“‘Now they are going to begin,’ I thought to myself, and I was not far wrong, for in another minute the body of men divided into three companies, each about five hundred strong, and, heralded by a running fire, charged at us on three sides.  Our men were now all well under cover, and the fire did us no harm.  I mounted on a rock so as to command a view of as much of the koppie and plain as possible, and yelled to our men to reserve their fire till I gave the word, and then to shoot low and load as quickly as possible.  I knew that, like all natives, they were sure to be execrable shots, and that they were armed with weapons made out of old gas-pipes, so the only chance of doing execution was to let the enemy get right on to us.

“On they came with a rush; they were within eighty yards now, and as they drew near the point of attack, I observed that they closed their ranks, which was so much the better for us.

“‘Shall we not fire, my father?’ sung out the captain.

“‘No, confound you!’ I answered.

“‘Sixty yards—­fifty—­forty—­thirty.  Fire, you scoundrels!’ I yelled, setting the example by letting off both barrels of my elephant gun into the thickest part of the company opposite to me.

“Instantly the place rang out with the discharge of two hundred and odd guns, while the air was torn by the passage of every sort of missile, from iron pot legs down to slugs and pebbles coated with lead.  The result was very prompt.  The Matukus were so near that we could not miss them, and at thirty yards a lead-coated stone out of a gas-pipe is as effective as a Martini rifle, or more so.  Over rolled the attacking soldiers by the dozen, while the survivors, fairly frightened, took to their heels.  We plied them with shot till they were out of range—­I made it very warm for them with the elephant gun, by the way—­and then we loaded up in quite a cheerful frame of mind, for we had not lost a man, whereas I could count more than fifty dead and wounded Matukus.  The only thing that damped my ardour was that, stare as I would, I could see no column of smoke upon the mountain crest.

“Half an hour elapsed before any further steps were taken against us.  Then the attacking force adopted different tactics.  Seeing that it was very risky to try to rush us in dense masses, they opened out into skirmishing order and ran across the open space in lots of five and six.  As it happened, right at the foot of the koppie the ground broke away a little in such fashion that it was almost impossible for us to search it effectually with our fire.  On the hither side of this dip Wambe’s soldiers were now congregating in considerable numbers.  Of course we did them as much damage as we could while they were running across, but this sort of work requires good shots, and that was just what we had not got.  Another thing was, that so many of our men would insist upon letting off the things they called guns at every little knot of the enemy that ran across.  Thus,