The Lady Sleuths MEGAPACK TM(116)
“So I understand, Hilda, my orders are these: I am to go out and fight for the women and children, if possible; that Sebastian shall be made prisoner alive, and on no account to let him be killed in the open!”
“I give you no orders, Hubert. I tell you how it seems best to me. But if Sebastian is shot dead—then you understand it must be all over between us. I never can marry you until, or unless, I have cleared my father.”
“Sebastian shall not be shot dead,” I cried, with my youthful impetuosity. “He shall be brought in alive, though all Salisbury as one man try its best to lynch him.”
I went out to report myself as a volunteer for service. Within the next few hours the whole town had been put in a state of siege, and all available men armed to oppose the insurgent Matabele. Hasty preparations were made for defence. The ox-waggons of settlers were drawn up outside in little circles here and there, so as to form laagers, which acted practically as temporary forts for the protection of the outskirts. In one of these I was posted. With our company were two American scouts, named Colebrook and Doolittle, irregular fighters whose value in South African campaigns had already been tested in the old Matabele war against Lo-Bengula. Colebrook, in particular, was an odd-looking creature—a tall, spare man, bodied like a weasel. He was red-haired, ferret-eyed, and an excellent scout, but scrappier and more inarticulate in his manner of speech than any human being I had ever encountered. His conversation was a series of rapid interjections, jerked out at intervals, and made comprehensible by a running play of gesture and attitude.
“Well, yes,” he said, when I tried to draw him out on the Matabele mode of fighting. “Not on the open. Never! Grass, if you like. Or bushes. The eyes of them! The eyes!…” He leaned eagerly forward, as if looking for something. “See here, Doctor; I’m telling you. Spots. Gleaming. Among the grass. Long grass. And armed, too. A pair of ’em each. One to throw”—he raised his hand as if lancing something—“the other for close fighting. Assegais, you know. That’s the name of it. Only the eyes. Creeping, creeping, creeping. No noise. One raised. Waggons drawn up in laager. Oxen out-spanned in the middle. Trekking all day. Tired out; dog tired. Crawl, crawl, crawl! Hands and knees. Might be snakes. A wriggle. Men sitting about the camp fire. Smoking. Gleam of their eyes! Under the waggons. Nearer, nearer, nearer! Then, the throwing ones in your midst. Shower of ’em. Right and left. ‘Halloa! stand by, boys!’ Look up; see ’em swarming, black like ants, over the waggons. Inside the laager. Snatch up rifles! All up! Oxen stampeding, men running, blacks sticking ’em like pigs in the back with their assegais. Bad job, the whole thing. Don’t care for it, myself. Very tough ’uns to fight. If they once break laager.”
“Then you should never let them get to close quarters,” I suggested, catching the general drift of his inarticulate swift pictures.
“You’re a square man, you are, Doctor! There you touch the spot. Never let ’em get at close quarters. Sentries?—creep past ’em. Outposts?—crawl between. Had Forbes and Wilson like that. Cut ’em off. Perdition!… But Maxims will do it! Maxims! Never let em get near. Sweep the ground all round. Durned hard, though, to know just when they’re coming. A night; two nights; all clear; only waste ammunition. Third, they swarm like bees; break laager; all over!”
This was not exactly an agreeable picture of what we had to expect—the more so as our particular laager happened to have no Maxims. However, we kept a sharp lookout for those gleaming eyes in the long grass of which Colebrook warned us; their flashing light was the one thing to be seen, at night above all, when the black bodies could crawl unperceived through the tall dry herbage. On our first night out we had no adventures. We watched by turns outside, relieving sentry from time to time, while those of us who slept within the laager slept on the bare ground with our arms beside us. Nobody spoke much. The tension was too great. Every moment we expected an attack of the enemy.