ickerwork, or rather interlaced
boughs. Into them went the forerunners, to be pierced by the sharp,
fire-hardened stakes set at the bottom of each pit. Vainly did those who
were near enough to understand their danger call to the ranks behind to
stop. They could not or would not comprehend, and had no room to extend
their front. Forward surged the human torrent, thrusting all in front of
it to death by wounds or suffocation in those deadly holes, till one by
one they were filled level with the ground by struggling men and horses,
over whom the army still rushed on.

How many perished there I do not know, but after the battle was over we
found scarcely a pit that was not crowded to the brim with dead. Truly
this device of Ragnall's, for if I had conceived the idea, which
was unfamiliar to the Kendah, it was he who had carried it out in so
masterly a fashion, had served us well.

Still the enemy surged on, since the pits were only large enough to hold
a tithe of them, till at length, horsemen and footmen mixed up together
in inextricable confusion, their mighty mass became faintly visible
quite close to us, a blacker blot upon the gloom.

Then my turn came. When they were not more than fifty yards away from
the first wall, I shouted an order to my riflemen to fire, aiming low,
and set the example by loosing both barrels of an elephant gun at the
thickest of the mob. At that distance even the most inexperienced shots
could not miss such a mark, especially as those bullets that went high
struck among the oncoming troops behind, or caught the horsemen lifted
above their fellows. Indeed, of the first few rounds I do not think that
one was wasted, while often single balls killed or injured several men.

The result was instantaneous. The Black Kendah who, be it remembered,
were totally unaccustomed to the effects of rifle fire and imagined that
we only possessed two or three guns in all, stopped their advance as
though paralyzed. For a few seconds there was silence, except for the
intermittent crackle of the rifles as my men loaded and fired. Next came
the cries of the smitten men and horses that were falling everywhere,
and then--the unmistakable sound of a stampede.

"They have gone. That was too warm for them, Baas," chuckled Hans
exultingly.

"Yes," I answered, when I had at length succeeded in stopping the
firing, "but I expect they will come back with the light. Still, that
trick of yours has cost them dear, Hans."