trained to the utmost; every nerve was on the
quiver; so that not one of the four felt that he could trust himself to
shoot when the crucial moment came.

It came more quickly than they expected; for, after a few moments of
intense strain, the barrel was suddenly depressed, till through the
clear air the watchers distinctly saw a tiny hole and nothing more.
Then all at once the sun glinted from something else--a something that
flashed brightly for one instant, and was then obscured by smoke--the
smoke that darted from the little, just perceptible orifice of the
small-bore Mauser and that which shot out from four British rifles, to
combine into one slowly rising cloud; while as the commingled reports of
five rifles, friendly and inimical, died away, to the surprise of
Dickenson and his men they saw the figure of a big swarthy Boer
staggering towards them with both hands pressed to his face. The next
moment he was lying just in front of his hiding-place, stretched out--
dead.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

SAFE AT LAST.

"Ha!" ejaculated Dickenson, with a sigh of relief, and he turned away to
creep to where Lennox lay, finding him still plunged in the same state
of stupor.

"One ought to lay him in the shade," he thought; but there was very
little that he could do beyond drawing a few pieces of the thorn bush
together to hang over his face. He then took out his handkerchief to
lay over the bush, but hastily snatched it away again. "Bah!" he
muttered. "It's like making a white bull's-eye for them to fire at."

Then he crept back to his position, with the bullets still whizzing
overhead or striking up the dust, and he almost wondered that no one had
been hit.

"I hope Mr Lennox is better, sir," said the sergeant respectfully.

"I see no difference, sergeant. But what does that mean?"

"What we used to call `stalking horse,' sir, down in the Essex marshes.
Creeping up under the shelter of their mounts."

"Then they are getting nearer?"

"Yes, sir. Don't you think we might begin to pay them back? We could
hit their ponies if we couldn't hit them."

"Yes, sergeant, soon," replied the young officer, carefully scanning the
enemy's approach; "but I think I'd let them get a hundred yards, or even
two, nearer before we begin. The business is simplified."

"Is it, sir?"

"I mean, there's no question of retreating now that the ponies are gone.
It's either fight to the last, or surrender."

"You mean, sir, that