ell
have evoked, through the gloom, which was dense, the moon being hidden
behind the hill, I thought I caught sight of something running towards
me like a crouching man. I lifted my rifle to fire but, reflecting that
it might be no more than a hyena and fearing to provoke a fusilade from
my half-trained company, did not do so.

Next instant I was glad indeed, for immediately on the other side of the
wall behind which I was standing I heard a well-known voice gasp out:

"Don't shoot, Baas, it is I."

"What have you been doing, Hans?" I said as he scrambled over the wall
to my side, limping a little as I fancied.

"Baas," he puffed, "I have been paying the Black Kendah a visit. I crept
down between their stupid outposts, who are as blind in the dark as a
bat in daytime, hoping to find Jana and put a bullet into his leg or
trunk. I didn't find him, Baas, although I heard him. But one of their
captains stood up in front of a watchfire, giving a good shot. My bullet
found _him_, Baas, for he tumbled back into the fire making the sparks
fly this way and that. Then I ran and, as you see, got here quite
safely."

"Why did you play that fool's trick?" I asked, "seeing that it ought to
have cost you your life?"

"I shall die just when I have to die, not before, Baas," he replied in
the intervals of reloading the little rifle. "Also it was the trick of a
wise man, not of a fool, seeing that it has made the Black Kendah think
that we were attacking them and caused them to hurry on to attack _us_
in the dark over ground that they do not know. Listen to them coming!"

As he spoke a roar of sound told us that the great charge had swept
round a turn there was in the pass and was heading towards us up
the straight. Ivory horns brayed, captains shouted orders, the very
mountains shook beneath the beating of thousands of feet of men and
horses, while in one great yell that echoed from the cliffs and forests
went up the battle-cry of "_Jana! Jana!_"--a mixed tumult of noise which
contrasted very strangely with the utter silence in our ranks.

"They will be among the pitfalls presently," sniggered Hans, shifting
his weight nervously from one leg on to the other. "Hark! they are going
into them."

It was true. Screams of fear and pain told me that the front ranks
had begun to fall, horse and foot together, into the cunningly devised
snares of which with so much labour we had dug many, concealing them
with earth spread over thin w