"Don't take your eye from the spot, my lad," cried Dickenson sharply.
"Never mind a fresh cartridge. Trust to your magazine."

"Yes, sir; that's what I'm doing," was the reply.

"Hadn't we all better do the same, sir?" asked the sergeant.

"Yes," said Dickenson angrily.

"I doubt whether we can keep his fire down, though, sir. He's got us
now."

"Not yet--the brute!" cried Dickenson through his teeth.

"He'll have the other two safe, sir."

"Other two?" cried Dickenson wonderingly.

"What! don't you see, sir? There's another of the ponies hit."

"Good gracious!" cried Dickenson, in such a homely, grandmotherly style
that, in spite of their perilous position, the sergeant could not help
smiling.

But his face was as hard as an iron mask directly, as he saw the look of
anguish in his young officer's face, Dickenson having just seen the
second pony standing with drooping head and all four legs widely
separated, rocking to and fro for a few moments, before dropping
heavily, perfectly dead.

_Crack_! came again from the same place, and another of the grazing
ponies flung up its head, neighing shrilly, before springing forward to
gallop for a couple of hundred yards and then fall.

And _crack_! again, and its following puff of smoke, making the fourth
pony start and begin to limp for a few yards with its off foreleg
broken; and _crack_! once more, and the sound of a sharp rap caused by
another bullet striking the suffering beast right in the middle of the
shoulder-blade, when it dropped dead instantly, pierced through the
heart.

"Best shot yet, sir," said the sergeant grimly; "put the poor beast out
of its misery. Now," he muttered to himself, "we know what we've got to
expect if we don't stop his little game."

"Every man watch below where the smoke rose," said Dickenson slowly and
sternly. "That man can't see without exposing himself in some way.
Yes; be on the alert. Look! he's pressing the sand away to right and
left with the barrel of his rifle. Mind, don't fire till you've got a
thoroughly good chance."

No one spoke, but all lay flat upon their chests, watching the moving
right and left of a gun-barrel which was directed towards them, but
pointing so that if fired a bullet would have gone over their heads. It
was hard to see; but the sun glinted from its polished surface from time
to time, and moment by moment they noted that it was becoming more
horizontal.

Every man's sight was s