ed his
way through the thorns and crawled beneath the waggon into the laager.
The gun in my hand was empty, but by me lay an axe which I snatched up,
and as he rose to his knees I struck him with all my strength upon the
neck and killed him at a blow. Yes, my child, that was the kind of work
to which we wives of the voortrekkers had to put a needle.

Jan had just fired his gun, and seeing the man he sprang to help me,
whereon three more Kaffirs following on the dead soldier's path crawled
out from under the waggon. Two of them gained their feet and ran at him
lifting their assegais. I thought that all was lost, for one hole in our
defence was like a pin prick to a bladder, but with a shout Jan dropped
the empty gun and rushed to meet them. He caught them by the throat, the
two of them, one in each of his great hands, and before they could spear
him dashed their heads together with such desperate strength that they
fell down and never stirred again. This was always thought something of
a feat, for as everybody knows the skulls of Kaffirs are thick.

By this time the girl had handed Ralph his second gun loaded, and with
it he shot the third Kaffir; then he also did a brave thing, for seeing
that more Zulus were beginning to creep through the hole, he snatched
the assegai from a dead man's hand, and stopped the gap with his own
body, lying flat upon his stomach and thrusting at their heads with the
spear. Soon we dragged him out with only one slight wound, pushing the
bodies of the Kaffirs into his place, and over them spare branches of
thorn, so that the breach was made good.

This was the turning point of the fight, for though after it one other
Kaffir managed to get into the laager, where he was cut down, and two
Boers, Nicholas Potgieter and Pieter Botha were killed by assegais
thrown from without, from that moment the attack began to slacken. In
thirty minutes from the time that Celliers had fired the first shot,
Moselikatse's general, whose name was Kalipi, had given the order to
retire, and his hosts drew off sullenly, for we had beaten them.

Thirty minutes! Only thirty minutes--the shadows had shifted but a few
inches on the grass, and yet now that it was done with it seemed like
half a lifetime. Panting and begrimed with smoke and powder, we stood
looking at each other and around us. The tents of the waggons were
ripped to pieces, in our own I counted more than sixty spear cuts,
and the trampled turf insid