He stood as if he were on parade, in the midst of this palpitating turmoil of savages.  Some of us, encouraged by his example, mounted the waggons, and shot from the tops at our approaching assailants.

How long the hurly-burly went on, I cannot say.  We fired, fired, fired, and Kaffirs fell like sheep; yet more Kaffirs rose fresh from the long grass to replace them.  They swarmed with greater ease now over the covered waggons, across the mangled and writhing bodies of their fellows; for the dead outside made an inclined plane for the living to mount by.  But the enemy were getting less numerous, I thought, and less anxious to fight.  The steady fire told on them.  By-and-by, with a little halt, for the first time they wavered.  All our men now mounted the waggons, and began to fire on them in regular volleys as they came up.  The evil effects of the surprise were gone by this time; we were acting with coolness and obeying orders.  But several of our people dropped close beside me, pierced through with assegais.

All at once, as if a panic had burst over them, the Matabele, with one mind, stopped dead short in their advance and ceased fighting.  Till that moment, no number of deaths seemed to make any difference to them.  Men fell, disabled; others sprang up from the ground by magic.  But now, of a sudden, their courage flagged—­they faltered, gave way, broke, and shambled in a body.  At last, as one man, they turned and fled.  Many of them leapt up with a loud cry from the long grass where they were skulking, flung away their big shields with the white thongs interlaced, and ran for dear life, black, crouching figures, through the dense, dry jungle.  They held their assegais still, but did not dare to use them.  It was a flight, pell-mell—­and the devil take the hindmost.

Not until then had I leisure to think, and to realise my position.  This was the first and only time I had ever seen a battle.  I am a bit of a coward, I believe—­like most other men—­though I have courage enough to confess it; and I expected to find myself terribly afraid when it came to fighting.  Instead of that, to my immense surprise, once the Matabele had swarmed over the laager, and were upon us in their thousands, I had no time to be frightened.  The absolute necessity for keeping cool, for loading and reloading, for aiming and firing, for beating them off at close quarters—­all this so occupied one’s mind, and still more one’s hands, that one couldn’t find room for any personal terrors.  “They are breaking over there!” “They will overpower us yonder!” “They are faltering now!” Those thoughts were so uppermost in one’s head, and one’s arms were so alert, that only after the enemy gave way, and began to run at full pelt, could a man find breathing-space to think of his own safety.  Then the thought occurred to me, “I have been through my first fight, and come out of it alive; after all, I was a deal less afraid than I expected!”