The Lust of Hate, Guy Newell Boothby [essential books to read .txt] 📗

>of my next-door neighbours.

 

This desire to ascertain how my friends were getting on was,

however, nearly my undoing; for if I had been more intent upon my own

concerns, I should have seen a man wriggling along on the ground

towards me. Just, however, as he was about to hurl his assegai I

caught sight of him, and brought my rifle to the shoulder. Seeing

this, he rose to his feet with a jump, and hurled his spear. I dodged

with the quickness of lightning, and heard it strike the tire of the

wheel behind me. At the same instant I covered him and pulled the

trigger. To my horror the rifle did not go off. I had fired my nine

shots, and the magazine was empty. But my wits did not desert me for

long. Before the savage had time to clamber on to the wheel and raise

his knob-kerrie, I was within striking distance, and, swinging my

rifle by the barrel high into the air, brought the butt down upon his

head with a crash that might have been heard yards away. It crushed

in his skull like an egg-shell, and he fell like a log and never

moved again.

 

As he went down a sudden peace descended upon the field, and for a

moment or two every man wondered what had happened. The smoke quickly

cleared away, and when it did we saw that the foe had retired. I

accordingly clambered back to my old position, and looked about me.

My throat was like a lime kiln, and my eyes were dry as dust. But I

was not going to take any refreshment, though a bucket stood quite

close to me, until I had refilled my rifle. This done, I crossed to

the bucket, filled the mug and drank its contents with a relish such

as I had never known in my life before. When I had handed it to

another man, I turned about and endeavoured to take stock of our

company. From where I stood I could see two men stretched out upon

the ground. The one nearest me I knew instantly. It was Mackinnon,

and a single glance was sufficient to tell me that he was dead. The

other I could not for the moment identify. Mr. Maybourne, I was

relieved to see, was unhurt save for a wound on his left hand, which

he explained he had received in a hand-to-hand encounter in his

corner.

 

“We’ve taught the brutes a lesson in all conscience,” he said. “I

don’t fancy they’ll be as eager next time. How many men have we

lost?”

 

In order to find out, we walked quickly round our defences,

encouraging the garrison as we went, and bidding them replenish the

magazines of their rifles while they had the chance.

 

On the other side of the house we discovered Agnes, busily engaged

binding up the wounds of those who had been hurt. She was deadly

pale, but her bravery was not a bit diminished. When we got back to

our own quarters we had counted three dead men, two placed hors de

combat by their wounds, and five more or less cut and scratched.

Of the enemy we estimated that at least a hundred had fallen before

our rifles, never to rise again.

 

For something like half-an-hour we stood at our posts, waiting to

be attacked, but the foe showed no sign of moving. I was just

wondering what the next move would be when I heard a shout from the

right. I gripped my rifle and peered ahead of me, but there was

nothing to be seen save the foe crouching behind their shelters in

the distance.

 

“What is it?” I cried to my right-hand neighbour. “What do they

see?”

 

“A horseman,” he replied, “and coming in our direction.”

 

“Is he mad?” I cried, “or doesn’t he see his danger?”

 

My informant did not reply, and a moment later I saw for myself

the person referred to. He was mounted on a grey horse, and was

riding as fast as his animal could travel in our direction. I turned

my eyes away from him for a moment. When I looked again I saw a man

rise from behind a bush and hurl a spear at him. The cruel weapon was

thrown with unerring aim and struck the horse just behind the saddle.

He leapt into the air, and then with a scream of agony that could be

heard quite plainly where we all stood watching, dashed frantically

towards us. He had not, however, gone a hundred yards before he put

his foot into a hole, and fell with a crash to the ground, to lie

there motionless. His neck was broken, so we discovered later.

 

From where I stood, to the place where the man and beast lay, was

scarcely eighty yards; thence, on to the spot where the enemy were in

ambush, not more than a hundred. For some reason—why, I shall never

be able to explain—an irresistible desire to save the injured man

came over me. I could not have resisted it, even had I wished to do

so. Accordingly, I placed my rifle against the axle, sprang upon the

box of the waggon wheel, vaulted over, and ran as hard as I could go

towards the victim of the accident. Ahead of me I could distinctly

see the nodding plumes of the foe as they crouched behind their

enormous shields. They did not, however, move, and I was thus enabled

to reach the man’s side, and to take him in my arms unmolested. I had

not gone ten yards on my return journey, however, before I heard

their yells, and knew that they were after me. Fortunately, I had

nearly a hundred and twenty yards start; but I had a heavy man to

carry, and was quite out of breath. However, I was not going to be

beaten, so putting out every ounce of strength I boasted in my body,

I raced on. By the time I reached the waggons again, the foe were not

fifty yards behind me. A couple of assegais whistled passed my ears

as I climbed over the wheel and dropped my burden on the ground, but

fortunately neither hit me. So exhausted was I that for a moment I

leant against the waggon, unable to move. But the instinct of

self-preservation gave me strength, and picking up my rifle I let

drive blindly at the nearest of the foe who was already on the wheel

before me. I saw the man’s forehead open out like a cracked walnut as

my shot caught it, and a moment later he fell forward on the

tyre—dead. I threw him off in time to shoot the next man as he took

his place. Of the following five minutes my only recollection is a

sense of overpowering heat; a throat and mouth parched like the sands

of the Great Sahara; a rifle growing every moment hotter in my hand,

and dominating all the necessity of stemming, at any cost, the crowd

of black humanity that seemed to be overwhelming me. How long the

fight lasted I cannot say. But at last a cheer from the other side of

the laager reached me, and almost at the same instant the enemy

turned tail and fled for their lives. Then, with an empty rifle at my

feet, a dripping cutlass in one hand, and a still smoking revolver in

the other, I leant against the waggon and laughed hysterically till I

fell fainting to the ground.

 

CHAPTER XII. THE END.

 

WHEN I recovered consciousness I found a stranger dressed in

uniform kneeling beside me. What was more singular still I was not

under the waggon as before, but was lying surrounded by a dozen or so

of my comrades in the verandah of my own house. Agnes was kneeling

beside me, and her father was holding a basin of water at my

feet.

 

“There is nothing at all to be alarmed about, my dear young lady,”

the man in uniform was saying as he felt my pulse. “Your friend here

will live to fight another day, or a hundred other days for that

matter. By this time tomorrow he’ll be as well as ever.” Then,

turning to me, he asked: “how do you feel now?”

 

I replied that I felt much stronger; and then, looking up at Mr.

Maybourne, enquired if we had beaten off the enemy.

 

“They have been utterly routed,” replied the gentleman I

addressed. “The credit, however, is due to Captain Haviland and his

men; but for their timely arrival I fear we should have been done

for. Flesh and blood could not have stood the strain another half

hour.”

 

“Stuff and nonsense,” said the doctor, “for such I afterwards

discovered he was, all the credit is due to yourselves; and, by

George, you deserve it. A finer stand was never made in this country,

or for that matter in any other.”

 

After a few minutes’ rest and another sip of brandy, I managed to

get on to my feet. It was a sad sight I had before me. Stretched out

in rows beyond the verandah rails were the bodies of the gallant

fellows who had been killed—twelve in number. On rough beds placed

in the verandah itself and also in the house were the wounded; while

on the plain all round beyond the laager might have been seen the

bodies of the Matabele dead. On the left of the house the regiment of

mounted infantry, who had so opportunely come to our assistance, were

unsaddling after chasing the enemy, and preparing to camp.

 

After I had had a few moments’ conversation with the doctor, Mr.

Maybourne and Agnes came up to me again, and congratulated me on

having saved the stranger’s life. The praise they gave me was

altogether undeserved, for, as I have already explained, I had done

the thing on the spur of the moment without for an instant

considering the danger to which I had exposed myself. When they had

finished I enquired where the man was, and in reply they led me into

the house.

 

“The doctor says it is quite a hopeless case,” said Agnes, turning

to me in the doorway; “the poor fellow must have injured his spine

when his horse fell with him.”

 

I followed her into the room which had once been my own sleeping

apartment. It was now filled with wounded. The man I had brought in

lay upon a mattress in the corner by the window, and, with Agnes

beside me, I went across to him. Once there I looked down at his

face, and then, with a cry that even on pain of death I could not

have kept back, I fell against the wall, as Agnes afterwards told me,

pallid to the very lips. I don’t know how to tell you who I saw

there; I don’t know how to make you believe it, or how to enable you

to appreciate my feelings. One thing was certain, lying on the bed

before me, his head bandaged up, and a bushy beard clothing the lower

half of his face, was no less a person than Richard Bartrand—my

old enemy and the man I believed myself to have murdered in London so

many months before. I could hardly believe my eyes; I stared at

him and then looked away—only to look back again half expecting to

find him gone. Could this be any mistake? I asked myself. Could it be

only a deceiving likeness, or an hallucination of an overtaxed brain?

Hardly knowing what I did I dragged Agnes by the wrist out of the

house to a quiet corner, where I leant against the wall feeling as if

I were going to