ses will always
leap over a body, and so you cannot reach them with your swords; but a
lance would do the business well. I don't care much for lances for
regular work, but for this sort of fighting there is no doubt they are
the real thing. Well, there is one thing, if we get among the niggers
this time we know what we have got to deal with, and up or down there
will be no mercy shown."

On the 10th the Royal Highlanders marched out six miles towards Tamai
and formed an encampment there, defending it with bushes interlaced with
wire, this kind of defence being known among the natives as a zareba.
The next afternoon the rest of the infantry marched out and joined them.
Next morning the cavalry moved out, and in the afternoon the whole force
started, the cavalry thrown out ahead. A few shots were exchanged with
parties of the enemy, but there was no serious fighting. The march was
slow, for the ground was thickly covered with bushes, through which the
troops with the ambulance and commissariat camels moved but slowly. The
sailors had very hard work dragging their guns through the deep sand,
and it took four hours before they reached a spot suitable for
encampment, within two miles of the enemy's position.

The spot selected for the halt was a space free from bushes, and large
enough to afford room for the encampment and to leave a clear margin of
some fifty yards wide between it and the bushes. As soon as the column
halted the cavalry and part of the infantry took up their position as
outposts to prevent a surprise on the part of the enemy, and the rest
set to work to cut down bushes and drag them across the sand to form a
fresh zareba. When this was completed the cavalry trotted back to the
post held on the previous night, as they would be useless in case of a
night attack, and their horses might suffer from a distant fire of the
enemy.

Inside the zareba the greatest vigilance was observed. Fully ten
thousand determined enemies lay but a short distance away, and might
creep up through the bushes and make a sudden onslaught at any time. The
moon was full, and its light would show any object advancing across the
open space. Had it not been for this the general would not have been
justified in encamping at so short a distance from the enemy. The march
had been a short one, but the heat had been great and the dust terrible,
and the troops threw themselves down on the ground exhausted when the
work of constructing the zar