tinued. They passed the ray of
light and he saw the whites of their eyes and the gleam of teeth and
steel. They paused a second to fire a volley, and a storm of shot
rattled about him. He had stepped back into his shelter, and was
unscathed, but when he looked out he saw the enemy at the foot of the
slope. His weapons were all loaded except the express, and in mad haste
he sent shot after shot into the ranks. The fire halted them, and for a
second they were on the edge of a panic. This unknown destruction
coming out of the darkness was terrifying to the stoutest hearts. All
the while there was wrath behind them. This stopping of the advance
column was throwing the whole force into confusion. Angry messages came
up from the centre, and distracted officers cursed their native guides.

Meanwhile Lewis was something wholly unlike himself, a maddened creature
with every sense on the alert, drinking in the glory of the fight. He
husbanded the chances of his life with generous parsimony. Every chance
meant some minutes' delay and every delay a new link of safety for the
north. His cartridges were getting near an end, but there still
remained the stones and his pistol and the power of his arm hand to
hand.

Suddenly came a second volley which all but killed him, bullets glancing
on all sides of him and scraping the rocks with a horrid message of
death. Then on the heels of it came a charge up the slope. The turn
had come for the last expedient. He rushed to the stone and with the
strength of madness rooted it from its foundations. It wavered for a
second, and then with a cloud of earth and gravel it plunged downwards.
A second and it had ploughed its way with a sickening grinding sound
into the ranks of the men below. There was one wild scream of terror,
and then a retreat, a flight, almost a panic.

Down in the hollow was a babel of sound, men yelping with fright,
officers calming and cursing them, and the shouting of the forces
behind. For Lewis the last moment was approaching. The neck of the
pass was now bare and wide and half of the slope was gone. He had lost
his weapons in the fall, all but his express, and the loosening of the
stone had crushed his foot so that he could scarcely stand. Then order
seemed, to be restored, for another volley rang out, which passed over
his head as he crouched on the ground. The enemy were advancing slowly,
resolutely. He knew that now there was something different in their
tread.

He