ou will never
have it again. She is lost to you forever now. Never can you hope to
possess her!"

And now the firing opened from an unexpected quarter--and behold, the
bushy slope in front was alive with Kafir warriors. The patrol was
entirely surrounded, and now the savages began to shout exultantly to
each other.

"We have got the white men in a hole," they cried. "Ha! They cannot
get out. Look, the sun is shining very bright, but it will be dark for
the white men long before it touches the hill. They are caught like
wolves in a trap. _Hau_!"

"Ho-ho! Are they!" sung out Carhayes, in reply to this taunt. "When a
wolf is caught in a trap, the dogs cannot kill him without feeling his
teeth. The Amaxosa dogs have caught not a wolf, but a lion. Here is
one of his bites." And quick as lightning he brought up his rifle and
picked off a tall Gcaleka, who was flitting from one bush to another a
couple of hundred yards above. The Kafir lurched heavily forward,
convulsively clutching the earth with both hands. A yell of rage arose
from the savages and a perfect hail of bullets and assegais came
whistling around the whites--fortunately still overhead.

"Aha!" roared Carhayes with a shout of reckless laughter. "Now does any
other dog want to feel the lion's bite? Ha, ha! I am he whom the
people call Umlilwane. `The Little Fire' can burn. He it was who
helped to burn the kraal of Sarili, the Great Chief of the House of
Gcaleka. He it is who has `burned' the life out of many dogs of the
race of Xosa. He will burn out the lives of many more! Ha, ha--dogs--
black scum! Come forth! Try who can stand before The Little Fire and
not be burned up--utterly consumed away! Come forth, dogs, come forth!"

Catching their comrade's dare-devil spirit, the men laughed and cheered
wildly. But the Kafirs, full of hate and rage, forgot their prudence.
A great mass of them leaped from their cover, and shrilling their wild
war-whistles, snapped their assegais off short, and bore down upon the
handful of whites in full impetuous charge.

Critical as the moment was, the latter were prepared never more
dangerously cool than now when it was almost a case of selling their
lives dearly. They instantly gave way, melting into cover with the
serpent-like celerity of the savages themselves, and before these could
so much as swerve, they poured such a deadly cross-fire upon the compact
onrushing mass that in a second the ground