er as many
miles--we reached the river, and found it a yellow flood two hundred
yards broad. In the way African rivers have, the stream, four feet
across last night, had risen from the rain. We did not think our horses
could swim it, utterly tired as they now were; but we were just playing
the game through, so we decided to try. With their heads and ours barely
above the water, swimming and drifting, we got across and crawled out on
the other side. Then for the first time, I remember, the idea struck me
that we might come through it after all, and with that the desire of
life came passionately back upon me.

We topped the bank, and there, five hundred yards in front to the left,
stood several hundred Matabele! They stared at us in utter surprise,
wondering, I suppose, if we were the advance guard of some entirely new
reinforcement. In desperation we walked our horses quietly along in
front of them, paying no attention to them. We had gone some distance
like this, and nobody followed behind, till at last one man took a shot
at us; and with that a lot more of them began to blaze away. Almost at
the same moment Ingram caught sight of horses only four or five hundred
yards distant; so the column still existed--and there it was. We took
the last gallop out of our horses then, and--well, in a few minutes I
was falling out of the saddle, and saying to Forbes: "It's all over; we
are the last of that party!" Forbes only said, "Well, tell nobody else
till we are through with our own fight," and next minute we were just
firing away along with the others, helping to beat off the attack on the
column.'

Here Mr. Burnham's narrative ends.

* * * * *

What happened to Wilson and his gallant companions, and the exact manner
of their end after Burnham and his two comrades left them, is known only
through the reports of natives who took part in the fight. This,
however, is certain: since the immortal company of Greeks died at
Thermopylae, few, if any, such stands have been made in the face of
inevitable death. They knew what the issue must be; for them there was
no possibility of escape; the sun shone upon them for the last time, and
for the last time the air of heaven blew upon their brows. Around them,
thousand upon thousand, were massed their relentless foes, the bush
echoed with war-cries, and from behind every tree and stone a ceaseless
fire was poured upon their circle. But these four-and-thirty m