ess supposed were a large force
instead of being but ten strong. For some reason it never occurred
to them to try and rush the wall, which they could have scrambled
over with comparative ease; they all made for the fence, which
was really a strongly interwoven fortification. With a bound
the first warrior went at it, and even before he touched the
ground on the other side I saw Sir Henry's great axe swing up
and fall with awful force upon his feather head-piece, and he
sank into the middle of the thorns. Then with a yell and a crash
they began to break through as they might, and ever as they came
the great axe swung and Inkosi-kaas flashed and they fell dead
one by one, each man thus helping to build up a barrier against
his fellows. Those who escaped the axes of the pair fell at
the hands of the Askari and the two Mission Kaffirs, and those
who passed scatheless from them were brought low by my own and
Mackenzie's fire.

Faster and more furious grew the fighting. Single Masai would
spring upon the dead bodies of their comrades, and engage one
or other of the axemen with their long spears; but, thanks chiefly
to the mail shirts, the result was always the same. Presently
there was a great swing of the axe, a crashing sound, and another
dead Masai. That is, if the man was engaged with Sir Henry.
If it was Umslopogaas that he fought with the result indeed
would be the same, but it would be differently attained. It
was but rarely that the Zulu used the crashing double-handed
stroke; on the contrary, he did little more than tap continually
at his adversary's head, pecking at it with the pole-axe end
of the axe as a woodpecker {Endnote 7} pecks at rotten wood.
Presently a peck would go home, and his enemy would drop down
with a neat little circular hole in his forehead or skull, exactly
similar to that which a cheese-scoop makes in a cheese. He never
used the broad blade of the axe except when hard pressed, or
when striking at a shield. He told me afterwards that he did
not consider it sportsmanlike.

Good and his men were quite close by now, and our people had
to cease firing into the mass for fear of killing some of them
(as it was, one of them was slain in this way). Mad and desperate
with fear, the Masai by a frantic effort burst through the thorn
fence and piled-up dead, and, sweeping Curtis, Umslopogaas, and
the other three before them, into the open. And now it was that
we began to lose men fast. Down