e jackal meat of you all," shouted back
Jekyll in Sindabele. "_Au_! We shall see many more suns rise, and many
shadows against them--the shadows of hung Amandabele." But a great
jeering laugh was all the answer vouchsafed.

With the darkness the firing ceased, but those watching at the windows
redoubled their vigilance, every sense on the alert lest the enemy
should steal up under its cover and rush the position. Enraged and
gloomy at so little opportunity being given them of avenging their
comrade's death, those within almost wished they would. One of the
wounded men--the police trooper, to wit--was groaning piteously. Both
had been made as comfortable as was practicable, but it was painful to
listen to the poor fellow's pleadings in the darkness, for, of course,
they dared not strike a light. Would they not shoot him at once and put
him out of his agony, he begged.

"Poor old chap! We'll see you through all right. You'll live to talk
over all this again and again," was the pitying reply of a comrade.

"I don't want to; I want to be dead. Oh, it's awful--awful!"

His kneebone had been shattered by a bullet, and he was enduring
terrible agony. To listen to his pitiful writhings and groans was
enough to take the heart out of the most daredevil glutton for fighting.

"Here, have a drink, old man. It'll buck you up a bit," said another,
groping towards him with a whisky bottle.

"Yes. Give it here. Where is it?" And the sufferer's groans were
silenced in a gasping gurgle.

"Worst thing possible for him, I believe," whispered Moseley.

"Shouldn't wonder," replied Tarrant also in a whisper. "Doesn't much
matter, though, the poor devil! He's a `goner' anyhow. A knock like
that means mortification, and there's no doctor here to take his leg
off, nor could it be done under the circumstances if there was."

"By the Lord, Moseley," he resumed, a moment later, "I wonder if there's
anything in what Jekyll said the niggers were saying just now--that
there are no whites left in the land. If this is a general outbreak,
what of Hollingworth and his crowd?"

An exclamation of dismay escaped the other. Their own position was so
essentially one of action that they had had little or no time to take
thought for any but themselves. Now it came home to them. But for the
timely warning brought by the police trooper, they themselves would have
been treacherously set upon and massacred; how, then, should those who