of a man and the sharp snort of an excited horse.  When the force was within a mile of Babyan’s impi a halt was called, and the men lay down to sleep in the freezing cold night.  It was not a long sleep, for an hour before dawn they were in the saddle again, and moving through the darkness as silently as before towards the enemy’s stronghold.  When the pass was reached which led into the valley held by Babyan the column was prepared for attack, the advance force being under the command of Baden-Powell.

The guide almost jumped with joy, he says, when he spotted the enemy’s fires.  The fight was to begin.  The guns were got up, and in a few minutes they were volleying and thundering, flinging their whirring shells into the masses of Matabele, whose assegai blades glistened in the morning sun.  While this opening cannonade was proceeding Baden-Powell found useful work to do.  With a few native scouts he started off on his own account and soon found a large body of the enemy elsewhere enjoying a bombastic war-dance, which plainly portended the staggering of humanity and the driving of the British into the sea.  Thinking that Colonel Plumer ought not to miss this performance, Baden-Powell sent back word of it, and calling together the Native Levy proceeded to attack the dancers.  Their sound of revelry died away, or changed to something more dismal, when Baden-Powell and his men came clambering up the rocky height, leaping over boulders, dodging behind crags, and pouring lead into their astonished midst.  With very little delay the Matabele went to earth, tumbling pell-mell into their caves and holes, from whence the rattle of their musketry soon rolled, and where they fancied themselves as safe as a rabbit in its burrow from the attack of an eagle.  To add to Baden-Powell’s difficulty his Native Levy began to show the white feather, getting behind rocks and wasting their ammunition on the desert crags.  Had the Matabele come out of their caves, given one war-whoop, and made a show of descending upon the besiegers, those precious friendlies would assuredly have turned tail and bolted.  But the Matabele in the security of their caves made no such sign, and Baden-Powell called up the Cape Boys and the Maxims in the nick of time.  In a few minutes the guns were in position on what looked like inaccessible crags, and the Cape Boys shouting and cheering were floundering through bogs, leaping over boulders, and firing with firm hand wherever firing was of use.  The fight was now begun in earnest, and B.-P., on a rock directing the movements of his force, was surrounded by the deafening roar of artillery.  In nearly every cave on those hills savages lay with rifle to shoulder, finger on trigger, waiting to pick off the besiegers as they came bounding over the rocks towards them.  The Cape Boys never wavered; up they dashed, panting and sweating, to the very mouths of the caves, fired their rifles into the darkness, charged in, to reissue in a few minutes, jabbering to each other, and then