e campaign which it should be my lot to
report! Here then is my first despatch from a field of battle:

Our numbers had been reinforced during the night by a fresh batch of
natives from the caves, and we may have been four or five hundred
strong when we made our advance. A fringe of scouts was thrown out in
front, and behind them the whole force in a solid column made their way
up the long slope of the bush country until we were near the edge of
the forest. Here they spread out into a long straggling line of
spearmen and bowmen. Roxton and Summerlee took their position upon the
right flank, while Challenger and I were on the left. It was a host of
the stone age that we were accompanying to battle--we with the last
word of the gunsmith's art from St. James' Street and the Strand.

We had not long to wait for our enemy. A wild shrill clamor rose from
the edge of the wood and suddenly a body of ape-men rushed out with
clubs and stones, and made for the center of the Indian line. It was a
valiant move but a foolish one, for the great bandy-legged creatures
were slow of foot, while their opponents were as active as cats. It
was horrible to see the fierce brutes with foaming mouths and glaring
eyes, rushing and grasping, but forever missing their elusive enemies,
while arrow after arrow buried itself in their hides. One great fellow
ran past me roaring with pain, with a dozen darts sticking from his
chest and ribs. In mercy I put a bullet through his skull, and he fell
sprawling among the aloes. But this was the only shot fired, for the
attack had been on the center of the line, and the Indians there had
needed no help of ours in repulsing it. Of all the ape-men who had
rushed out into the open, I do not think that one got back to cover.

But the matter was more deadly when we came among the trees. For an
hour or more after we entered the wood, there was a desperate struggle
in which for a time we hardly held our own. Springing out from among
the scrub the ape-men with huge clubs broke in upon the Indians and
often felled three or four of them before they could be speared. Their
frightful blows shattered everything upon which they fell. One of them
knocked Summerlee's rifle to matchwood and the next would have crushed
his skull had an Indian not stabbed the beast to the heart. Other
ape-men in the trees above us hurled down stones and logs of wood,
occasionally dropping bodily on to our ranks and fighting fu