“Oh!  Mr. Quatermain,” he answered, “I will obey you, though with fear and trembling.”

He went and when a few hours afterwards I noted that he had never reappeared, I came to the conclusion, with a sigh, for I was very fond of Sammy in a way, that he had fallen into trouble and been killed.  Probably, I thought, “his fear and trembling” had overcome his reason and caused him to run in the wrong direction with the cooking-pots.

The first part of our march through the town was easy enough, but after we had crossed the market-place and emerged into the narrow way that ran between many lines of huts to the south gate it became more difficult, since this path was already crowded with hundreds of terrified fugitives, old people, sick being carried, little boys, girls, and women with infants at the breast.  It was impossible to control these poor folk; all we could do was to fight our way through them.  However, we got out at last and climbing the slope, took up the best position we could on and just beneath its crest where the trees and scattered boulders gave us very fair cover, which we improved upon in every way feasible in the time at our disposal, by building little breastworks of stone and so forth.  The fugitives who had accompanied us, and those who followed, a multitude in all, did not stop here, but flowed on along the road and vanished into the wooded country behind.

I suggested to Brother John that he should take his wife and daughter and the three beasts and go with them.  He seemed inclined to accept the idea, needless to say for their sakes, not for his own, for he was a very fearless old fellow.  But the two ladies utterly refused to budge.  Hope said that she would stop with Stephen, and her mother declared that she had every confidence in me and preferred to remain where she was.  Then I suggested that Stephen should go too, but at this he grew so angry that I dropped the subject.

So in the end we established them in a pleasant little hollow by a spring just over the crest of the rise, where unless our flank were turned or we were rushed, they would be out of the reach of bullets.  Moreover, without saying anything more we gave to each of them a double-barrelled and loaded pistol.

CHAPTER XX

THE BATTLE OF THE GATE

By now heavy firing had begun at the north gate of the town, accompanied by much shouting.  The mist was still too thick to enable us to see anything at first.  But shortly after the commencement of the firing a strong, hot wind, which always followed these mists, got up and gradually gathered to a gale, blowing away the vapours.  Then from the top of the crest, Hans, who had climbed a tree there, reported that the Arabs were advancing on the north gate, firing as they came, and that the Mazitu were replying with their bows and arrows from behind the palisade that surrounded the town.  This palisade, I should