Now the light was beginning to grow, flowing out of the pearly eastern sky; but no attack had yet been delivered, although that one was imminent that spear fixed in the plaster of the wall behind us showed clearly.  Perhaps the Kaffirs had been frightened by the galloping of horses through their line in the dark, not knowing how many of them there might have been.  Or perhaps they were waiting to see better where to deliver their onset.  These were the ideas that occurred to me, but both were wrong.

They were staying their hands until the mist lifted a little from the hollow below the stead where the cattle kraals were situated, for while the fog remained they could not see to get the beasts out.  These they wished to make sure of and drive away before the fight began, lest during its progress something should happen to rob them of their booty.

Presently, from these kraals, where the Heer Marais’s horned beasts and sheep were penned at night, about one hundred and fifty of the former and some two thousand of the latter, to say nothing of the horses, for he was a large and prosperous farmer, there arose a sound of bellowing, neighing, and baaing, and with it that of the shouting of men.

“They are driving off the stock,” said Marie.  “Oh! my poor father, he is ruined; it will break his heart.”

“Bad enough,” I answered, “but there are things that might be worse.  Hark!”

As I spoke there came a sound of stamping feet and of a wild war chant.  Then in the edge of the mist that hung above the hollow where the cattle kraals were, figures appeared, moving swiftly to and fro, looking ghostly and unreal.  The Kaffirs were marshalling their men for the attack.  A minute more and it had begun.  On up the slope they came in long, wavering lines, several hundreds of them, whistling and screaming, shaking their spears, their war-plumes and hair trappings blown back by the breeze, the lust of slaughter in their rolling eyes.  Two or three of them had guns, which they fired as they ran, but where the bullets went I do not know, over the house probably.

I called out to Leblanc and the Kaffirs not to shoot till I did, for I knew that they were poor marksmen and that much depended upon our first volley being effective.  Then as the captain of this attack came within thirty yards of the stoep—­for now the light, growing swiftly, was strong enough to enable me to distinguish him by his apparel and the rifle which he held—­I loosed at him with the “roer” and shot him dead.  Indeed the heavy bullet passing through his body mortally wounded another of the Quabies behind.  These were the first men that I ever killed in war.