Seeing them come the scattered Arabs began to fire at them, killing some, but thereby revealing their own hiding-places.  At these the slaves rushed.  They hurled themselves upon the Arabs; they tore them, they dashed out their brains in such fashion that within another five minutes quite two-thirds of them were dead; and the rest, of whom we took some toll with our rifles as they bolted from cover, were in full flight.

It was a terrible vengeance.  Never did I witness a more savage scene than that of these outraged men wreaking their wrongs upon their tormentors.  I remember that when most of the Arabs had been killed and a few were escaped, the slaves found one, I think it was the captain of the gang, who had hidden himself in a little patch of dead reeds washed up by the stream.  Somehow they managed to fire these; I expect that Hans, who had remained discreetly in the background after the fighting began, emerged when it was over and gave them a match.  In due course out came the wretched Arab.  Then they flung themselves on him as marching ants do upon a caterpillar, and despite his cries for mercy, tore him to fragments, literally to fragments.  Being what they were, it was hard to blame them.  If we had seen our parents shot, our infants pitilessly butchered, our homes destroyed and our women and children marched off in the slave-sticks to be sold into bondage, should we not have done the same?  I think so, although we are not ignorant savages.

Thus our lives were saved by those whom we had tried to save, and for once justice was done even in those dark parts of Africa, for in that time they were dark indeed.  Had it not been for Hans and the courage which he managed to inspire into the hearts of these crushed blacks, I have little doubt but that before nightfall we should have been dead, for I do not think that any attempt at retreat would have proved successful.  And if it had, what would have happened to us in that wild country surrounded by enemies and with only the few rounds of ammunition that we could have carried in our flight?

“Ah!  Baas,” said the Hottentot a little while later, squinting at me with his bead-like eyes, “after all you did well to listen to my prayer and bring me with you.  Old Hans is a drunkard, yes, or at least he used to be, and old Hans gambles, yes, and perhaps old Hans will go to hell.  But meanwhile old Hans can think, as he thought one day before the attack on Maraisfontein, as he thought one day on the Hill of Slaughter by Dingaan’s kraal, and as he thought this morning up there among the bushes.  Oh! he knew how it must end.  He saw that those dogs of Arabs were cutting down a tree to make a bridge across that deep stream and get round to the high ground at the back of you, whence they would have shot you all in five minutes.  And now, Baas, my stomach feels very queer.  There was no breakfast on the hillside and the sun was very hot.  I think that just one tot of brandy—­oh!  I know, I promised not to drink, but if you give it me the sin is yours, not mine.”