Now they were in them and ploughing through their ever-thickening ranks, throwing their black bodies to this side and to that as a ship throws the water from its bows.  Here, there, everywhere spears flashed and stabbed, but as yet they were unhurt, for the very press saved them, although an assegai was quivering in the flank of the schimmel.  Ah! a pang as of the touch of red-hot iron and a spear had pierced Ralph’s left shoulder, remaining fast in the wound.  Still lower he bent his body till his head was almost hidden in the flowing mane of the schimmel, but now black clutching hands caught feet and bridle rein, and slowly the great horse lost way and stopped.  A tall Zulu stabbed it in the chest, and Ralph gasped, “It is over!”

But it was not over, for, feeling the pain of this new wound, of a sudden the stallion went mad.  He shrieked aloud as only a horse can shriek, and laying back his ears till his face was like the face of a wolf, he reared up on his hind legs and struck out with his hoofs, crushing the skulls and bodies of his tormentors.  Down he came again, and with another scream rushed open-mouthed at the man who had stabbed him; his long white teeth gripped him across the body where the ribs end, and then the awful sight was seen of a horse holding in his mouth a man who yelled in agony, and plunging forward with great bounds while he shook him to and fro, as a dog will shake a rat.[*]

[*] The reader may think this incident scarcely credible, but for an authenticated instance of such behaviour on the part of a horse he may be referred to the “Memoirs of General Marbot.”

Yes, he shook and shook till the flesh gave, and the man fell dying on the veldt.  Again the furious beast opened his jaws from which gore dripped and rushed upon another, but this one did not wait for him—­none waited.  To the Zulus in those days a horse was a terrible wild beast, and this was a beast indeed, that brave as they were they dared not face.

“It is a devil! and wizards ride it!” they cried, as they opened a path before its rush.

They were through, and behind them like the voice of hounds that hunt swelled the cry of the war-dogs of Dingaan.  They were through and living yet, though one broad bangwan was fast in Ralph’s shoulder, and another stood in the schimmel’s chest.

Not two miles away rose the koppie.  “The horse will die,” thought Ralph as he drew Suzanne closer to him, and gripped the saddle with his knees.  Indeed, he was dying; yet never since he was a colt did the schimmel cover two miles of plain so fast as those that lay between the impi and the camp.  Slowly and surely the spear worked its way into his vitals, but stretching out his head, and heedless of his burden, he rushed on with the speed of a racer.