e
ferocious Ba-gcatya, now maddened to assuage their blood-thirst, and
whose crushing might, now pouring over in countless numbers, this
handful shall never hope to resist. The chief, Mashumbwe, is speared and
ripped. The struggle is fierce and hand-to-hand, but short. The Wangoni,
now a sorry remnant, are rolled back upon their allies.

Of these not a man but knows that the day is lost, that flight is
impossible; that if the other half of the Ba-gcatya host has not swarmed
over to take them on the rear, it is only because it is waiting to
receive on its spear points all who flee. But there is no thought of
flight. With all their indifference to human suffering, with all their
brutality, their savagery, the slavers are as brave as any. They are
indeed men picked for their desperate courage, and now, standing back to
back, they begin to render the victory of the Ba-gcatya a dearly bought
one indeed.

The war-shout no longer rends the air. There is a grim, fell silence in
this hand-to-hand conflict, broken only by the snake-like hiss of the
Ba-gcatya as an enemy goes down, by the slap and shock of shield meeting
clubbed gun or stabbing knife, by the gasps of the combatants. The cloud
of powder smoke hanging overhead partially veils the sun, which glowers,
a blood-red ball, through this gloomy shroud.

The whole space within the rock-circle is a very charnel-pit of
corpses, among which the combatants stagger--victorious Ba-gcatya and
vanquished slave-hunters alike--stagger and slip on a foothold of oozy
gore; stab, and strike, and fall in their turn.

In the rush and the _melee_ Laurence Stanninghame has become separated
even farther from his comrades,--his white comrades, that is,--nor can
he by any effort hope to rejoin them. Several Arabs are around him, his
own followers, swarthy sons of the Prophet, their keen eyes flashing
hate and defiance upon the foe, their long ataghans sweeping a circle of
light around them. In their forefront is Lutali--Lutali, whirling a
great scimitar, hewing down more than one of the too venturesome
Ba-gcatya, and that in spite of the broad bull-hide shield deftly
wielded--Lutali, uttering a semi-religious war-cry, his erect form and
keen, haughty face the very personification of absolute and dauntless
valour. And he himself, wedged in by those around, can still get in now
and again a telling shot from his revolver, and with every such shot one
more warrior of "The Spider" has uttered hi