at if it had not been that just then I had not got a
laugh anywhere about me, I should have exploded at the sight
he presented armed for battle. To begin with, he had on a clergyman's
black swallow-tail and a kind of broad-rimmed black felt hat,
both of which he had donned on account, he said, of their dark
colour. In his hand was the Winchester repeating rifle we had
lent him; and stuck in an elastic cricketing belt, like those
worn by English boys, were, first, a huge buckhorn-handled carving
knife with a guard to it, and next a long-barrelled Colt's revolver.

'Ah, my friend,' he said, seeing me staring at his belt, 'you
are looking at my "carver". I thought it might come in handy
if we came to close quarters; it is excellent steel, and many
is the pig I have killed with it.'

By this time everybody was up and dressing. I put on a light
Norfolk jacket over my mail shirt in order to have a pocket handy
to hold my cartridges, and buckled on my revolver. Good did
the same, but Sir Henry put on nothing except his mail shirt,
steel-lined cap, and a pair of 'veldt-schoons' or soft hide shoes,
his legs being bare from the knees down. His revolver he strapped
on round his middle outside the armoured shirt.

Meanwhile Umslopogaas was mustering the men in the square under
the big tree and going the rounds to see that each was properly
armed, etc. At the last moment we made one change. Finding
that two of the men who were to have gone with the firing parties
knew little or nothing of guns, but were good spearsmen, we took
away their rifles, supplied them with shields and long spears
of the Masai pattern, and took them off to join Curtis, Umslopogaas,
and the Askari in holding the wide opening; it having become
clear to us that three men, however brave and strong, were too
few for the work.

CHAPTER VII
A SLAUGHTER GRIM AND GREAT

Then there was a pause, and we stood there in the chilly silent
darkness waiting till the moment came to start. It was, perhaps,
the most trying time of all -- that slow, slow quarter of an
hour. The minutes seemed to drag along with leaden feet, and
the quiet, the solemn hush, that brooded over all -- big, as
it were, with a coming fate, was most oppressive to the spirits.
I once remember having to get up before dawn to see a man hanged,
and I then went through a very similar set of sensations, only
in the present instance my feelings were animated by that more
vivid and p