the rumours always
turned out to be false; so at last even we began to grow indifferent
to them. One night a negro was sent to our corn-crib with the same old
warning: the enemy was hovering in our neighbourhood. We all said let
him hover. We resolved to stay still and be comfortable. It was a fine
warlike resolution, and no doubt we all felt the stir of it in our
veins--for a moment. We had been having a very jolly time, that was full
of horse-play and school-boy hilarity; but that cooled down now, and
presently the fast-waning fire of forced jokes and forced laughs died
out altogether, and the company became silent. Silent and nervous. And
soon uneasy--worried--apprehensive. We had said we would stay, and we
were committed. We could have been persuaded to go, but there was nobody
brave enough to suggest it. An almost noiseless movement presently began
in the dark, by a general and unvoiced impulse. When the movement was
completed, each man knew that he was not the only person who had crept
to the front wall and had his eye at a crack between the logs. No, we
were all there; all there with our hearts in our throats, and staring
out toward the sugar-troughs where the forest foot-path came through. It
was late, and there was a deep woodsy stillness everywhere. There was a
veiled moonlight, which was only just strong enough to enable us to mark
the general shape of objects. Presently a muffled sound caught our ears,
and we recognised it as the hoof-beats of a horse or horses. And right
away a figure appeared in the forest path; it could have been made of
smoke, its mass had so little sharpness of outline. It was a man on
horseback; and it seemed to me that there were others behind him. I got
hold of a gun in the dark, and pushed it through a crack between the
logs, hardly knowing what I was doing, I was so dazed with fright.
Somebody said 'Fire!' I pulled the trigger. I seemed to see a hundred
flashes and hear a hundred reports, then I saw the man fall down out of
the saddle. My first feeling was of surprised gratification; my first
impulse was an apprentice-sportsman's impulse to run and pick up his
game. Somebody said, hardly audibly, 'Good--we've got him!--wait for the
rest.' But the rest did not come. There was not a sound, not the whisper
of a leaf; just perfect stillness; an uncanny kind of stillness, which
was all the more uncanny on account of the damp, earthy, late-night
smells now rising and pervading it. Then, wo