m,
waiting to take his rifle if either of these should fall. Also I had
made sure that all of them had twenty rounds of ammunition in their skin
pouches. More I would not serve out, fearing lest in excitement or in
panic they might fire away to the last cartridge uselessly, as before
now even disciplined white troops have been known to do. Therefore I had
arranged that certain old men of standing who could be trusted should
wait in a place of comparative safety behind the line, carrying all our
reserve ammunition, which amounted, allowing for what had been expended
in practice, to nearly sixty rounds per rifle. This they were instructed
to deliver from their wallets to the firing line in small lots when they
saw that it was necessary and not before.

It was, I admit, an arrangement apt to miscarry in the heat of desperate
battle, but I could think of none better, since it was absolutely
necessary that no shot should be wasted.

After a few words of exhortation and caution to the natives who acted
as sergeants to the corps, I returned to a bough shelter that had been
built for us behind a rock to get a few hours' sleep, if that were
possible, before the fight began.

Here I found Ragnall, who had just come in from his inspection. This
was of a much more extensive nature than my own, since it involved going
round some furlongs of the rough walls and trenches that he had prepared
with so much thought and care, and seeing that the various companies of
the White Kendah were ready to play their part in the defence of them.

He was tired and rather excited, too much so to sleep at once. So we
talked a little while, first about the prospects of the morrow's battle,
as to which we were, to say the least of it, dubious, and afterwards of
other things. I asked him if during his stay in this place, while I was
below at the town or later, he had heard or seen anything of his wife.

"Nothing," he answered. "These priests never speak of her, and if
they did Harut is the only one of them that I can really understand.
Moreover, I have kept my word strictly and, even when I had occasion
to see to the blocking of the western road, made a circuit on the
mountain-top in order to avoid the neighbourhood of that house where I
suppose she lives Oh! Quatermain, my friend, my case is a hard one, as
you would think if the woman you loved with your whole heart were shut
up within a few hundred yards of you and no communication with her
possib