place,
passing just between our heads. So we gave over love-making and turned
our attention to war.

Now the light was beginning to grow, flowing out of the pearly eastern
sky; but no attack had yet been delivered, although that one was
imminent that spear fixed in the plaster of the wall behind us showed
clearly. Perhaps the Kaffirs had been frightened by the galloping of
horses through their line in the dark, not knowing how many of them
there might have been. Or perhaps they were waiting to see better where
to deliver their onset. These were the ideas that occurred to me, but
both were wrong.

They were staying their hands until the mist lifted a little from the
hollow below the stead where the cattle kraals were situated, for while
the fog remained they could not see to get the beasts out. These they
wished to make sure of and drive away before the fight began, lest
during its progress something should happen to rob them of their booty.

Presently, from these kraals, where the Heer Marais's horned beasts and
sheep were penned at night, about one hundred and fifty of the former
and some two thousand of the latter, to say nothing of the horses, for
he was a large and prosperous farmer, there arose a sound of bellowing,
neighing, and baaing, and with it that of the shouting of men.

"They are driving off the stock," said Marie. "Oh! my poor father, he is
ruined; it will break his heart."

"Bad enough," I answered, "but there are things that might be worse.
Hark!"

As I spoke there came a sound of stamping feet and of a wild war chant.
Then in the edge of the mist that hung above the hollow where the
cattle kraals were, figures appeared, moving swiftly to and fro, looking
ghostly and unreal. The Kaffirs were marshalling their men for the
attack. A minute more and it had begun. On up the slope they came in
long, wavering lines, several hundreds of them, whistling and screaming,
shaking their spears, their war-plumes and hair trappings blown back by
the breeze, the lust of slaughter in their rolling eyes. Two or three of
them had guns, which they fired as they ran, but where the bullets went
I do not know, over the house probably.

I called out to Leblanc and the Kaffirs not to shoot till I did, for I
knew that they were poor marksmen and that much depended upon our first
volley being effective. Then as the captain of this attack came within
thirty yards of the stoep--for now the light, growing swiftly, was
stron