ater into those Black Kendah,
pausing between each shot to take aim, with the result that presently
five riderless horses were galloping loose about the veld.

The effect was electrical, since our attackers had never seen anything
of the kind before. For a while they all drew off, which gave me time to
reload. Then they came on again and I repeated the process. For a second
time they retreated and after consultation which lasted for a minute or
more, made a third attack. Once more I saluted them to the best of my
ability, though on this occasion only three men and a horse fell. The
fifth shot was a clean miss because they came on in such a scattered
formation that I had to turn from side to side to fire.

Now at last the game was up, for the simple reason that I had no more
cartridges save two in my double-barrelled pistol. It may be asked why.
The answer is, want of foresight. Too many cartridges in one's pocket
are apt to chafe on camel-back and so is a belt full of them. In those
days also the engagements were few in which a man fired over fifteen.
I had forty or fifty more in a bag, which bag Savage with his usual
politeness had taken and hung upon his saddle without saying a word to
me. At the beginning of the action I found this out, but could not then
get them from him as he was separated from me. Hans, always careless in
small matters, was really to blame as he ought to have seen that I had
the cartridges, or at any rate to have carried them himself. In short,
it was one of those accidents that will happen. There is nothing more to
be said.

After a still longer consultation our enemies advanced on us for the
fourth time, but very slowly. Meanwhile I had been taking stock of the
position. The camel corps, or what was left of it, oblivious of our
plight which the dust of conflict had hidden from them, was travelling
on to the north, more or less victorious. That is to say, it had cut its
way through the Black Kendah and was escaping unpursued, huddled up in
a mob with the baggage animals safe in its centre. The Black Kendah
themselves were engaged in killing our wounded and succouring their
own; also in collecting the bodies of the dead. In short, quite
unintentionally, we were deserted. Probably, if anybody thought about us
at all in the turmoil of desperate battle, they concluded that we were
among the slain.

Marut came up to me, unhurt, still smiling and waving a bloody spear.

"Lord Macumazana," he said