s were asked him as to the fighting powers of the wild
natives.

"How they could break right into a square beats me altogether," one of
the big troopers said. "They always tell us that cavalry have no chance
nowadays of breaking into a square, for they would all be shot down by
the breech-loaders before they could reach it, and yet these niggers,
with nothing but spears, manage to do it. I cannot make head or tail of
it; no more I can of you chaps getting cut up by them."

"You will understand it when you see it," Edgar said. "They run pretty
nearly as fast as a horse can gallop, and they don't seem to fear death
in the slightest, for they believe that if they are killed they go
straight to heaven. It seems to me that savages must be braver than
civilized soldiers. It was the same thing with the Zulus, you know, they
came right down on our men at Isandula, and the fire of the
breech-loaders did not stop them in the slightest."

"No more it would stop us, young un, if we got orders to charge. It did
not at Balaclava."

"No, that is true enough," Edgar agreed; "but then we have got
discipline. The order is given, and the whole regiment goes off
together; one could not hold back if one would. But that is a different
thing from rushing forward each man on his own account, as they did
against us, and running up to what seemed certain death. I know the
feeling among our fellows was that they would not have believed it had
they not seen it."

"Well, I hope we shall get a chance of seeing it," the man said, "only I
hope that we shall not be atop of them camels when they try it. I have
been looking at the beasts over there in the city, and there does not
seem to me to be any go about them. Beastly-tempered brutes! I don't
believe you could get a charge out of them if you tried ever so much."

"No, I don't think you could," Edgar laughed. "But, you see, we are
intended to fight on foot. We shall be like the old dragoons, who used
their horses only to carry them to the place where they were to fight."

"No chance of any loot?" another put in.

"No chance in the world. At the best of times they wear a sort of dirty
cotton sheet round their shoulders, but when they go into battle they
leave that behind them, and fight only in their loin-cloths."

"I have heard," an old soldier said, "from some of our chaps who fought
in the Indian mutiny, that they often found a lot of money and jewels
and things in those loin-cloths of th