As we approached, our triangle curved a little, no doubt under the direction of Harut.  A minute or so later I saw the reason.  It was that we might strike the foot-soldiers not full in front but at an angle.  It was an admirable manoeuvre, for when presently we did strike, we caught them swiftly on the flank and crumpled them up.  My word! we went through those fellows like a knife through butter; they had as much chance against the rush of our camels as a brown-paper screen has against a typhoon.  Over they rolled in heaps while the White Kendah spitted them with their lances.

“The Child is top dog!  My money on the Child,” reflected I in irreverent ecstasy.  But that exultation was premature, for those Black Kendah were by no means all dead.  Presently I saw that scores of them had appeared among the camels, which they were engaged in stabbing, or trying to stab, in the stomach with their spears.  Also I had forgotten the horsemen.  As our charge slackened owing to the complication in front, these arrived on our flanks like two thunderbolts.  We faced about and did our best to meet the onslaught, of which the net result was that both our left and right lines were pierced through about fifty yards behind the baggage camels.  Luckily for us the very impetuosity of the Black Kendah rush deprived it of most of the fruits of victory, since the two squadrons, being unable to check their horses, ended by charging into each other and becoming mixed in inextricable confusion.  Then, I do not know who gave the order, we wheeled our camels in and fell upon them, a struggling, stationary mass, with the result that many of them were speared, or overthrown and trampled.

“I have said we, but that is not quite correct, at any rate so far as Marut, Hans, I and about fifteen camelmen were concerned.  How it happened I could not tell in that dust and confusion, but we were cut off from the main body and presently found ourselves fighting desperately in a group at which Black Kendah horsemen were charging again and again.  We made the best stand we could.  By degrees the bewildered camels sank under the repeated spear-thrusts of the enemy, all except one, oddly enough that ridden by Hans, which by some strange chance was never touched.  The rest of us were thrown or tumbled off the camels and continued the fight from behind their struggling bodies.”

That is where I came in.  Up to this time I had not fired a single shot, partly because I do not like missing, which it is so easy to do from the back of a swaying camel, and still more for the reason that I had not the slightest desire to kill any of these savage men unless I was obliged to do so in self-defence.  Now, however, the thing was different, as I was fighting for my life.  Leaning against my camel, which was dying and beating its head upon the ground, groaning horribly the while, I emptied the five cartridges of the repeater into those Black Kendah, pausing between each shot to take aim, with the result that presently five riderless horses were galloping loose about the veld.