d and rushed upon another, but this one did not wait for him--none
waited. To the Zulus in those days a horse was a terrible wild beast,
and this was a beast indeed, that brave as they were they dared not
face.

"It is a devil! and wizards ride it!" they cried, as they opened a path
before its rush.

They were through, and behind them like the voice of hounds that hunt
swelled the cry of the war-dogs of Dingaan. They were through and
living yet, though one broad _bangwan_ was fast in Ralph's shoulder, and
another stood in the _schimmel's_ chest.

Not two miles away rose the koppie. "The horse will die," thought Ralph
as he drew Suzanne closer to him, and gripped the saddle with his knees.
Indeed, he was dying; yet never since he was a colt did the _schimmel_
cover two miles of plain so fast as those that lay between the impi and
the camp. Slowly and surely the spear worked its way into his vitals,
but stretching out his head, and heedless of his burden, he rushed on
with the speed of a racer.

The Boers in the laager were awake at last, the sound of the gun and the
war-cry of the Zulus had reached them faintly. Half-clad, men and women
together, they stood upon their waggon-boxes looking towards the west.
Behind them the pencils of daylight were creeping across the sky, and
presently in their low rays they saw such a sight as they would never
see again. Fast, fast towards them thundered a great roan horse,
blood dripping from his chest, and jaws, and flank, and on its back a
yellow-bearded man, in whose shoulder stood a spear, and who held in
front of him a fainting woman.

"Soon he will fall suddenly, and we shall be crushed," thought Ralph,
and had the horse died while travelling at that speed it must have been
so. But he did not. When within fifty yards of the laager suddenly
he began to lurch and roll in his stride; then with three bounds he
stopped, and standing still, looked round with piteous blood-shot eyes,
and whinnied faintly as though he heard some voice that he knew and
loved.

Ralph slipped from his back, dragging Suzanne after him, and watched.

For a moment the _schimmel_ stood, his head touching the ground, till
presently a bloody foam came upon his mouth, and blood poured from his
eyes and ears. Now for the last time he arched his neck and shook his
mane, then roaring straight up on his hind legs as he had done when he
beat down the Zulus, he pawed the air with his fore feet and fell over