. His mind was made up in a flash.

"Clear out, or I'll shoot you dead," he answered, in the same language,
whipping out his pipe-case, and presenting it pistol fashion at the
shorter of the two men, who was advancing as if to seize his bridle.

The resolute attitude, the quick, decisive tone, above all perhaps the
click, strongly suggestive of cocking, which Renshaw managed to produce
from the spring of the implement, caused the fellow instinctively to
jump aside. At the same time came a flash and a stunning report.
Something hummed overhead, and most unpleasantly near. The other man
had deliberately fired at him.

Then Renshaw did the best thing he could under the circumstances. He
took the bull by the horns.

He put his horse straight at his assailant, at the same time wrenching
off his stirrup--no mean weapon at a push. But the fellow, losing
nerve, tried to dodge. In vain. The horse's shoulder hit him fair and
sent him floundering to earth; indeed, but for the fact that the animal,
frenzied with fright, swerved and tried to hang back, he would have been
trampled underfoot.

Again Renshaw did the best thing he could. Mastering a desire to turn
and brain the ruffian before he could rise, he rammed the spurs into his
horse's flanks and set off down the road at a hard gallop; not, however,
before he was able to recognise in his assailants a Hottentot and a
Bastard. Luckily, too, for three more flashes belched forth from the
hillside a little way above the scene of the conflict, but the bullets
came nowhere near him. Then upon the still silence of the night he
could hear other and deeper tones mingling with the harsh chatter of his
late assailants. There was no mistaking those tones. They issued from
Kafir lips. He had walked into the very midst of the cut-throat gang
itself--had come right through it.

Then the question arose in his mind, would they pursue him? He was
certain they had no horses, but he had still about four miles to go, and
his own steed was beginning to show signs of distress. The fleet-footed
barbarians could travel almost as fast on two legs as he could on four.
They might pursue him under cover of the bush and converge upon his line
of flight at any moment. And then his heart sank within him as he
thought of a certain steep and very stony hill which still lay between
him and his journey's end.

How his ears were strained; how every faculty was on the alert to almost
agonising