't throw so devilish
high. I always aim at a man's toes if I want to stimulate his
digestion. O Lord, there's our kettle gone!" With a boom like a
dinner-gong a Remington bullet had passed through the kettle, and a
cloud of steam hissed up from the fire. A wild shout came from the
rocks above.

"The idiots think that they have blown us up. They'll rush us now, as
sure as fate; then it will be our turn to lead. Got your revolver,
Anerley?"

"I have this double-barrelled fowling-piece."

"Sensible man! It's the best weapon in the world at this sort of
rough-and-tumble work. What cartridges?"

"Swan-shot."

"That will do all right. I carry this big bore double-barrelled pistol
loaded with slugs. You might as well try to stop one of these fellows
with a pea-shooter as with a service revolver."

"There are ways and means," said Scott. "The Geneva Convention does not
hold south of the first cataract. It's easy to make a bullet mushroom
by a little manipulation of the tip of it. When I was in the broken
square at Tamai--"

"Wait a bit," cried Mortimer, adjusting his glasses. "I think they are
coming now."

"The time," said Scott, snapping up his watch, "being exactly seventeen
minutes past four."

Anerley had been lying behind a camel staring with an interest which
bordered upon fascination at the rocks opposite. Here was a little
woolly puff of smoke, and there was another one, but never once had they
caught a glimpse of the attackers. To him there was something weird and
awesome in these unseen, persistent men who, minute by minute, were
drawing closer to them. He had heard them cry out when the kettle was
broken, and once, immediately afterwards, an enormously strong voice had
roared something which had set Scott shrugging his shoulders.

"They've got to take us first," said he, and Anerley thought his nerve
might be better if he did not ask for a translation.

The firing had begun at a distance of some 100 yards, which put it out
of the question for them, with their lighter weapons, to make any reply
to it. Had their antagonists continued to keep that range the defenders
must either have made a hopeless sally or tried to shelter themselves
behind their zareba as best they might on the chance that the sound
might bring up help. But, luckily for them, the African has never taken
kindly to the rifle, and his primitive instinct to close with his enemy
is always too strong for his sense of stra