Now they took another counsel and in a great confused body charged down the market-place to break out at the south gate, and our turn came.  How we raked them as they sped across the open, an easy mark!  I know that I fired as fast as I could using two rifles, swearing the while at Hans because he was not there to load for me.  Stephen was better off in this respect, for, looking round, to my astonishment I saw Hope, who had left her mother on the other side of the hill, in the act of capping his second gun.  I should explain that during our stay in Beza Town we had taught her how to use a rifle.

I called to him to send her away, but again she would not go, even after a bullet had pierced her dress.

Still, all our shooting could not stop that rush of men, made desperate by the fear of a fiery death.  Leaving many stretched out behind them, the first of the Arabs drew near to the south gate.

“My father,” said Mavovo in my ear, “now the real fighting is going to begin.  The gate will soon be down. We must be the gate.”

I nodded, for if the Arabs once got through, there were enough of them left to wipe us out five times over.  Indeed, I do not suppose that up to this time they had actually lost more than forty men.  A few words explained the situation to Stephen and Brother John, whom I told to take his daughter to her mother and wait there with them.  The Mazitu I ordered to throw down their guns, for if they kept these I was sure they would shoot some of us, and to accompany us, bringing their spears only.

Then we rushed down the slope and took up our position in a little open space in front of the gate, that now was tottering to its fall beneath the blows and draggings of the Arabs.  At this time the sight was terrible and magnificent, for the flames had got hold of the two half-circles of huts that embraced the market-place, and, fanned by the blast, were rushing towards us like a thing alive.  Above us swept a great pall of smoke in which floated flakes of fire, so thick that it hid the sky, though fortunately the wind did not suffer it to sink and choke us.  The sounds also were almost inconceivable, for to the crackling roar of the conflagration as it devoured hut after hut, were added the coarse, yelling voices of the half-bred Arabs, as in mingled rage and terror they tore at the gateway or each other, and the reports of the guns which many of them were still firing, half at hazard.

We formed up before the gate, the Zulus with Stephen and myself in front and the thirty picked Mazitu, commanded by no less a person than Bausi, the king, behind.  We had not long to wait, for presently down the thing came and over it and the mound of earth and stones we had built beyond, began to pour a mob of white-robed and turbaned men whose mixed and tumultuous exit somehow reminded me of the pips and pulp being squeezed out of a grenadilla fruit.

I gave the word, and we fired into that packed mass with terrible effect.  Really I think that each bullet must have brought down two or three of them.  Then, at a command from Mavovo, the Zulus threw down their guns and charged with their broad spears.  Stephen, who had got hold of an assegai somehow, went with them, firing a Colt’s revolver as he ran, while at their backs came Bausi and his thirty tall Mazitu.